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Hi, my husband and I just returned from visiting Philly. We rented a house in Ardmore through Airbnb. The reason for our trip was to check out the neighborhood and surrounding areas since we've been thinking of moving to the "main line" from NYC. There seems to be reference to counties and townships when reading posts on city-data. Having really liked the walk-ability of Ardmore [yay, sidewalks!], I've looked at maps to try to wrap my head around things... the regional rail station we walked to is in Lower Merion (Montgco), we walked from the house in Haverford (Delco). Does this distinguish something I should be aware of, in general, or specifically, when it comes to real estate?
And separately, while walking my dog, I noticed some of the properties appeared very well-kept, nearly adjacent to others that look like they might collapse. If anyone has some insight on this, that would be helpful. Don't get me wrong... we currently live in a home next door to one that basically houses raccoons. The owner is our neighbor three spots down and it was his parents and his family is working on restoring a different property on the block first. Just wondering if there’s public info like this on Ardmore.
Hi, my husband and I just returned from visiting Philly. We rented a house in Ardmore through Airbnb. The reason for our trip was to check out the neighborhood and surrounding areas since we've been thinking of moving to the "main line" from NYC. There seems to be reference to counties and townships when reading posts on city-data. Having really liked the walk-ability of Ardmore [yay, sidewalks!], I've looked at maps to try to wrap my head around things... the regional rail station we walked to is in Lower Merion (Montgco), we walked from the house in Haverford (Delco). Does this distinguish something I should be aware of, in general, or specifically, when it comes to real estate?
And separately, while walking my dog, I noticed some of the properties appeared very well-kept, nearly adjacent to others that look like they might collapse. If anyone has some insight on this, that would be helpful. Don't get me wrong... we currently live in a home next door to one that basically houses raccoons. The owner is our neighbor three spots down and it was his parents and his family is working on restoring a different property on the block first. Just wondering if there’s public info like this on Ardmore.
I'll deal with what you raise in your first paragraph. I don't know enough about the situation in the second to comment on it knowledgeably.
Welcome to the thicket of legal and informal boundaries that define Pennsylvania municipalities and communities (the two are not one and the same, as you discovered in your sojourn on the Main Line).
Let's start with the legal ones first.
Pennsylvania contains 67 counties, 66 of which are divided into three different types of municipalities; the 67th, Philadelphia, is coterminous with the city of the same name, its municipalities having been consolidated with the City of Philadelphia in 1854.
The other 66 are subdivided into cities, boroughs and townships. The distinctions among the three types of municipality are somewhat hazy, but generally speaking, cities and boroughs have some powers townships do not, and cities have some powers boroughs do not.
Townships especially, but cities and larger boroughs also, are then also split informally into several communities, some of which PennDOT marks with road signs bearing the legend "Village of [name]." Despite these signs' official appearance, they do not denote legal municipal boundaries but rather what the Census Bureau would call "Census Designated Places" (CDPs).
Ardmore, which, like many Main Line communities, straddles a county line and thus a boundary between two townships as well, is an example of such a "village." Part of Ardmore lies in Lower Merion Township, Montgomery County ("Montco," btw), and that part is also home to the township's municipal offices. Its southern portion - the oldest and only historically black community on the Main Line - lies partly in Lower Merion Township and partly in Haverford Township, Delaware County...
...which is separate from but includes part of the CDP known as Haverford, the rest of which is also in Lower Merion Township. The remainder of the Delaware County township includes the communities of Brookline, Oakmont, Llanerch, Havertown and a couple of others whose names escape me right now.
This is as good a place as any to explain how the Main Line got this patchwork quilt of place names. Blame it on the Pennsylvania Railroad, whose east-west "main line" - successor to Pennsylvania's answer to the Erie Canal, the Main Line of Public Works (a cross-state network of canals, regular and inclined-plane railroads) - is the backbone of the territory. The stations along the line were given names, and as was the case with "railroad suburbs" everywhere else, communities grew up around those stations and took their names. As the railroad line dances along the Montgomery/Delaware county line before heading into Chester County completely, the communities likewise straddle the border.
Here, then, are the various categories of place names along the Main Line, starting at the top level, from east to west:
Townships: In Montgomery County: Lower Merion In Delaware County: Haverford (part), Radnor In Chester County: Easttown, Tredyffrin, Willistown* (part), West Whiteland* (part), Caln* (part)
Boroughs: In Montgomery County: Narberth In Chester County: Malvern*, Downingtown*
Unincorporated "Villages" / Census Designated Places: In Lower Merion Township, Montgomery County: Gladwyne, Bala, Cynwyd (these two usually joined with a hyphen), Merion (usually called "Merion Station" to avoid confusion with the township), Wynnewood, Ardmore (part), Haverford (part), Bryn Mawr (part), Rosemont (part), Villanova (part) In Haverford Township, Delaware County: Ardmore (part), Haverford (part), Bryn Mawr (a sliver) In Radnor Township, Delaware County: Bryn Mawr (part), Villanova (part), Radnor, St. Davids, Wayne**, Strafford** In Easttown Township, Chester County: Devon, Berwyn In Tredyffrin Township, Chester County: Daylesford, Paoli (part) In Willistown Township, Chester County: Paoli (part), Exton* (part) In West Whiteland Township, Chester County: Exton*, Whitford* (also considered part of Exton) In Caln Township, Chester County: Thorndale*
*The historical "Main Line" extended only as far west as Paoli, where the Pennsylvania Railroad's Paoli Local commuter service ended. SEPTA has since extended this line west to Thorndale, and the communities between Paoli and Thorndale are now regarded by some but not all as part of the Main Line, especially those from Exton eastward.
**Some addresses in Wayne and Strafford lie in Upper Merion Township, Montgomery County, which is not considered part of the Main Line. Upper Merion, however, is home to Greater Philadelphia's preeminent edge city, King of Prussia.
N.B.: The very first stop on the Main Line is Overbrook, which lies right on the Philadelphia/Montgomery County line. The Philadelphia neighborhood of the same name and its tonier sibling Overbrook Farms, however, are not considered part of the Main Line. Overbrook station is located at the east edge of Overbrook Farms.
I'll deal with what you raise in your first paragraph. I don't know enough about the situation in the second to comment on it knowledgeably.
Welcome to the thicket of legal and informal boundaries that define Pennsylvania municipalities and communities (the two are not one and the same, as you discovered in your sojourn on the Main Line).
Let's start with the legal ones first.
Pennsylvania contains 67 counties, 66 of which are divided into three different types of municipalities; the 67th, Philadelphia, is coterminous with the city of the same name, its municipalities having been consolidated with the City of Philadelphia in 1854.
The other 66 are subdivided into cities, boroughs and townships. The distinctions among the three types of municipality are somewhat hazy, but generally speaking, cities and boroughs have some powers townships do not, and cities have some powers boroughs do not.
Townships especially, but cities and larger boroughs also, are then also split informally into several communities, some of which PennDOT marks with road signs bearing the legend "Village of [name]." Despite these signs' official appearance, they do not denote legal municipal boundaries but rather what the Census Bureau would call "Census Designated Places" (CDPs).
Ardmore, which, like many Main Line communities, straddles a county line and thus a boundary between two townships as well, is an example of such a "village." Part of Ardmore lies in Lower Merion Township, Montgomery County ("Montco," btw), and that part is also home to the township's municipal offices. Its southern portion - the oldest and only historically black community on the Main Line - lies partly in Lower Merion Township and partly in Haverford Township, Delaware County...
...which is separate from but includes part of the CDP known as Haverford, the rest of which is also in Lower Merion Township. The remainder of the Delaware County township includes the communities of Brookline, Oakmont, Llanerch, Havertown and a couple of others whose names escape me right now.
State/cite some evidence(dates, please)that the black community in Ardmore is the oldest/most historic on the Main Line. It is ,though, the largest.
I know there were black students, as early as 1913, who went to the old, long gone, Preston Elementary School, on Railroad Ave in Bryn Mawr. There were small pockets of black people nearby in Haverford and Bryn Mawr(the parts in Haverford Twp/DelCo).
Black people have also lived in Radnor and Tredyffrin for decades.
Brookline, Oakmont, Llanerch got bundled into the "new" Havertown at least 50 years ago when it was created.
Welcome to the thicket of legal and informal boundaries that define Pennsylvania municipalities and communities (the two are not one and the same, as you discovered in your sojourn on the Main Line).
Let's start with the legal ones first.
Pennsylvania contains 67 counties, 66 of which are divided into three different types of municipalities; the 67th, Philadelphia, is coterminous with the city of the same name, its municipalities having been consolidated with the City of Philadelphia in 1854.
The other 66 are subdivided into cities, boroughs and townships. The distinctions among the three types of municipality are somewhat hazy, but generally speaking, cities and boroughs have some powers townships do not, and cities have some powers boroughs do not.
Townships especially, but cities and larger boroughs also, are then also split informally into several communities, some of which PennDOT marks with road signs bearing the legend "Village of [name]." Despite these signs' official appearance, they do not denote legal municipal boundaries but rather what the Census Bureau would call "Census Designated Places" (CDPs).
Ardmore, which, like many Main Line communities, straddles a county line and thus a boundary between two townships as well, is an example of such a "village." Part of Ardmore lies in Lower Merion Township, Montgomery County ("Montco," btw), and that part is also home to the township's municipal offices. Its southern portion - the oldest and only historically black community on the Main Line - lies partly in Lower Merion Township and partly in Haverford Township, Delaware County...
...which is separate from but includes part of the CDP known as Haverford, the rest of which is also in Lower Merion Township. The remainder of the Delaware County township includes the communities of Brookline, Oakmont, Llanerch, Havertown and a couple of others whose names escape me right now.
This is as good a place as any to explain how the Main Line got this patchwork quilt of place names. Blame it on the Pennsylvania Railroad, whose east-west "main line" - successor to Pennsylvania's answer to the Erie Canal, the Main Line of Public Works (a cross-state network of canals, regular and inclined-plane railroads) - is the backbone of the territory. The stations along the line were given names, and as was the case with "railroad suburbs" everywhere else, communities grew up around those stations and took their names. As the railroad line dances along the Montgomery/Delaware county line before heading into Chester County completely, the communities likewise straddle the border.
Here, then, are the various categories of place names along the Main Line, starting at the top level, from east to west:
Townships: In Montgomery County: Lower Merion In Delaware County: Haverford (part), Radnor In Chester County: Easttown, Tredyffrin, Willistown* (part), West Whiteland* (part), Caln* (part)
Boroughs: In Montgomery County: Narberth In Chester County: Malvern*, Downingtown*
Unincorporated "Villages" / Census Designated Places: In Lower Merion Township, Montgomery County: Gladwyne, Bala, Cynwyd (these two usually joined with a hyphen), Merion (usually called "Merion Station" to avoid confusion with the township), Wynnewood, Ardmore (part), Haverford (part), Bryn Mawr (part), Rosemont (part), Villanova (part) In Haverford Township, Delaware County: Ardmore (part), Haverford (part), Bryn Mawr (a sliver) In Radnor Township, Delaware County: Bryn Mawr (part), Villanova (part), Radnor, St. Davids, Wayne**, Strafford** In Easttown Township, Chester County: Devon, Berwyn In Tredyffrin Township, Chester County: Daylesford, Paoli (part) In Willistown Township, Chester County: Paoli (part), Exton* (part) In West Whiteland Township, Chester County: Exton*, Whitford* (also considered part of Exton) In Caln Township, Chester County: Thorndale*
*The historical "Main Line" extended only as far west as Paoli, where the Pennsylvania Railroad's Paoli Local commuter service ended. SEPTA has since extended this line west to Thorndale, and the communities between Paoli and Thorndale are now regarded by some but not all as part of the Main Line, especially those from Exton eastward.
**Some addresses in Wayne and Strafford lie in Upper Merion Township, Montgomery County, which is not considered part of the Main Line. Upper Merion, however, is home to Greater Philadelphia's preeminent edge city, King of Prussia.
N.B.: The very first stop on the Main Line is Overbrook, which lies right on the Philadelphia/Montgomery County line. The Philadelphia neighborhood of the same name and its tonier sibling Overbrook Farms, however, are not considered part of the Main Line. Overbrook station is located at the east edge of Overbrook Farms.
State/cite some evidence(dates, please)that the black community in Ardmore is the oldest/most historic on the Main Line. It is ,though, the largest.
I know there were black students, as early as 1913, who went to the old, long gone, Preston Elementary School, on Railroad Ave in Bryn Mawr. There were small pockets of black people nearby in Haverford and Bryn Mawr(the parts in Haverford Twp/DelCo).
Black people have also lived in Radnor and Tredyffrin for decades.
Brookline, Oakmont, Llanerch got bundled into the "new" Havertown at least 50 years ago when it was created.
A quick Google search on "black communities on the Main Line" produced no documents giving dates of first settlement of any of the Main Line's black communities, but a Phillymag article from 2006 about a protest over racism in the Lower Merion School District includes a passage stating that blacks began settling in Ardmore sometime around the Reconstruction era. I'd say it's quite likely that Bryn Mawr, Radnor and Tredyffrin acquired their black communities around that time as well.
I did, however, find a fascinating paper describing a 1932 protest over a move to segregate the elementary schools in Tredyffrin and Easttown, which had separate school boards at the time but jointly ran the high school that served both since 1909. Up until the move was announced in a Main Line Times article on March 10, 1932, black and white children had attended the same schools in both townships. The move was justified as a way to - are you ready for it? - "improve property values" in the township, which the proposal's author said had been "retarded" by the mixing of the races in the schools. Of course, the townships' black residents didn't see things that way at all:
This essay by Roger D. Thorne was published in Vol. 42, No. 1 (Winter 2005 issue) of the Tredyffrin-Easttown History Quarterly, the oldest local history journal on the Main Line, published since 1937 by the Tredyffrin-Easttown Historical Society.
The more serious error I made in my post upthread was in referring to South Ardmore as the "only" historically black community on the Main Line. It is clearly not that.
Edited to add: I'm not sure what you're referring to with the phrase "the 'new' Havertown." The Township of Haverford (its legal name) in Delaware County was incorporated in 1911. Township offices are in Havertown. Most of the land on which Haverford College sits lies within the township.
Last edited by MarketStEl; 01-01-2017 at 10:12 AM..
A quick Google search on "black communities on the Main Line" produced no documents giving dates of first settlement of any of the Main Line's black communities, but a Phillymag article from 2006 about a protest over racism in the Lower Merion School District includes a passage stating that blacks began settling in Ardmore sometime around the Reconstruction era. I'd say it's quite likely that Bryn Mawr, Radnor and Tredyffrin acquired their black communities around that time as well.
I did, however, find a fascinating paper describing a 1932 protest over a move to segregate the elementary schools in Tredyffrin and Easttown, which had separate school boards at the time but jointly ran the high school that served both since 1909. Up until the move was announced in a Main Line Times article on March 10, 1932, black and white children had attended the same schools in both townships. The move was justified as a way to - are you ready for it? - "improve property values" in the township, which the proposal's author said had been "retarded" by the mixing of the races in the schools. Of course, the townships' black residents didn't see things that way at all:
This essay by Roger D. Thorne was published in Vol. 42, No. 1 (Winter 2005 issue) of the Tredyffrin-Easttown History Quarterly, the oldest local history journal on the Main Line, published since 1937 by the Tredyffrin-Easttown Historical Society.
The more serious error I made in my post upthread was in referring to South Ardmore as the "only" historically black community on the Main Line. It is clearly not that.
Edited to add: I'm not sure what you're referring to with the phrase "the 'new' Havertown." The Township of Haverford (its legal name) in Delaware County was incorporated in 1911. Township offices are in Havertown. Most of the land on which Haverford College sits lies within the township.
The Reconstruction Era, certainly feels right wrt when blacks started living on the Main Line. When my mother's parents arrived in Haverford in 1916, they moved to an already established mini-community. They were not pioneers at all.
There are( may be "were" nowadays) two very old black churchs in Bryn Mawr as a reference point.
Yes, I knew about the attempt to segregate schools in Tredyffrin in the 1930s. Interestingly my mother was going to Haverford Twp Sr High at, roughly, the same time. She graduated in 1935. To my knowledge nothing like that happened in Haverford Twp.
My maternal grandfather was very active in the NAACP at the time and I'm sure I would have heard about it subsequently.
The deal with "Havertown", I think, has to do with the creation on zipcodes in 1963. Havertown is 19083. Unless it was anecdotally, it did not exist prior to that time. Before that there were the separate communities that centered, kind of, on parts of Darby Rd: Oakmont, Llanerch, Brookline.
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