The Business District in the Swarthmore Borough

As a Swarthmore College student, I'm not even sure that I would have known this title refered to before this project. I wandered over to the row of shops us college kids called, "The Ville", and started looking at the buildings. I was expecting them all to be built around the same time, by the same builders. I thought the logical explanation for this little town was the need generated by the college nearby. Because the college is old, I assumed it was here before the shops. I was in for a surprise, though, because when I actually researched the area, it turns out that "The Ville" is actually a thriving business district. It is not a village, and it never has been a village. It was not built all at once and in response to the college - it has peices of its history linked to the train station and it has not been stagnant since it was first developed. What is currently "The Ville" is not the product of a single builder. There were a couple of very imfluencial ones throughout the Business District's history...

The Business District is the result of two earlier developments: the establishment of train service in the mid-nineteenth century and the founding of Swarthmore College in 1864. In 1868, the train service which connects media and Philadelphia established a permanent station on Chester Rd (it was called Westdale station, but was later changed to Swarthmore station). Swarthmore College was founded in 1864 by a joint committee of New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore Yearly Meetings of the Society of Friends. Parrish Hall was build in 1866 and classes started in the fall of 1869. Swarthmore had its first real estate company incorporated in 1878 to develop the tract north of the railroad. When the rail line was improved in the 1880's, commuter suburbs began to spring up and by 1886 development companies were building homes south of the railroad station. After these residential areas were established, the business district began to develop. In 1891 the College sold a tract of land bounded by the railroad, Chester Road, Princeton and Harvard Avenues. This College Tract includes the present day Business District, which had Park Avenue open in the late summer of 1891 and Dartmouth was close behind, opening in 1892. Swarthmore Hall, which later became Borough Hall, was built when Swarthmore became a borough in 1893. The Business District not only served local residents and college students, but also served two "resort" hotels (the Grange and the Strath Haven), and Swarthmore Preparative School which was in the area until 1930. The current traffic pattern was put into place in 1931 when an underpass to the train station was built to accomodating growing automobile traffic. The Business District aquired a more cohesive, unified look in 1926 when the structures along Park and Chester Road were replaced by Tudor-style buildings constructed by Clarke and Harvey. Over the years, though, some buildings along Park Avenue were renovated (One Park Avenue), and new buildings were added (the round bank replacing the service station at Dartmouth and Lafayette). Recently, two parks have been added to the landscape, reflecting a push towards green public space in the twentieth century.

It should be kept in mind that the Swarthmore Borough is primarily residential. 52% of land use is residential, Swarthmore College facilities occupy about 17% of the borough's land, and commercial space is only about 2% of the entire borough. This commercial center is situated at the center of the borough, close to the main source of transportation (the railway) and entertainment (the college). The feeling of the downtown area is not one of disjointed development, despite the fact that it is the product of many different developers building at different times. It has a consistent feel in terms of scale and design. Most buildings are less than than or not more than three stories, and their close proximity/density create a clearly distinct commercial area. It is small enough for every business to be within walking distance of the others and it is laid out in a triangular fashion that minimizes the distance one must walk in order to cover the entire downtown, making it very condusive to pedestrian traffic.

The lightened circle on this map of the Swarthmore Borough indicates just how small the business district is in comparison to the residential areas of the Borough.

Below is a map that is from the Pennsylvania Historic Resource Survey Form. It shows the exact street layout of the circular area above, and this is the area officially defined as the Business District.

This map takes a closer look at the layout of Park and Chester (with the Corner of Dartmouth and Park Ave included, as well).

The business district was inescapibly linked to the college, but it only really begin to take shape after the residential areas were established. The land where it now rests, south of the railroad and bounded by Chester Road was donated by the College and termed the Swarthmore Improvement Tract. This tract would be heavily influenced by the builders, Clarence Scott, Jon Cass and Clement Biddle. Two stores opened at Park and Chester Road at the end of 1892, and these were the first shops of Swarthmore's business district. The first business was a grocery store where Michale's Drugstore now stands on the southeast corner of Chester Road and Park Avenue. The other was a General Store on the northeast corner. The original grocery store was constructed by Greim Builders, but demolished completely in 1926. The General Store was built by Adelbert Lewis with George Wells of Morton as the architect.

 

Michael's Corner Store is one store in the 1920's Tudor style commercial district. It is 2-16 Park Ave/1-11 Chester Rd. and the stores it is attached to are 2 rows of 21/2 story stores, although it provides an important central presence with its 31/2 stories and conical roof. The other stores in this building have some asphalt-shingled and some slate-shingled flat or gabled roofs. Some of the stores have sheds or gable dormers. All the bottom stories are brick with window displays. Michael's Corner has its first two stories made of brick. This shoping center was designed by Stuckert & Co and constructed in 1925-1926. Since the were made, the first stories have been commercial while the second stories were utilized as apartments.

The Swarthmore National Bank which is on Chester Road and Rutgers Ave was first founded in 1904, but the building I see today is not the original bank. The original bank was moved around the corner to make room for the building with houses the bank today, built in 1925. It is a 1 story, 3 bay, classically-detailed masonry bank building with many elements of the Italian Renaissance style. It was designed by T.H. Moyer.

The view below is along Chester Ave. The building in the foreground is called the Shire building, and it was constructed in two sections. The first section (shown to the right) was built around 1905 and was owned by Victor D. Shirer and used to house his drug store. By the 1920's, the rest of the present building had been constructed, and in 1915 it was used as a Post Office. The two sections present a unified facade, though. (The building as it stands today is shown to the left below.) On the left side are two single doorways and inbetween them is a window. The building is of the commercial Beaux Arts style and is faced with brown brick except on the first story level where there is coursed stone. Today, the Shire buildings are still used as stores and apartments.

Another view of Chester Rd that provides a look at the more cohesive buildings built in the Tudor style is provided below:

These are essentially all the buildings along Chester Rd. A view of buildings on Park Ave is below. The buildings are two story, brick, flat roof commercial structures. These structures ere orriginally houses built in the early 1900's. In 1929, the first portions of the commercial building were built at expansions onto the house. The front porch, which faced the street, was removed. More additions were made in 1949 and 1960 that eventually had it completely converted from a single family home to a commercial building with apartments upstairs.

It was the college's decision to donate the land that currently contains the business district. It became known as the College Tract Property. This decision allowed the college to dictate the layout and development of the business district. In fact, the design that was adopted for the layout of the business district was proposed by Howard B. Green, student of Swarthmore College Class of 1891. Even earlier than Green's plan to divide the tract into building lots, Swarthmore College engineering students had been involved in designing Harvard Avenue. The original builders for the tract was the Swarthmore Improvement Company, a company heavily influenced by the college and the surrounding community. Eventually, the community remained involved in the selling and reselling of the land and the development of the business district, but the college did not. Today, "The Ville" services the needs of the residential community fairly sucessfully, but it is rarely visited by the students of Swarthmore College. With larger, cheaper, more multifunctional chains nearby on Baltimore Pike, students with cars service their needs elsewhere.