{"id":43,"date":"1950-02-17T00:00:10","date_gmt":"1950-02-17T05:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/radnorhistory.org\/collection\/articles\/ytmt\/?p=43"},"modified":"2016-06-26T17:20:06","modified_gmt":"2016-06-26T22:20:06","slug":"the-old-main-line-part-1-the-area-in-the-60s-70s-%e2%80%93-lancaster-pike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radnorhistory.org\/archive\/articles\/ytmt\/?p=43","title":{"rendered":"“The Old Main Line” part 1: The area in the “60s” & “70s” \u2013 Lancaster Pike"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t<\/span><\/strong>A little book entitled \u201cThe Old \u2018Main Line\u2019\u201d has come my way recently through the courtesy of Herbert S. Casey, whose interest in matters of a bygone day is evidenced by the fact that he is president of the Radnor Historical Society. Originally printed more than thirty years ago in pamphlet form, tis book was rewritten in 1922 by its author, J. W. Townsend, as the \u201cmeanderings of an old man\u2019s memories jotted down for his amusement . . . they do not pretent to accuracy, in which memory often fails, but a wide margin will allow the reader to make corrections as desired\u201d.<\/p>\n

\t<\/span><\/strong>Mr. Townsend was a member of the large Joseph B. Townsend family who were among the first to own country places near \u201cCity Line.\u201d Although the book has few specific references to Wayne as a community, it does contain much of general interest about the Main Line section of which this suburb is so integral a part.<\/p>\n

\t<\/span><\/strong>A quaint picture of a locomotive of this sixties in the front of the book dates the contents, which are mostly of that decade and the following, the seventies. At that time this section was not even designated as the \u201cMain Line\u201d since the Lancaster and Columbia Railroad, predecessor of the Pennsylvania Railroad, had only one line then. By the first settlers of this part of Pennsylvania the section was known as \u201cThe Welsh Barony\u201d which consisted of some 30,000 acres. Several railroad stations and many country estates have Welsh names derived from the names of the places from which these early settlers migrated to America. SOme of the early deeds signed by William Penn are still held by present land-owners.<\/p>\n

\t<\/span><\/strong>Early Philadelphians \u201cwho craved country air and more room to breathe\u201d settled north of the city first, however, \u201cbecause the journey by horse or foot to the city from the West and back again involved the sun in the traveler\u2019s eyes both ways\u201d. (Many a commuter by automobile in these days notices this, too!). Although this was not the main factor, it could be one of the reasons why Germantown and Chestnut Hill had become favorite places for country residences of Philadelphia some time before the Main Line was settled.<\/p>\n

\t<\/span><\/strong>Germantown, of course, dates back to the Revolution and Chestnut HIll has long been a popular residential section. It was in the late fifties, according to Mr. Townsend, that \u201ca new migration began beyond the western \u2018City-Line\u2019 and a few city people began to locate along the \u2018Pennsylvania Central Railroad\u2019 soon after it took over the old Columbia State Road\u201d. The first stop was \u201cMantua\u201d, now almost in downtown Philadelphia, and the second was \u201cHestonville\u201d. described as \u201ca small village in the midst of a farming country\u201d. This is our present 52nd Street Station! Next was \u201cCity Line Station\u201d, where the tracks crossed a creek. When later a culvert was built for it, the new Station was appropriately called \u201cOverbrook\u201d. What remains of the stream site parallels the railroad near the Station, as the west bound commuter looking from his window can see. Mr. Townsend makes an interesting comment when he writes \u201cIt is curious to note that the railroad does not cross any sizable stream until far into Chester Valley, showing that it was laid out on a ridge, from which the waters flow in both directions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t<\/span><\/strong>In the sixties there were only six trams a day each way on the railroad. After the six o\u2019clock from Philadelphia in the evening there was nothing until \u201cthe Emigrant\u201d at midnight which was a through train for arriving foreigners, stopping only at each destination for which these foreigners were booked. According to Mr. Townsend\u2019s description, \u201cthe cars were lighted by oil lamps and in cold weather, red hot coal stoves stood at each end. A brakeman at each car turned a wheel such as those that the present freight cars have. The city terminal was a small square brick building near the present West Philadelphia Station.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t<\/span><\/strong>The \u201cOld Lancaster Road\u201d and \u201cThe Lancaster Turnpike\u201d of course predated the railroad by many years. The former, later known as Conestoga Road, was originally an Indian trail from the Delaware River to the Susquehanna River. The latter, laid out late in the eighteenth century, had in the early sixties some 67 taverns on it between Philadelphia and Lancaster, or about one a mile! Among them were \u201cThe General Wayne\u201d, near Merion; the \u201cRed Lion\u201d at Ardmore; the \u201cOld Buck\u201d at Haverford; \u201cThe Eagle\u201d at Strafford; the \u201cOld Ship\u201d, near Exton, and many others.<\/p>\n

\t<\/span><\/strong>These old Turnpike Taverns of Revolutionary days were utilized by some of the first Philadelphians to come out to the Main Line for two or three summer months in the sixties and seventies. But the largest aggregation of all, according ot our historian \u201csummered\u201d in \u201cThe White Hall Hotel,\u201d the site of which is now occupied by a row of houses opposite the old Bryn Mawr Hospital building on Glenbrook avenue, formerly Railroad Avenue. When the last disreputable old ruins of White Hall were torn down more than thirty years ago \u201cthey did not look as if they had ever houses a gay crowd of Philadelphia\u2019s elite\u201d, Mr. Townsend writes, \u201cbut it was\u201d, he continues, \u201cthe place for large dances for both city and country people. The railway then went by it, and the trains stopped at its door, though later a station was built a few years further west.\u201d The original building of this old Lancaster and Columbia Railroad company now forms the nucleus of the building that houses the well-known Bryn Mawr \u201cThrift Shop\u201d. A study of its quaint architecture is well wroth a few minutes of the passerby\u2019s time.<\/p>\n

\t<\/span><\/strong>Whitehall Hotel held about eighty people. Another popular summer place on the Main Line was the Wildgoss Boarding house near Haverford College, which was kept by an elderly lady of that name. In winter her daughters had a school for children in the house which had ten acres of woods in the rear to make a pleasant recreation spot for boarders in summer and the school pupils in winter. Life in Wildgoss Boarding House, as colorfully described by Mr. Townsend, was probably typical of the many summer hotels on the Main Line in the sixties and seventies, such as the old Bellevue Hotel and Louella Mansion in Wayne. A summary of this description will be given in the newest article of this series.<\/p>\n

(to be continued)<\/p>\n

\t<\/span><\/strong>In order to complete an extra scrap book of the \u201cYour Town and My Town\u201d series, Mrs. Patterson need a copy of the Suburban of July 15. Anyone who has such a copy to spare will please call Wayne 4569. Such a scrap book, when completed, will be lent to anyone who is interested in the series, or who may have missed some part of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A little book entitled \u201cThe Old \u2018Main Line\u2019\u201d has come my way recently through the courtesy of Herbert S. Casey, whose interest in matters of a bygone day is evidenced by the fact that he is president of the Radnor Historical Society. Originally printed more than thirty years ago in pamphlet form, tis book was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[30,31,32,26],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-inns","tag-main-line","tag-philadelphia","tag-railroad"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radnorhistory.org\/archive\/articles\/ytmt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radnorhistory.org\/archive\/articles\/ytmt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radnorhistory.org\/archive\/articles\/ytmt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radnorhistory.org\/archive\/articles\/ytmt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radnorhistory.org\/archive\/articles\/ytmt\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radnorhistory.org\/archive\/articles\/ytmt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1093,"href":"https:\/\/radnorhistory.org\/archive\/articles\/ytmt\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions\/1093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radnorhistory.org\/archive\/articles\/ytmt\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radnorhistory.org\/archive\/articles\/ytmt\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radnorhistory.org\/archive\/articles\/ytmt\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}