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Home : Quarterly Archives : Volume 30 |
Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society |
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Source: October 1992 Volume 30 Number 4, Pages 153–160 Easttown Woods: Berwyn's First Post-World War II Housing Development The veterans of World War II had returned to civilian life, many of them to the college campus to use their government education allowance to earn a degree. By the early 1950s they had finished their studies and were beginning to settle into tneir careers. Easttown Woods, "a home surrounded by trees", advertised as offering homes at affordable prices forty years ago this summer was Berwyn's first post-war housing development. To the young apartment dweller in West Philadelphia with a wife and an infant son, the prospect of owning a sixth of an acre in Berwyn, with easy access to the Pennsylvania Railroad to commute to work in the city, was indeed a very exciting prospect. Actually, after a surge of construction in the 1880s, there was relatively little home building in Berwyn until after World War II. The nineteenth century development had been encouraged by the construction on the Pennsylvania Railroad which reduced the grades, straightened the numerous short curves on the old line and generally upgraded the operation through Reeseville in 1877. It was at about that time that John McLeod, Thomas Aiken and Enos Lewis began selling off some of their land for development and a mini-boom of sorts ensued, during which streets were laid out and much of the village stock of housing was constructed. It was also at that time the name Berwyn, a much more elegant appellation, replaced the old name of Reeseville. John McLeod had moved to Reeseville in 1861 when he purchased the old Spring House Inn on the Lancaster Turnpike east of the village and about 100 adjoining acres from the Kuglers. Generally, the property lay east of the Waterloo Road and south of the railroad. McLeod, a Presbyterian minister, established the first church in the village on land which he donated, and also laid out Church [now Main] and Berwyn avenues. But McLeod's principal church connections were in Philadelphia, and his office as founding pastor at the new church in Reeseville lasted only until 1864. He maintained his residence at the old Spring House Inn and dabbled in real estate sales, however, until 1884, when he resigned his pastorate in Philadelphia and retired to England. In 1886 he appointed his son, John McLeod Jr., as his attorney to liquidate his remaining real estate holdings, which by then had been reduced by prior sales to about 50 acres, lying to the south of his home on the other side of the Turnpike. Most of this land was conveyed to George Matthias Aman, by deed dated October 2, 1899, for $2,450 and assumption of seven mortgage debts aggregating $22,500. The deed identifies the young McLeod as a resident of Wayne. Aman also lived there, on West Wayne Avenue. He worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad, in its Manor Real Estate and Trust Company affiliate, for a time. He was also active in real estate development from about 1900 to just before the First World War, and had a hand in developing Lansdowne and Runnymede avenues in South Wayne. In business directories of the era he is listed as a notary and conveyancer. He also apparently acted as a straw party in numerous real estate transactions, many on behalf of the railroad. Aman wasted little time in drawing up a development scheme for the Spring House Inn land. It included an extension of Woodside Avenue, which at that time ran only from Lancaster Avenue to First Avenue, to the south-east, an extension of Berwyn Avenue to intersect Woodside a second time, farther to the south, and the construction of a new street, named Midland Avenue, between them. In September of 1902 he secured the agreement of John B. Minnick, the owner of the land adjoining the proposed development to the southeast, to the extension of Woodside Avenue across his property to connect with Lakeside Avenue. In November that year Milton R. Yerkes, prepared a drawing, described as a "plan of building lots, the property of George M. Aman at Berwyn, Pennsylvania", a sub-division plan for the 36.362 acres. But George Aman's plans changed dramatically shortly thereafter. He spent most of the year 1903 acting as a straw party for Manor Real Estate and Trust Company buying up property on the southern border of Berwyn. Altogether there were 22 separate properties, stretching from Lakeside Avenue on the east to Berwyn-Paoli Road on the west, that were deeded to Manor by Aman, including eleven acres off the south end of the McLeod tract he had acquired for development in 1899. In addition, Aman placed on record two agreements, abandoning the streets in his subdivision and ending his planned development. Shortly thereafter he sold the remaining 25 acres, the northern part of the tract, to Preston Butler. What happened to cause this radical shift in plans? The record is not clear, but reading between the lines it appears that the Pennsylvania Railroad wanted to control a sizeable block of real estate behind Berwyn (and probably at other places along the Main Line) to thwart the emerging threat to its dominant position posed by proposed trolley line development. A most serious challenge had arisen with the incorporation of the Philadelphia and Western Railroad Company on May 21, 1902. The P&W had announced plans to construct a line, some 44 miles long, from 63d and Market streets in Philadelphia to Parkesburg, closely paralleling the PRR four-track main line to the west. However, a story which has since gained wide circulation suggests that the P&W had really been formed as the eastern link of a transcontinental railway system being put together by George Gould, son of financier Jay Gould. When the elder Gould died in 1892 his son George inherited all of his far-flung rail holdings. With the encouragement of Andrew Carnegie, he then proceeded to push an extension of the Wabash Railroad, which he controlled, into the rail center of Pittsburgh in 1904, and in that year he constructed a link to the Western Maryland, another of his properties, which ran into Pennsylvania as far as York. An extension of the P&W would extend the road across the state. There was no love lost between the Pennsylvania and the Gould interests. This was demonstrated in the action taken in 1903 by A. J. Cassatt, then president of the railroad, when dealing with the Western Union Telegraph Company controlled by the Gould estate. Western Union had a 20-year contract for the occupancy of the Pennsylvania right-of-way and other facilities which expired in September of 1901. The parties could not agree on a renewal, and ultimately the PRR decided to substitute the Postal Telegraph Company for Western Union, serving notice on the latter company to remove its property from the railroad right-of-way. Protracted litigation ensued, and when the appeals court ruled in favor of the PRR, Cassatt promptly had the poles and wires of Western Union torn down from one end of the railroad to the other on the night of May 21, 1903, leaving a tangled mass of confusion for Western Union. By 1904 the Pennsylvania Railroad had gained control of a broad band of property wrapping around the south side of the village of Berwyn. What was not owned outright by Manor Real Estate was held in friendly hands by the Coates family, which had close ties with the railroad. George Morrison Coates, who was in the wool and publishing businesses, served on the Pennsylvania Railroad's Board of Directors from March 4, 1867 to March 26, 1878, the appointee of the Select and Common Councils of the City of Philadelphia: his sons William, Joseph and Henry all maintained estates on the southern rim of the village. Franklin Burns, in an unpublished manuscript on the "History of Berwyn", relates some background on the Coates brothers. Writing about Henry Coates, he mentioned "his nervous disposition in his later days", and noted, "The PRR contemplated going through a corner of his property in order to eliminate a difficult curve. Mr. Coates sought an interview with A. J. Cassatt ... who reassured him, 'We wouldn't go through YOUR place.'" Burns did not date this exchange, but it cannot have been later than 1906, the year Cassatt died. It is possible that the railroad in fact was thinking about straightening the sweeping curve that commences just west of the Devon station. If a ruler is placed on the current map of Easttown Township along the straight stretch of track at the Devon station, it shows that the line, extended to the west, would have continued through the land along Woodside, First, and Potter avenues that was acquired in 1904 by the Manor Real Estate and Trust Company. And the president of the railroad was certainly cognizant of the broad curve at Berwyn as he used the railroad regularly going to and from his Chesterbrook Farm. Why such a logical change was not made when the line through Berwyn was straightened in 1877 remains a question. But whatever the motive for the great accumulation of real estate by the railroad, its result was to retard the development of the village of Berwyn for many years. It was not until after World War I that the railroad disposed of any appreciable amount of its Berwyn land holdings. During the period it held the land the growth of the area pushed farther west, to Paoli, leaving Berwyn more or less in suspended animation. The eleven acres on the south end of the former Spring House tract which George Aman sold to Manor Real Estate in 1904 were disposed of by Manor in 1923. They were sold to William H. Doyle, who planned to expand his nursery and landscaping business which up to that time had been conducted in North Berwyn, along Howellville Road. (In the previous year Doyle had acquired about three acres at the southwest corner of Lakeside and Woodside avenues from Manor, where he built a large U-shaped stone stable, which is still standing, to house his horses and mules. In the meantime, the northern 25 acres of the tract which Aman had transferred in 1904 to Preston Butler passed through a bewildering succession of hands: from Butler to William H. Midgely in 1904; from Midgely to John G. Vogler in 1905; from Vogler to Samuel H. Parsons in 1906; from Parsons back to Vogler in 1906 and in 1915. Vogler then sold off a few lots along Woodside Avenue (as did Doyle, including a lot to Dan Redmond, his adopted son), but aside from that the real estate market east of the village was quiet. When Doyle died on October 13, 1934 his lands passed to his estate. A year later Vogler died, on August 3, 1935, and his tract also remained in his estate. The market remained quiet until into the 1950s. In the August 31, 1951 issue of the Upper Main Line News there was a story that indicated that sale of the Vogler land in Berwyn was finally being considered. "Rumor ran rife in Berwyn this week," it was reported, "concerning the 22 acre John G. Vogler Estate property on the Lincoln Highway at the east end of town, but stories that it had been sold, that 100 houses were to be erected, etc., came to naught with the statement by the local agent that the tract had not changed hands. Edward J. Kehoe, Berwyn realtor and local representative for the New York estate, scotched rumors of the sale Wednesday. The vacant property lies to the south of Pyott's Tydol station, the diner, Willys agency and other buildings on the highway, to Woodside Avenue and as far south as the Doyle's Nursery land. "Kehoe indicated," it was also reported, "that several developers have been interested in the property as well as other parties, and that various propositions for the whole or parts of the land are being considered by the Vogler Estate. ... The land has been allowed to lie dormant by the estate for the past thirty years." Four months later the deal was done. Walter K. Durham, an architect-builder with offices in Gladwyne and at 1606 Latimer Street in Philadelphia, at a meeting of the Berwyn Business Men's Association unveiled his plans for the transformation of the Vogler tract into a housing development and shopping center. To carry out the project as planned, Durham had not only acquired the Vogler tract, but also land from the Doyle estate, and also ten lots along Woodside Avenue. Walter Kremer Durham was born on Christmas day in 1896. Raised in Riverton, New Jersey and the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia, he was a graduate of Girard College in 1914 and later attended classes at Drexel Institute. By 1920 he had opened his own office as an architect, and later practised in partnership with Ira D. Smedley, in 1923, and with James Irvine in 1924. Early in his career he displayed an interest in land development and in the 1920s and 1930s successfully developed portions of Bryn Mawr, Haverford and Gladwyne, offering a residence which in style was similar to the work being done by such well-known architects as Edmund B. Gilchrist or R. Brognard Okie. In Tredyffrin and Easttown townships he is credited with projects in Strafford, where he built seven residences and garages in 1925; the Edward B. Leisenring home on Leopard Road in Berwyn; the A. D. Warnock residence on LeBoutillier Road in Paoli, in 1929; and the W. Stanley Stokes residence on Grubbs Mill Road in Berwyn in 1930. Following World War II a combination of pent-up demand for new housing, plentiful open land, mobility given by the automobile, and, most importantly, easy credit facilitated by the United States government led to the buildinq of suburbia. The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, known as the "G. I. Bill of Rights", provided V.A.-guaranteed home loans for millions of veterans of World War II. Most famous for capitalizing on this post-war demand for housing was the "merchant-builder" William Levitt, imitated by many but never equaled In seven years, beginning in 1951, Levitt churned out 17,311 houses in four Bucks County municipalities, a second "Levittown" reminiscent of the original he had created earlier on Long Island's south shore. Also taking advantage of this trend, in the post-war era Durham turned from building large estate homes to build literally hundreds of modestsized starter homes. His "Easttown Woods" development, as it was called, consisted of 75 two-story "salt box style" houses lying south of Lancaster Avenue on Eastwood Road and Midland, Woodside and Berwyn avenues. A sizeable lot at the southwest corner of Lancaster and Midland avenues [4 Midland Avenue] became the site of the Easttown Township Building and Library in 1958, and still later, in 1966, a large six-acre tract east of Midland and south of Lancaster Avenue was developed as the Berwyn Shopping Center, with an Acme Market, Thrift Drug, and several smaller stores. Durham came to Berwyn after undertaking similar projects in Virginia and in Roxborough in Philadelphia. Upon completion of the Easttown Woods homes in Berwyn he broke ground for another development in Phoenixville. Newspaper feature writer Barbara Barnes interviewed Durham in August of 1953 about the Easttown Woods development. Her story, published in the August 22 issue of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, gives an excellent description of Berwyn's first housing development. "There is no reason why a inexpensive house in a development should not be built with the same care and thought as a Main Line mansion." Architect Walter Durham has been claiming that for years -- while he has been building literally dozens of [big] $50,000 to $100,000 homes. Now he is proving his small house theory with 75 two-story homes in Berwyn that are as attractively individual as the flowers in an old-fashioned garden, and that include many of the features of the big houses. But Durham's homes cost only $11,290. The architect's new development, a stone's throw from the PRR station is rapidly nearing completion. More than two-thirds of the houses have been sold. Almost half are already occupied. ... There is an air of permanence about the little community just off Lancaster Pike. The houses are nestled down among big trees instead of standing on bulldozed flatlands as many development houses do. "We saved every tree not directly in the way of foundations," Durham says. "And why not!" he adds emphatically. "You preserve the trees around a large house, why not a small one?" Trunks are only a few feet from the walls in some cases and where nature did not provide an oak or a maple, the architect-builder has scattered good sized dogwoods [from the Doyle tract which had been a dogwood nursery]. The Easttown homes have the appearance of being "scattered", too. They don't toe a straight line as in the usual development. Each is placed on its lot a little differently from the next. There are so many variations on the basic shapes that no two houses look alike. In one section, for example, a chemist and his family live in a square house with pink asbestos shingle walls, gray trim and a gray roof. Next door is a young doctor in a gabled house that's part brown cedar shingles, part banana yellow clapboards with a brown roof. There are four or five different roof lines, a dozen different roofing and siding materials and 75 different color schemes. Many of the houses have shutters, all have picture windows, insulated walls, roofs and ceilings, hot air heating systems and full-sized basements. In spite of the trend toward one-floor ranch houses, Durham believes that a basement is a real necessity in this area. "Where else can you store the children's bicycles and the thousand and one things a family collects?" he says. "Besides a basement can always be converted into a play room or game room as the family grows." Even after all this was planned on the drawing boards, construction of the houses was not started until the "best manager-superintendent in town" could be found. What has made Ernest Norton "best" in Durham's opinion is not only brains and know-how but the friendlv attitude which endeared him to the whole community. Sales representative Frank DuFrayne is a man of the same type. How has it been possible for the architect and his team to provide so much house for so little money? Well, for one thing the second stories of the Easttown Woods homes are unfinished. The stairs are there, the pipes, the ducts and the windows, but each family will have to build their own partitions, flooring, etc. for two upstairs rooms and bath when needed. Durham himself believes, however, that the secret of his homes' success has been careful planning. "Thought costs very little," he says. Financing a new home purchase was a relatively painless process, thanks to government entitlements. A sheet headed "Information pertaining to financing through the V.A." explained that mortgage money was available with a 10% down payment, with a 25-year pay off. Veterans were required to earn a minimum of $4,000 a year, plus $200 extra for each child. (The earnings of the wife were not counted.) The monthly payment worked out to $68.50, including $11.79 paid to an escrow fund for real estate taxes and insurance. An extra bonus was a "V.A. gratuity", representing 4% of that part of the mortgage guaranteed by the V.A. ($4,000), which was applied to reduce the principal of the mortgage. The houses today sell for as much as $150,000. The first owners in Easttown Woods were John Russell Voigt and his wife Kathryn, who purchased the house on lot #62, today known as 553 Woodside Avenue; their settlement date was September 26, 1952. Twenty months later the 75th, and last, home, on lot #72, at 18 Midland Avenue, was conveyed to Jesse R. Palini and his wife Corinne, on May 27, 1954. Both the Voigt and the Palini families have since moved from Berwyn, but seven of the homes in Easttown Woods today are still occupied by the families who originally purchased them. The Housworth family on Woodside Avenue, the Koppen, Law, Mogish, Phillips and Sardinas families on Eastwood Road, and the Rodgers family on Midland Avenue will all be celebrating 40 years as residents in the next year. At least 20 more of the original owners, though they have moved from their homes in Easttown Woods, are still living in the immediate vicinity. The Easttown Woods community was just the first in what was to become a wave of post-World War II building which transformed Berwyn and Easttown Township into suburbia. Today jobs have followed homes to our community with the building of large office complexes in Chesterbrook and along Route 202. But as we reflect on the changes brought by the rush to develop this area we might also ponder those non-happenings of long ago that could have exerted profound changes on the present face of Berwyn. What if the P&W had built its line to Parkesburg and, perhaps, beyond? What if George Aman had proceeded with his development on the east end of Berwyn in 1903? What if the Doyle and Vogler estates had been settled promptly in the late 1930s or early 1940s? Or what if the railroad had straightened the curve around Berwyn so that its tracks today would be well south of Lancaster Avenue? One thing is certain: life in Berwyn would be much different than it is. TopReferences Aman, George M. Ill , Interview August 1, 1992 Barnes, Barbara "Care and Taste Merk Low-Priced Berwyn Homes", in Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, August 22, 1953 Burgess, George H. and Kennedy, Miles C. Centennial History of The Pennsylvania Railroad, 1846-1946. Philadelphia: The Pennsylvania Railroad Company, 1949 Burns, Franklin L, Unpublished manuscript, in the manuscript files of the Chester County Historical Society, West Chester, Pa. Deed records in the Chester County Courthouse, West Chester DeGraw, Ronald The Red Arrow: A History of the Most Successful Transit Companies in the World. Haverford: Haverford Press, Inc., 1972 Goldstein, Steve "Walking in Levitt's Shadow", in the Philadelphia Inquirer, December 10, 1991 Newspaper clippings about Easttown Lands, in the clipping file of the Chester County Historical Society, West Chester Tatman, Sandra L. and Moss, Roger W. Biographical Dictionary of Philadelphia Architects, 1700-1930. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1985 |
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