Monday September 23 – The Lower Merion Historical Commission gave a qualified recommendation to the Board of Commissioners, to approve the Lower Merion School District’s tentative sketch plan for improvements at 1800 Montgomery Avenue and 1835 County Line Road.
The district recently acquired the two properties. Now they plan to convert them, and to use them primarily as athletic fields for the new middle school. LMSD also recently acquired a property at 1860 Montgomery Avenue which will be used for the school itself.
Jim Lill, Director of Operations for Lower Merion School District seemed to imply that residents could not have their cake and eat it too – that they must choose between having the playing fields that the schools need, or maintaining the historic structures at 1800. In response to Lill’s position, Kathleen Abplanalp said, “The Conservancy strongly believes that a plan that meets the programmatic needs of the School District and also maintains select elements of the site’s cultural landscape is achievable.”
Lower Merion School District wants to tear down some historically important structures on the 1800 Montgomery Avenue property, to which members of the Historic Commission are opposed.
1800 Montgomery Avenue and 1835 County Line Road were both part of a property that Samuel Bodine purchased from Edmund Smith, around 1900. Smith was an executive with the Pennsylvania Rail Road. Smith purchased the land and built a residence there in 1877. According to the Stoneleigh Garden website, Bodine was the head of the United Gas Improvement Company. Stoneleigh Garden is next door to 1835 County Line Road (known as Oakwell). All three properties are part of the land that Smith and later Bodine owned.
From Stoneleighgarden.org In addition to building the Tudor Revival style building that exists today, Bodine hired New York landscape architecture firm Pentecost and Vitale to radically redesign the gardens in a more formal, or “Beaux Arts,” style.
Evidently, Bodine was not pleased with the results. In 1908, he retained the Olmsted Brothers of Massachusetts—sons of Frederick Law Olmsted, and the most prestigious landscape architecture firm in the country—to “guide him in the gradual transformation of the place.” Over the next 50 years, the Olmsted Brothers firm returned periodically to Stoneleigh to plan vistas and pathways, establish gardens and terraces, reroute points of entry, select plant species, and transplant trees.
Christian Busch, Chair of the Lower Merion Historical Commission: The commission will always encourage applicants to go further in conserving that, in this case, close context, which includes landscape features, and plantings adjacent or near adjacent to the Oakwell [1835 County Line Road]. Further, the commission sees the Tea House as a resource on the subject property that is contributing and should be retained in all possibilities. Further the commission recognizes that the landscape features and structures on the adjacent property, while part of this plan are not under the purview of the historical commission, but again the commission urges the applicant to retain as much of that historic context and fabric as possible.
The “garden complex” at 1800 at Montgomery Avenue (which LMSD wants to tear down) was designed by Frank Miles Day and Brother. The original greenhouse is gone, but the brick walls that surrounded the greenhouse were well preserved by the previous owner. Kathleen Abplanalp, Director of Historic Preservation at the Lower Merion Conservancy, said that 1800 Montgomery Avenue also contains what was historically called the “Superintendent’s Cottage.” This was the house where the head gardener for the estate lived. The house is located adjacent to the garden complex. The District proposed to demolish this house. In addition, 1835 County Line Road contains a brick “tea house” that was part of the original design. The Historical Commission recommended that he Building and Planning Committee treat the tea house as a contributing resource to the property, in other words, a designated, Class II resource.”
Unlike 1835 County Line Road, 1800 Montgomery Avenue is not listed on the “inventory” of historic properties and therefore is not “under the purview” of the Historic Commission.
Abplanalp believes that “It is evident that when the Historic Resource Inventory survey was conducted in the late 1990s, 1800 Montgomery was inadvertently overlooked. The parcel is surrounded by private development, and access to it is limited. Like 1835 County Line, however, this parcel is historically associated with the Stoneleigh estate, and warrants similar protections.” “The firm that designed it, Frank Miles Day and Brother,” she added, “was responsible for some of the largest and most important architectural commissions of the day, including the gym at Franklin Field, numerous college campus plans, and three Class II resources in Lower Merion Township.”
