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Home : Quarterly Archives : Volume 28 |
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Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society |
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Source: July 1990 Volume 28 Number 3, Pages 85–96 History on a Sign Post TopIntroduction The names of many roads and streets in our two townships reflect various aspects of our history and the growth and development of the area. The names are derived from a number of different origins. Some of them, for example, took their names from where they went: to an important or nearby town or village; to a ford across a river or stream; to a mill; to a church or meeting house; to a school; to a tavern or inn. Many of the earliest roads were laid out and built to transport goods and produce to market or to provide a way to get to meeting or mills, and remind us of places that were important to the early settlers and succeeding generations. Others were named for famous persons. In some cases they were prominent local people who played a part in the development of the area; farmers or landowners whose land was traversed by the road or lay along side of it, or the names of their farms or estates; officials in local government. In others they were well-known national figures, including a number of roads bearing the names of officers of the Continental army during the War for Independence. Our early heritage is also recalled in the names of other roads: names with a Welsh origin that reflect the first Welsh settlers; names taken from places in England; names associated with events and places of the Revolutionary War, or those who took part in it. Other roads, especially in the newer developments, were named by the developer for himself or members of his family, and reflect the changes that have taken place during the past 40 years or so, since the Second World War. Other roads have names derived from the land and its topography: valleys or dales, woods, forests, creeks and streams, lakes, hills and vistas. There are also roads that were named for various types of trees, in some cases perhaps because they were indigenous to the area when the road was first laid out. (The use of tree names for street names, of course, has a distinguished precedent: in William Penn's "greene country town" of Philadelphia, the east-west streets were named Pine, Spruce, Locust, Walnut, Chestnut, Mulberry, and Sassafras.) Other roads, again especially in the newer developments, were named for colleges or universities, perhaps because they were considered indicative of a prestigious community by the developer. And, finally, some roads were given their names simply because they were considered euphonious or with merchandising appeal by the developer. Thus quite often the name of a road reflects something of our history and tells a little about how this area developed over almost three centuries.
Here are the stories behind the names of the roads in Berwyn and Devon -- history on a sign post. Berwyn Conestoga road, running east and west through Devon and Berwyn in Tredyffrin and Easttown townships, is a section of what is probably the oldest road in the area. The road followed the course of an old Indian trail between the principal villages of the Conestoga Indians on the Susquehanna River and the Delaware River, and hence its name, the Conestoga road. The segment of the road through our two townships may have been laid out and built as early as in 1701. When the "King's Highway or Publick Road" to Lancaster, branching west from the Conestoga Road in East Whiteland Township, was built forty years later, the section of Conestoga Road east of the junction also became known as the Lancaster Road, as it was also used by travelers going to or from Lancaster and the west. In 1792 the State authorized the incorporation of the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike Company to construct a new "artificial" road between the two cities, in accordance with detailed specifications set forth in the act, and to charge a toll for its use. The turnpike opened two years later, and was both the first major toll road, and the first macadam (or packed stone) road, built in America. After it opened in 1794, the segments of the old road that were bypassed by the new and less circuitous turnpike became known as the Old Lancaster Road. The road was operated as a toll road until 1917, when it was bought by the State and became a public road. Even though it has not been a toll road for more than seventy years now, however, it is sometimes still referred to as the Lancaster Pike, for the pikes that once were a barrier across the road until the tolls were paid and they were turned aside. A number of improvements were made in the road over the next few years, with the sections of the old road north of the railroad replaced by a new highway on the south side of the tracks between Strafford and the eastern end of Berwyn, and between the western end of Berwyn and Daylesford. There placed sections of the road became known as Old Lancaster Road, as we know it today, and the present Conestoga Road again became known by its original name. At that time the new road, and the sections of the old road that had not been replaced, including the section through the village of Berwyn, became Lancaster Avenue as it is today. Lancaster Avenue also became a part of the coast-to-coast highway from New York City to San Francisco, promoted by Carl Fisher and Henry Joy who formed the Lincoln Highway Association. The highway was called the Lincoln Highway, in honor of Abraham Lincoln, and as a result Lancaster Avenue is sometimes referred to by that name.
Finally, when the system of federally-numbered routes was inaugurated, Lancaster Avenue also became
known as Route 30. There were two important periods in the growth of the village of Berwyn south of Lancaster Avenue and between Lakeside and Leopard roads, one in the late 19th century and the other in the middle of the 20th century. Much of the 19th-century growth of the village came from the development of three tracts of land. First was the land purchased by the Rev. John McLeod, the founding pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church, in 1862. He bought the remaining lands of the old Springhouse Tavern property in 1861, extending from the present Lakeside Avenue on the east to Waterloo Avenue on the west. The second tract was the ten-acre farm between Waterloo Avenue and the present Bridge Avenue. It was purchased in 1870 by Thomas Aiken, a weaver and farmer in Howellville. And third, the streets to the west, from Bridge Avenue to Leopard Road, were cut out of the old Carter and Potter farms. In 19th century records, Lakeside Avenue was just an unnamed road, used by a Jacob Detwiler and the men he employed to cut and haul logs from the woods to be used as railroad ties. On old maps, well into the 20th century, a lake is shown adjacent to the road, and was probably the origin of the road's name. Waterloo Avenue, the western boundary of the McLeod tract, is an older road, leading south from the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike to Waterloo Mills and Newtown [Square]. In early records the road was often referred to as the Waterloo-Newtown Road; its importance in providing away to the grist mill at Waterloo Mills, which began operations on Darby Creek in 1814, however, is reflected in the name by which we now know it. Reverend McLeod laid out the first streets on his property, and also gave them their names. Berwyn Avenue was laid out just south of the Lancaster Turnpike, running parallel to it. It obviously was given its present name sometime after 1877, when the village of Reeseville became Berwyn. A street called Church Avenue was laid out and built south from the Turnpike to the new Presbyterian Church, which was dedicated in 1862. When St. Monica's Roman Catholic Church and the Berwyn Methodist Church were also built in the same block in the 1880s, the name for the street was triply appropriate. For some reason still to be determined, however, some folks felt its name should be changed, and it became Main Avenue shortly after that. The McLeod's home was in the old Springhouse Tavern building on the north side of the Turnpike. Across the Turnpike was a spring and woods that marked the eastern end of the village until the 1950s. The street along these woods, running south from the Turnpike and then to the east, was appropriately named Woodside Avenue as it bordered the woods. As the village of Berwyn began to grow, Reverend McLeod sold off much of his property to people wanting to build homes and businesses in the developing village. Although he was no longer the minister at Trinity, he continued to live in Berwyn until 1882, commuting to his position as the pastor of the South West Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia. (After that his son John McLeod Jr., an attorney, handled his real estate transactions.) The first lot sold from the tract was to the Clarks, who built their house down Waterloo Avenue, and soon afterwards First Avenue was laid out and cut through. Beyond that, or south of First Avenue, much of the property was owned by the Coates family; it would not be developed into residential lots until after 1950. When the railroad relocated its tracks in the mid-1870s, changing the route of the Turnpike slightly, and cutting through the northern part of the Aiken's property, the Aikens also began to sell off parts of their 10-acre farm. New streets were laid out on the property and named Aiken, Knox, and Woodbine avenues. (On some early maps, Woodbine Avenue appears as Woodlawn Avenue.) The source of the name for Aiken Avenue is obvious. The Aikens were a prominent family in Berwyn during the latter half of the 19th century and into the 1900s. Thomas Jefferson Aiken was at one time the pastor of the Trinity Church, and later of the Presbyterian churches in Paoli and Malvern, and his brother James Aiken was a well known doctor in the area. Knox Avenue, we might guess, could have been named for John Knox, the early Scottish Calvinist. Certainly the Aikens were of Scottish descent, and were both strongly Scotch and strongly Presbyterian. Bridge, Central, and Walnut avenues were streets built by the railroad - and unfortunately with less attention to curbing and drainage than had been shown in the streets in the more central part of the village. They were laid out when the Carter and Potter farms were developed following the relocation of the tracks. The sources of their names again is obvious: Bridge Avenue was so named because it is at the bridge over the railroad over which the Turnpike passed; Walnut Avenue was named for the tree; and Central Avenue because it was in the middle or center of the area being developed. Potter Avenue, running between Walnut Avenue and Leopard Road, was named for the Potter family, owners of the Potter farm. The Potters were among the earlier settlers of the area; Martin Potter came to this country from Germany and bought the property in Easttown Township in 1793. The name of Maple Avenue, to the south of Potter Avenue, was, of course, taken from the maple tree. Leopard Road is another older road. Its name came from the fact that it ran from the Turnpike southwest to the Leopard Inn, and the small village around the tavern. At the eastern end of Berwyn, it wasn't until the 1950s that the area east of Woodside Avenue, and the section south along Waterloo Avenue, beyond First Avenue, was developed. In 1899 John McLeod Jr. sold the woods at the eastern end to George W. Aman. Although Aman made plans to develop it and build houses on the tract, little was actually done. About twenty years later, the property was purchased by John Vogler but still remained undeveloped until it was sold by his estate in 1952. The new purchaser was Walter K. Durham, an architect/builder with offices in Gladwyne and Philadelphia, who soon announced plans to develop the 24-acre Vogler tract into a housing development of 18 acres; with a shopping center, along the highway, on the remaining six acres. To carry out the project, Durham and his associates formed the Easttown Company. It was at this time that Midland Avenue, first projected in the Aman plan, running south from Lancaster Avenue, was finally constructed. Its name probably stems from its location on the midland between Lakeside Avenue and Woodside Avenue. In the original Aman plan, it was also planned that Berwyn Avenue would be extended to the east and then curve around to intersect with Woodside Avenue; instead, Berwyn Avenue was extended only as far as Midland Avenue; and a new road, Eastwood Road, was constructed to join Midland with the lower part of Woodside Avenue. The name of the road was a contraction of Easttown Woods, a name long used for the area. The development was also Easttown Woods. It included 80 single family homes -- salt boxes, with the picture windows popular at the time, and with an open-style living area with no walls separating the efficiency kitchen, dining room, and living room. Even though the second floors were unfinished, they sold quickly at $10,990, or $11,990 if there was a garage, to veterans under the GI Bill during the postwar building boom.) In 1957 and 1958, Midland Avenue was extended to curve around to Waterloo Avenue when the land formerly owned by William H. Coates and his brother Joseph Horner Coates was developed by Berwyn Downs, Inc., which built split-level houses selling for $15,990 along Lakeside Avenue and the extended Midland Avenue. West of Waterloo Road, a new cul-de-sac named Midland Circle, an extension of Midland Avenue, was constructed. Another new road, Bartholomew Road, was also cut through, running between Midland Avenue and First Avenue; its name could likely have come as an honor to Dr. Joseph Bartholomew, a prominent veterinarian and supervisor in Easttown Township in the 1930s and 1940s. Farther south, on the east side of Waterloo Road, the Devon Downs development was constructed in the years 1962 to 1964 on the old Zeigler farm. (The builder, Bernard Hankin, was about 40 years old at the time; in his thirty-two years of building, he has built 5500 single homes and apartments, and in 1986 was named Pennsylvania's Builder of the Year. Four styles of houses were used in the development: colonial, Georgian, ranch style, and split-level.) Like much of the postwar development of Berwyn, Devon Downs was not laid out in a grid pattern; instead, the houses were set along curving roads and circles, with care taken to preserve the old shade trees. The street names, one of the sales representatives for the development told me, were selected by the township, not the builder, and were selected to reflect English origins. Thus Daventry Road was named for the borough of Daventry in Northamptonshire in central England. Hastings Place took its name from the county town in Sussex East in the south of England, famous as the site of the battle in which the Normans under William defeated the Saxons under Harold in 1066. Kent Place was named for the county of Kent in southern England, noted for its rolling downs and sheep and dairy cattle. And Watford Lane took its name from the borough in Hertfordshire in east central England.
Finally, when the area further south and to the west of Waterloo Avenue was developed by Peter Picard,
a short street running west from Waterloo Road was named Dogwood Lane, for the indigenous dogwood trees. Like the center of the village of Berwyn on the south side, of the Turnpike, the area north of the Turnpike, between the railroad and Conestoga Road, was also developed in the latter part of the 19th century and early 20th century. Many of the street names in this section recall prominent local families of that period. Kromer Avenue, for example, running east and west parallel to the railroad and opened in the 1890s, was named for the Kromer family. There were three brothers, all of whom played a part in the growth of Berwyn. James Kromer was a telegrapher in the old railroad tower near the Bridge Avenue overpass, and Samuel Kromer, also a telegrapher, built a hotel and livery stable on the south side of the Turnpike in the eastern end of the village, and was a justice of the peace. (He also earned a local reputation for his artistry on the violin.) It was Samuel Kromer who built the first house, in the mid-1880s, on the land that later became Kromer Avenue. The road ran eastward only as far as the present Price Avenue until the late 1920s, when it was extended to what is now Francis Avenue. Station Avenue, which runs north and south between Kromer Avenue and the railroad, obviously took its name from its proximity to the Berwyn railroad station. It is believed that it was once part of an early cow path that was used by the widow Rees to drive her cows to the spring of the old Springhouse Tavern for watering. Cassatt Avenue ran between the station at the Turnpike and Chesterbrook Farm on Swedesford Road. It was named for Alexander J. Cassatt, the owner of the famed 600-acre Chesterbrook Stock Farm, and later the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Built by Cassatt as a Telford road, it was one of the better roads in the area. The 7/10-mile section of what is now Howellville Road, running south from Conestoga Road, was also called Cassatt Road until 1956 when it was renamed Howellville Road. Howellville Road, of course, was so named because it went down into the village of Howellville, intersecting there with Swedes Ford Road. On early maps, what is now Irish Road is also sometimes shown as Howellville Road. Price Avenue, between Kromer Avenue and Conestoga Road, was named for the canning operation of Mrs. John D. Follett, located at what is now the corner of Kromer arid Price avenues. Her preserves were sold under the trade name of "Hester Price", an old family name, and hence the name Price Avenue. East of Price Avenue was "Rhydlyn", the 13-acre property of James Francis. Francis Avenue, along the eastern boundery of the property, took its name from the Francis family. (At one time what is now Price Avenue, along the western boundary of the tract, was known as Francis Avenue.) Similarly, Keller Avenue, running north from Conestoga Road, took its name from the Keller family. In the latter part of the 19th century, John Keller owned a considerable amount of land in a tract that extended on both sides of Conestoga Road. The name of Bair Road, also running north from Conestoga Road, was derived from the Oliver Bair family. He was a well-known funeral director in Philadelphia. Their 15-acre summer estate "Hillcrest" was on the northside of Conestoga Road, just east of Bair Road. Also running north from Conestoga Road, and then curving to the east to Bair Road, is Orchard Way. The same name was given to a development with a half dozen houses built in that area on the Haskell Ewing property early in this century. Before the development, a section of the land was a part of an orchard on the Ewing property. Until the 1950s both Bair Road and Keller Avenue extended only a block or so north of Conestoga Road. When the property was developed in the mid-1950s by four different developers, however, they were extended to their present configuration. At this time Margo Lane was also laid out. Who Margo was, or how the road received its name, we have yet to determine. Two other new roads, Hickory Lane and Spruce Lane, obviously took the names of trees, while the name of Mountain View Road, running between Bair Road and Hickory Lane, reflects the fact that from it one could look over the valley to the North Valley Hills and Valley Forge Mountain. Finally, the short lane called Carriage Way, running east from Conestoga Road through the former Bair estate, and built about a decade later, was given its name from the carriage house on the Bair property. There are also two older roads running north from Conestoga Road down into the valley from the eastern end of Berwyn. The Berwyn-Baptist Road, obviously, was so named from the fact that it runs between Berwyn and the Baptist Church of the Great Valley, intersecting with what is now Devon State Road just south of the church.
Contention Lane dates back to the early 1850s, and was laid out to provide a road "from a point on the
Swedes' Ford Road in the township of Tredyffrin ... to the Lancaster Turnpike in the township of Easttown."
Although it now ends at Berwyn-Baptist Road, it originally crossed both Berwyn-Baptist Road and
Conestoga Road, intersecting with the Turnpike [now Old Lancaster Road] about where Francis Avenue does
today. The name Contention Lane is believed to be the result of the contention, and three years of
controversy, that took place before the road was finally approved by the Court, a process that involved
four separate petitions and three juries of view before it was approved and two additional juries of view
to determine the damages caused by its construction. (It has also been suggested that the name stemmed from
occasional skirmishes between British and American foraging parties during the winter of 1777-1778, but the
first explanation seems the more likely.) Devon In the portion of Easttown Township today known as Devon, both the residential development, and the laying out of streets, coincided with the opening of the Devon railroad station by the Pennsylvania Railroad and the construction of the Devon Inn. At that time, Joseph Altemus and Lemuel Coffin began the development of a fine summer resort "in the English manner in pleasing surroundings". The east-west streets, from north to south, as laid out by Altemus and Coffin, were Arlington, Berkeley, Chester, Sugartown (an old road, sometimes also identified on early maps as Devon Road), and Exeter. They ran from Valley Forge Road on the east, west to a swampy area drained by the many small streams that are tributaries to Darby Creek, in the area west of Fairfield Road. The north-south streets, from east to west, were the aforementioned Valley Forge Road, Dorset, an unnamed boulevard running from the railroad station to the Devon Inn (the Inn occupied the block bounded by Berkeley, Dorset, Chester, and Waterloo roads), Waterloo (another old road), Fairfield, West Arlington, and Lakeside (now considered the eastern border of Berwyn). The names of these streets, laid out in about 1882, all project a strong English flavor, and were selected to be compatible with the name Devon that was selected by the Railroad as the name for its new station. The east-west streets, with Fairfield, also provide an alphabetical sequence to the street names. Arlington Road was named for Henry Bennett, who became the first earl of Arlington in 1672. He was secretary of state under King Charles II from 1662 to 1674, and had earlier supported the King during the Civil War in England. Berkeley Road suggests the English family remarkable for its long tenure in the old Gloucestershire castle of Berkeley, and the earldom created in 1679. The first Lord Berkeley was also a royalist during the Civil War. Chester Road obviously took its name from Chester in Chestershire, the home town of a man named Pearson who accompanied William Penn to America on the ship "Welcome", and who gave the city and county of Chester their names. Exeter is the county town of Devonshire in England, on the river Exe, and the origin for the name of Exeter Road. Fairfield Road was similarly named for a town in County Kent in England. An interesting sidelight is that Arlington Road later became a part of Lancaster Avenue. When the new road between Devon and Berwyn south of the railroad was built, it used the bed of the original Arlington Road through Devon. What today is known as Arlington Road was known as West Arlington Road a hundred years ago. Similarly, what we now call South Devon Road, presumably because of its location at what was the southern end of the village, appeared as East Waterloo Road on some old maps in at lases of the area. Dorset Road was named for the county or shire on the seacoast of south-western England, bordering Devonshire on the west. As in Berwyn, Waterloo Road took its name from the fact that it went to Waterloo Mills. The road to the north, across what is now Old Lancaster Road and Conestoga down into the valley to its intersection with Valley Forge roads just south of the Baptist Church of the Great Valley, was also known as Waterloo Road until 1956, when the northern section of the road was officially named Devon State Road by the supervisors of Tredyffrin Township. Farther to the west, on the south side of Lancaster Avenue, a post-Second World War development gave birth to Oakwood Lane, connecting Fairfield Road with Arlington Road a block south of Lancaster Avenue. The name may have been derived from the estate of C. Hartman Kuhn, "Oaklands", at the southern end of Fairfield Road.
Sylvan Lane, a one-block long cul-de-sac extending from the east side of Lakeside Avenue south of
Lancaster Avenue, was also built following World War II. Its name obviously stems from the surrounding
wooded area. The 1912 railroad atlas shows this street as connecting with the "old" Arlington
Road as it proceeded west from Devon.
Valley Forge Road is an older road. Although today it runs only between Sugartown Road and Lancaster
Avenue on the south side of the railroad, and from Old Lancaster Road to Devon State Road north
of the railroad, it oriqinally ran from St. David's Church past the Baptist Church of the Great
Valley and on through what is now Valley Forge Park to the Fatland Ford across the Schuylkill River,
and hence its present name of Valley Forge Road. It was originally known as the Welsh Line Road
by the early settlers of the area because it followed an original Welsh surveyor's line, with the
early tracts of land surveyed east or west of the road so that the grantee of the land would not
be bisected by a public road. The northern section of Valley Forge Road was also known as Baptist
Road, as it provided access to the old Baptist Church of the Great Valley and, in fact, the section
of the old road now in Valley Forge National Park is still known as Baptist Road. North of the railroad tracks in Devon, between the railroad and the Turnpike [now Old Lancaster Road], is Highland Avenue, running west from Devon State Road. It was laid out in the late 19th century, and appears on the 1887 map of the area. It presumably was named for its location along the high land or ridge that is the watershed between the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers. The western section, where Highland Avenue turns back north into Old Lancaster Road, is shown on some old maps as Central Avenue, so called, perhaps, because it was half way between Devon and Berwyn. North of Conestoga Road, also running east and west, Spencer Road runs between Valley Forge and Fairfield roads. It bisected "Wayside", the 75-acre estate of John Thompson Spencer, and hence its name. Station Road, between Old Lancaster Road and the railroad, obviously too kits name from its connection to the Devon railroad station. The roads east of Valley Forge Road, and north of Conestoga Road, date back only to the 1950s and later. Steeplechase Road and Hunter's Lane were laid out and built when the old Lea estate were developed by A. C. Shand in 1952. Steeplechase Road took its name from a race track on the neighboring old Colket estate. The race course appears clearly on a 1937 aerial photograph of the area. The association of the steeplechase and the hunter breed of horses gave Hunter's Lane its name. Timber Lane, connecting Steeplechase Road with Valley Forge Road, was obviously named for the stand of timber in the area before the area was developed. Sentry Lane, between Timber Lane and Valley Forge Road, Tory Hill Road, and Patriot Circle, both running east from Timber Lane, were named by the developer as reminders of the colonial heritage of the area. Two other roads took their names from the 78-acre farm or estate of the Colket family. Colket Lane obviously derived its name from the family, and Glenwyth Road, between Colket Lane and School House Lane, was named for the main house of the Colkets which was called "Glenwyth". (The house is still standing, on the north side of Upper Gulph road, and is now called "Tall Trees".)
School House Lane was so-named because of its location near to the old Strafford School, now a private
school. Index to Roads
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