Green country towns: the development of Philadelphia's Main Line, 1870-1915
Date
1981
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
This thesis explores the development after the Civil War of Philadelphia’s Main Line as a residential area for the upper and upper middle classes. While the villages of the area give the appearance of being named and developed during the Welsh period of settlement in the late 17th and 18th centuries, in reality they were developed after 1865 and named by the Pennsylvania Railroad. They grew through the interest of that railroad, its executives, the officers of the Baldwin Locomotive Works and financiers like Anthony J. Drexel and publisher George W. Childs. ☐ Development which began in the area around Bryn Mawr and its famous resort hotel spread to other villages along the Main Line as large country estates were built by upper class Philadelphians. The manners and recreations of country life and the associated architecture and landscaping echoed the preoccupation with country living. This lifestyle contrasted with the source of wealth, most often in modern industry or manufacturing. Summers and holidays of gentlemanly leisure were spent on estates, often of several hundred acres, in increasingly formal houses of thirty of more rooms. Architectural styles and interior decoration reflected both current fashion and the social antagonism between Philadelphians of old and new wealth. The styles were also adopted by the upper middle class, making suburban developments like Wayne and St. Davids a success in the last two decades of the 19th century. ☐ By 1915 many of the Main Line houses were becoming year round residences. The colonial allusions and the images of country gentility by the Pennsylvania Railroad and the early developers were pervasive.