Historic Main Line home sparks debate over who decides when buildings should be protected

A distinctive house in Bryn Mawr is inspiring a lively public conversation about property rights, historic preservation, and the character of Lower Merion Township.

Designed in 1900 by esteemed Philadelphia architect William Lightfoot Price, the house at 17 Elliott Ave. is raising concerns due to its deteriorating exterior and its owner’s opposition to the township classifying his home as historic.

The house — a noteworthy presence on a block where some other vintage structures have been razed — is widely seen as architecturally significant, notwithstanding the fading paint, decaying eaves, and windows in obvious need of replacement. The house is not currently for sale.

Preservation advocates Arielle Harris and Jillian Galle are leading a grassroots campaign to include the three-story, five-bedroom house on Lower Merion’s Historic Resource Inventory as Class 1, meaning worthy of the strongest protection. The application was prepared by Harris and Galle’s late husband, Aaron Wunsch, and submitted to the township in July 2024.

Doing so would require a vote by the township commission. If approved, placing a building on the inventory with a Class 1 designation would bolster the township’s authority over exterior renovation and demolition.

The Lower Merion Historical Commission has recommended that the township include the house on the inventory.

But the township commission’s building and planning committee voted March 12 to pause the legislative process until May because of qualms about designating the house against the wishes of its owner, Thomas J. Roberts.

Lower Merion’s 25-year-old preservation ordinance does not explicitly bar the township from going ahead without an owner’s consent, but township officials said they believe this has occurred only with commercial, not residential, buildings.

“It would be a win-win if the township could preserve the house and collaborate with preservation advocates to assist the owner by identifying funding and incentive programs” to pay for certain repairs, said township commissioner and building committee chair Joshua L. Grimes.

Roberts did not answer the door at his home and did not respond to email messages. But the 70-year-old lawyer did send the township a multipage letter of unequivocal opposition to a designation.

“I want to make sure the township received his letter … and digested the 10 points he makes,” Carol Kelley, who lives on the same block, told the committee at the March 12 meeting.

“His primary assets are within his house,” she said. “He is concerned that a historic classification would hamper him [if] he decided to sell … and he is not in a position to apply for grants should he need to make repairs.”

Preservation advocate Harris, interviewed after the meeting, said the postponement “means we have more opportunities to solicit comment” from the public.

“The word is still spreading about this really special house, and if the commission votes against preservation, I fear it would send a message that the township doesn’t really care about historic preservation,” she said.

Named by Welsh Quakers who settled in what is now Lower Merion in the 1600s, Bryn Mawr began growing in the 19th century as railroads opened up former agricultural lands to residential development for prosperous commuters who worked in Center City.

A late 1880s real estate boom saw even more development, including on Elliott Avenue, which was then, as now, in walking distance of a train station and handy to the commercial district along Lancaster Avenue.

Price, the architect, was a prominent Philadelphia figure in the Arts and Crafts movement; he is described as the founder of the Rose Valley community in Delaware County.

The Elliott Avenue house is considered a significant example of Arts and Crafts architecture. It is also noteworthy because it features a very early version of what would become a staple of American suburbia: an attached garage believed to be among the first of its kind on the Main Line.

Price was commissioned to build the Elliott Avenue house by Helen Sleeper Pearson, a Bryn Mawr College graduate who taught mathematics and shared her home for 40 years with research scientist Helen Dean King, who also attended Bryn Mawr.

“Helen Sleeper Pearson was a pioneering educator at local secondary schools for young girls and one of Smith College’s first graduate students, and her long-term housemate, Dr. Helen Dean King, was a groundbreaking biologist,” said Hanna Stark, director of communications at the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia.

“Preservation isn’t just about buildings,” Galle said.

Said township historic preservation planner Greg Prichard: “A lot of our historic buildings have stories that deserve to be told.”

Galle’s mother-in-law, Lydia Vickers, eventually owned 17 Elliott Ave., and in 1983 sold it to Roberts and his wife, Patricia Anne Roberts, who has since died. The deed to the property includes covenants by Vickers that Galle characterized as prohibiting demolition of the house by successive owners in perpetuity.

Lower Merion “is not obligated to designate” any property as historic, township solicitor Gilbert P. High Jr. told the planning committee March 12.

“When an owner has objected, it has been my experience that the [township] has heard what the owner had to say,” High said, noting that some properties were removed upon request when the inventory was first proposed.

”In this particular case, the right of enforcement is given to specific people, [and] one could read and view it as only [Vickers] is entitled to enforce the covenants,” High said.

Lower Merion is not responsible for enforcing such covenants.

But if 17 Elliott Ave. is placed on the inventory, the township commissioners would have the ability to approve or deny an application to make exterior renovations, or for an application to permit demolition of the property.

The larger question, according to Galle, is whether “owners can do whatever they want to do with their properties, and government can’t tell them otherwise. Or are owners the stewards of their properties [in order to preserve them] for future generations?”

“This is a classic American struggle between property rights and the larger public good, and the public good may have more importance when a historic property” is at stake, she said.

Committee members on both sides of the ownership issue were in agreement that 17 Elliott Ave. ought not be demolished. Nor should it be allowed to undergo “demolition by neglect,” a process that violates the municipal building code and can result in enforcement actions.

“The letter from the owner is heartbreaking,” committee member Andrew S. Gavrin said. “It’s a beautiful historic home that I believe without the designation will be lost. It’s an amazing property in a very desirable area, and I believe there is a buyer out there who will be preservation-minded.”

Said Grimes: “If we let these historic properties go and be replaced one by one with plain vanilla buildings … at some point Lower Merion will become just another cookie-cutter suburb.”