West Chester Catch-up (11/16/2020)

Monday, November 16, 2020
When researching some dates for the last post, I came across two more West Chester walking tours, which did not show up when I Googled "West Chester walking tours!"

So here we go again!

Back in Marshall Square Park, which has a
Pennsylvania State Champion Tree -
this Fraxinus quadrangulata/Blue Ash (KSS)

This neighborhood was full of University of
Georgia flags and banners that we learned are
displayed in support of a local 23-year old
woman, named Georgia, who has bile duct cancer

Umm, what season is it?

7 E Virginia Ave (1903) has a block-long property
that is 0.2 miles from downtown

Next are the "Four Sisters," four houses designed by Addison Hutton and constructed with Chester County green serpentine stone.

101 W Virginia Avenue (1870) was built for Thomas Marshall,
president of the National Bank of Chester County

121 W Virginia Avenue (1870 with Gothic elements) was
built for dry goods merchant Samuel Parker

Hitching post (KSS)

205 W Virginia Avenue (1875, in Second Empire style)
was built for an attorney, Robert T Cornwell

221 W Virginia Avenue (1870 in Second Empire style)
was built for attorney William B Waddell

A close-up of green serpentine stone (KSS)

428 N Church Street/Rothrock Manor (late 1850s in Gothic style)
was the residence of Joseph T Rothrock, the "Father of the
Pennsylvania State Forest," who pioneered development of
forest fire control, reforestation, and scientific forestry methods

415 N Church Street/West Chester Library (1888, by
T Roney Williamson in Queen Anne style) (KSS)

Note the words "Public Library" on the turret

All the buckling brick sidewalks made walking tricky

320 N Church Street/Swedenborg Foundation (c 1760-1773, as
a farmhouse, remodeled after 1935 with Colonial Revival features)

21 W Washington Street/Washington Square (1917,
as Biddle Street School, using bricks from the previous
West Chester High School on this site) is now apartments (KSS)

221-231 N Church Street is a row of duplexes,
two constructed with fieldstone

206 N Church Street/Former synagogue of
Kesher Israel Congregation (1925) is now
the Eagles Home of West Chester, a private
social club with restaurant and bar

116 W Gay Street/Taylor Music Store
(founded in 1929) has a "keyboard awning"

W Gay Street between N Church and N Darlington Streets;
not as busy as on a Saturday!

233 W Gay Street/St Agnes Church (1925, in Neo-Gothic style)
is on the site of the 1793 church, the first church in West Chester

Modern fountain at 44 W Gay Street

30 N Church Street/First West Chester Fire Company
(1888, by T Roney Williamson in Queen Anne style)

The First West Chester Fire Company was founded in 1799 and with 23 volunteers it was considered to be well-equipped, except that it did not have any "apparatus for extinguishing fires." (Every volunteer was provided with two water buckets.) The tower was used to spot fires, to house the alarm bell, and to dry the 800-foot hose.

The door to the former firehouse, now a restaurant

1 N Church Street/Peter & Mary Rush's Grocery Store (1825)
reflects the typical family-owned market of the 19C

A horse-themed planter (KSS)

101 S Church Street/Judge Thomas Bell House (c 1829,
attributed to Thomas U Walter) has lost its brass rail at the steps

107 S Church Street/Samuel Barber House (1910) was the
boyhood home of the orchestral and vocal works composer,
Samuel Barber, who twice won the Pulitzer Prize in music
(1958 & 1963) and he composed the Alma Mater song
of West Chester High School

121 W Miner Street/Everhart Mansion (1830, for the
entrepreneur and real estate mogul William Everhart)

Everhart Mansion wrought-iron porch columns (KSS)

130 W Miner Street/First Presbyterian Church
(1834, by Thomas U Walter in Greek Revival style,
on land donated by William Everhart) is the
oldest extant church in West Chester 

15 S High Street/Old Borough Hall (1912)

11-13 S High Street/Buckwalter Building (1893, by
John M Dickey in Romantic Medieval/Late Gothic style)

2 W Market Street/Farmers & Mechanics Building
(1908, by William C Pritchett in Beaux-Arts style)
is considered to be the first and only skyscraper in town

13-15 N High Street/Smith-Sharpless-Darlington
Building (1789, in Federal style) is where
William Darlington served as president of the
First Bank of Chester County

Remember the relief panels on 10 N High Street?
At the top are a male and female settler
with a Native American

Next are Anthony Wayne, George Washington,
and the Marquis de Lafayette 

Depicted here are William Darlington (banker,
politician, etc), Bayard Taylor (poet and travel author),
Thomas McKean (lawyer and statesman), and
Rebecca Lukens (successfully managed an
ironworks after the passing of her husband)

Major General Smedley D Butler aka Old Gimlet Eye
(Marine who fought in Mexican Revolution and World War I),
Mark Sullivan (journalist), Herb Pennock (Baseball
Hall of Fame pitcher), and George Morris Phillips
(educator who became president of the West Chester
Normal School, now West Chester University)

There appear to be two more figures in the fourth panel... a young boy and a ghost?

17 N High Street/Former First Bank of Chester County
(that we saw on Saturday), doorway (KSS)

15 E Gay Street/Insurance Building (1905, in Beaux-Arts style)

17 E Gay Street (1905?, Brutalist style)

101 E Gay Street/United States Post Office was also seen on
Saturday but today we note the random Brandywine Blue stones
among the Cockeysville Marble stones

3 W Gay Street/Former Woolworth's Store (1928)
is now an Iron Hill Brewery restaurant

120 N High Street/Former Warner Theatre (1930) is now
Hotel Warner that kept the original staircase in the lobby

104-116 E Washington Street/Simon Barnard Row (1875,
in Federal style); one of these was rented by
Buffalo Bill Cody for a winter in the 1870s

300 E Evans Street/Sharples Separator Works (1890-1909, as
home to the manufacturing works for the Sharples Tubular
Centrifugal Separator, the first American-invented
cream separator) now houses apartments

309 N Franklin Street (1880, in Victorian style)

A couple blocks away to the starting point at Marshall Square Park.