PA Swarthmore N Catch-up (9/3/2020)

Thursday, September 3, 2020

Found another walking tour of Swarthmore, Historic Northeast Walking Tour, so we have some catching up to do!

Some tree work on Swarthmore Avenue;
to the right of the trucks are two tree trunks

312 Ogden Avenue (1957, designed by Craighead Cowden with
assistance from the Quaker architect, H Mather Lippincott)
a Pennsylvania fieldstone house with 2nd story added in 1984 

Craighead Cowden was the brother of the owner of the home, David S Cowden, a professor of English at Swarthmore College.

135 Ogden Avenue/Zimmer House (1918)

133 Ogden Avenue (1910 or 1913)
has a Craftsman-type lamp post light

100 Ogden Avenue (1929, by John Linerd Conarroe) with
a 1930s lamp post streetlight on the left

1930s streetlight

9 Ogden Avenue (1916) with the local sledding hill

8 Ogden Avenue (1926 as a rental house owned by Vincent Pownell)

Behind 8 Ogden Avenue are two more houses at #10 (1922) and #6 (1926) Ogden Avenue, the first built for the parents of Vincent Pownell, and the second for his daughter as a wedding gift.

490 Riverview Rd (1917) was built for Vincent Pownell's in-laws

430 Riverview Road/Pownell House (1910, by the firm of
Frank Furness), this was Vincent Pownell's own residence;
 the former porte-cochère is now enclosed

412 Riverview Rd/Riverview Farms Estate (1916)
had a ballroom on the third floor

The owner of Riverview Farms Estate, Louis Cole Emmons, a coal and oil baron, raised Guernsey cows as well as having an orchard and an arboretum on the property.

400 Riverview Rd/Riverview Farms Barn (1922 of 1926)
was the home of 80 purebred Guernsey cows and a creamery;
the second story of the barn was removed in the 1950s

Is this Photinia davidiana/Chinese Photinia?
Not many plants have shiny smooth leaves and
berries (still green here) with calyxes

345 Riverview Rd (1948, plus new addition!) Louis Cole Emmons
had the land around his estate developed in the 1920s, and
then his own estate was developed in the 1940s

50 Dogwood Lane (1946) is part of the development called
The Hills in former pastureland that until 1941 was used
for the annual Country Week Picnic, hosting a couple hundred
Philadelphia mothers and their toddlers who arrived by train
for an afternoon "in the country" each summer

11 Wellesley Rd (1965), a later residence in The Hills

One is to notice that there are no overhead utility wires
on the streets of Swarthmore Hills

The utilities originally ran through the backyards

Entrance pillar inscribed Swarthmore Hills

The creek at the entrance to The Hills

Another area creek still runs through the 18C springhouse
across from 615 Swarthmore Avenue

104 Elm Avenue/Onyx House (1922, by Steuber & Newberg
in Renaissance Revival style, for the Onyx family); from
1931-1934 it was the home of the forerunner of the
Swarthmore Co-op, making it the 3rd oldest community-
based food market in the country

Front door of 104 Elm Avenue

214 Elm Avenue/Scott House (c 1886, remodeled 1902
by Francis Caldwell), owner E Irvin Scott and his brother,
Clarence Scott, founded the Scott Paper Company

Wooden chair to control plant from covering sidewalk (KSS)

Gosh, one of the trees is gone! (Actually what
is left of the trunk can be seen between the bent
red cherry picker arm and the extended white arm)