125 years ago, a pioneering woman and math teacher enlisted the help of a well-known Main Line architect, William Lightfoot Price, to design an elegant home for her in Bryn Mawr. Eight decades later, another woman ahead of her time did her best to preserve the historic property in perpetuity. Now, the forward-looking vision of both hangs in the balance in Lower Merion. The Township’s Board of Commissioners are wrangling with what to do with the potentially imperiled property, and more widely, how aggressively they want to pursue historic preservation as development pressure builds in Philadelphia’s western suburbs.

The property in question is 17 Elliott Avenue, a two-and-a-half story, Arts and Crafts style home built in 1900. Located on the first block off of Lancaster Avenue in the heart of Bryn Mawr, the residence is something of a time capsule in the midst of modernity. In past decades, neighboring homes were razed to allow the expansion of Bryn Mawr’s commercial corridor, particularly the offices of water utility Aqua Pennsylvania, which now directly abut the property.

The home was originally commissioned by Helen Sleeper Pearson, then a mathematics teacher at The Baldwin School, according to a historic nomination of the home authored by historic preservation professionals Arielle Harris and the late Aaron Wunsch. Perhaps more notable was Pearson’s long-term “roomate” of four decades, Helen Dean King, an influential biologist who is credited with developing the modern lab rat while employed at the Wistar Institute, a Philadelphia-based scientific organization billed as the first independent biomedical research institute in the United States.

Also of note, according to the home’s historic nomination, is a purpose-built attached car garage on the rear of the property, which appears to be the first such structure commissioned anywhere in the Philadelphia region. Advocates argue that this confluence of these factors–the unique design of a well-known architect, inhabitation by pioneering women likely of LGBTQ+ orientation, and a historical first in the form of the car garage–make 17 Elliott Avenue a prime candidate for inclusion on Lower Merion’s Historic Resource Inventory, which can offer protections against exterior alterations and demolition.

However, whether Lower Merion’s commissioners deem that appropriate remains an open question. Although the township’s Historical Commission voted to confidently recommend approval of the nomination last fall, the township’s codes require both its Building and Planning Committee and Board of Commissioners to sign off. In a committee meeting held March 12, the nomination met resistance, narrowly staving off a trip to indefinite limbo by a 5-4 vote, before commissioners moved to punt the matter to a May 14 meeting, ostensibly to allow time to gather more information.

Time may be of the essence. Harris and other proponents of listing say the current owner of the property plans to vacate the property soon and retire to Florida and worry he may sell to Aqua to fuel further expansion of its offices. Neither the owner of the home nor Aqua responded to a request for comment by this article’s deadline. Some opposed to the nomination acknowledge the home appears to have significantly deferred maintenance, with the apparent financial burden of repair exceeding the current owner’s capacities. According to information shared by Township commissioners, the owner has expressed opposition to the nomination, citing concerns over his financial security and potential impacts to the resale value of the home.

The owner’s opposition to the nomination lies at the heart of the debate for the commissioners, whose membership also comprises the Building and Planning Committee. Most appear to acknowledge the home’s historic bona fides. All also seem to agree that the Township has never before listed a property on its historic inventory over opposition of the owner. Yet, where they disagree is whether or not it is time to break with that precedent, setting up an acute question to be answered by the board in the months ahead: shall the Township prioritize preserving historic properties for the benefit of the community or private property rights for the benefit of their owners?

Price, Pearson, and a Primordial Preservationist

That March is Women’s History Month strikes Harris as a compelling cosmic coincidence. A professional preservationist who has made 17 Elliott Avenue a personal passion project, Harris gravitates toward the stories of Pearson and King. Both were born to wealthy families in the 1860s. They used their positions of privilege as springboards to trailblazing lives. Pearson obtained both a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Smith College in Massachusetts and was reportedly the first graduate student ever enrolled there. She later enrolled for further study at Bryn Mawr College, at the time the only women’s college in the nation to offer doctoral studies, and began teaching mathematics at The Baldwin School nearby.

King, eight years her junior, was educated at Vassar College and received her doctorate from Bryn Mawr, studying under Thomas Hunt Morgan, a “geneticist who established the chromosome theory of heredity through research on the fruit fly,” according to the historic nomination. Later at the Wistar Institute, through inbreeding experiments, King helped develop the “Wistar rat,” a colony of albino rodents with consistent genetic traits that were soon sold to scientists across the country. King’s professional interests occasionally crossed into treacherous territory: she became a voice for the early 20th century human eugenics movement and expressed comfort for inner-familial marriage under certain conditions. “[This] stands as a reminder of the complex and ethically fraught intersections between science and societal ideologies during that era,” Harris and Wunsch wrote in their nomination, adding that, “As the eugenics movement fell into scientific obsolescence, so did King’s musings on the topic.”

Pearson and King likely met while the latter was enrolled at Bryn Mawr in the 1890s. By 1900, Census data show the pair were living together at a residence on a small side street in town. That same year, Pearson commissioned Price to design what would become their private and lasting home.

Price, a Philadelphia native born 1861, started his career as a carpenter’s apprentice before receiving architectural training under architect Addison Hutton and possibly Frank Furness. He spent the first part of his career in partnership with his brother, Frank L. Price, primarily designing residences, including in developments in Wayne, St. Davids, Pelham, and Overbrook. Several other homes designed by Price are presently listed on Lower Merion’s historic inventory, although they trend much larger, none more notable than the French Gothic Woodmont mansion in Gladwyne. Yet, that property remains the only Price-designed building listed as a “Tier 1” property, which provides restrictions on exterior alteration.

Price’s commission on 17 Elliott Avenue was a unique addition to his portfolio that came during a period of professional transition, according to Jeffrey Cohen, the Term Professor in Growth and Structure of Cities at Bryn Mawr College, who spoke in favor of the nomination at the March 12 meeting. From 1895 to 1903, Price practiced independently, culminating in his work designing Arts and Craft-style communities such as Rose Valley. Later, he would help establish the firm of Price & McLanahan under which he practiced until his death.

However, his work on Elliott Avenue was “special,” Cohen said, urging Lower Merion’s commissioners to imagine he and Pearson, and possibly also King, sitting down together to merge their visions. “It was a very customized conversation about presenting their identities in a public way, in the very coded language of architectural form,” Cohen said. “It’s a combination of many adventurous parts, a very animated building.”

Cohen pointed in particular to the home’s main bifurcated facade, where a large semicircular arch reminiscent of ancient Pompeii dominates the left half, while stone and gothic pointed arches similar to the architecture of Bryn Mawr College rise on the right.

Yet, the real innovation comes at the rear of the property, advocates say, where Pearson specifically requested an attached car garage, or “automobile stable” using the parlance of the time. According to Harris, an exhaustive search of historical records resulted in the determination that it was a prescient addition and the first of its kind in the Philadelphia region, even though car company executives themselves were building homes on the Main Line at the same time. In 1900, there were just 8,000 registered automobiles nationwide, the nomination found, a number that would grow to 450,000 within a decade. “The inclusion of the attached garage foreshadowed the ubiquitousness that cars would come to have within and beyond the Main Line in the years to come,” it concluded.

All of these elements would come to be very much appreciated by a future owner. Following Pearson’s death in 1942, King sold the home. Subsequent transactions left it, by 1949, with Evalyn Vickers, maternal grandmother of Aaron Wunsch. Eventually the home passed to Lydia Vickers, Wunsch’s mother, who sold the home to its present owner in 1983.

Vickers currently resides in an out-of-state assisted living facility, and Wunsch, a well-known Philadelphia preservationist and University of Pennsylvania professor who co-authored the Elliott Avenue nomination, passed away from cancer last year. However, Wunsch’s wife, Jillian Galle, acting as an executor of the family estate, said that Vickers placed several covenants on the deed of the house at the time of sale to the current owner. Among them are clauses, she said, that require both exterior and interior features of the house to remain as originally designed, that the family be given right of first refusal for any subsequent sales, and that sale to the neighboring water authority be expressly forbidden. As Lower Merion had no historic preservation ordinance at the time, it was the best she could do to try and protect the home, Galle explained. “She really made this thing watertight. She was fully aware at the time that there was a start of rampant development on the Main Line,” she said.

Galle, who spoke in favor of the nomination at the Lower Merion meeting, believes a listing on the Township’s historic inventory would add a layer of protection to the property. As it stands, Lower Merion’s processes do not take any deed covenants into account: any perceived transgression would fall to the courts to enforce.

Whether or not the home’s current owner, a retired attorney who Galle said knowingly and willingly agreed to the covenants at the time of sale, has properly maintained the home remains an open question. Several current neighbors spoke at the March 12 meeting supporting his objection to the nomination. One claimed that in recent years, a significant number of stones fell from the building’s facade, revealing a “rotting” substructure beneath. Such rot extends to the home’s windows and roof, he claimed.

A Debate For the Ages

In advance of the Building and Planning Committee meeting, Harris and Galle said they received indications that the Township’s commissioners would vote to reject the nomination, citing their concern over the owner’s objections and past practice of not adding buildings to its historic inventory under such circumstances.

For a time at the meeting, things appeared headed that way. Public comment came first, with Harris, Galle, Cohen, the Lower Merion Conservancy, and several other members of the preservation community speaking in support, while neighbors and friends of the current owner of 17 Elliott Avenue argued against.

When it came time for commissioners to decide, chair Joshua Grimes made a motion to postpone the matter indefinitely. But in a surprise turn, Commissioner Sean Whalen objected, saying he believed doing so would effectively kill the effort to list the home and leave it in danger of eventual demolition.  “Let’s be real here. If we postpone indefinitely, we are throwing this out and saying no to this application,” Whelan said. “Indefinitely is just a death knell to this.”

The interjection kicked off an hours-long debate among the commissioners. At one point, a vote was called on the motion to postpone indefinitely, which failed, 5-4. Ultimately, a later motion by Commissioner Gilda Kramer to postpone until the May 14 meeting passed by a 6-3 vote.

Throughout the back-and-forth, Whelan appeared the most ardent supporter of approving the nomination. He noted that nothing in the Township’s codes required commissioners to deny a historic nomination if the present owner was opposed and that the township’s own Historical Commission had found it strongly met the guidelines for inclusion. He also referenced long-running discussions that the Township’s current historic ordinance is inadequate to protect historic properties. In this context, 17 Elliott Avenue presented an opportunity to change the paradigm, he argued. “We’re being asked to make a designation which is opposed by the individual owner. That’s a very serious shift and I get that it’s new,” Whelan said. “However, our historic designation system isn’t working. We need to start to put our foot down.”

Most vigorously opposed was Commissioner V. Scott Zelov, whose ward contains 17 Elliott Avenue. Zelov said he is personally familiar with the owner and knows him to be a “passionate man.” He dismissed concerns over impending sale and demolition of the property as hearsay, and added that, in the past, he had personally protested the demolition of other historic properties. However, noting other, “larger” historic properties in Lower Merion were not fully protected, as well the owner’s opposition, Zelov mused whether efforts were best spent elsewhere and said he did not support the nomination. “This just isn’t the property to change how we do things,” Zelov said.

Several commissioners expressed mixed feelings, admitting an internal struggle to balance protecting historic properties against development pressure with overriding the wishes of a homeowner claiming significant economic hardship. “This is absolutely gut wrenching. Seven years on the board, this is easily one of the most difficult decisions I’ve had to make,” said Commissioner Andrew Garvin. “Our charge is to weigh the historic significance of this house, with what’s happening in our township, with what’s happening with our residents. It is a big burden to put on the owner.”

Ultimately the commissioners seemed to coalesce around a compromise of reconsidering the matter at the May 14 meeting. Township staff indicated that would likely allow them time to assemble more information about various aspects of the matter. Yet, they also warned that some questions, such as to what extent a historic listing would actually impact the value of the property, would likely be unanswerable.

Following the meeting, Galle expressed skepticism of the narrative that the current owner of 17 Elliott is under extreme financial duress, noting that he agreed to the deed covenants that require upkeep of the home and that both he and his late wife were working professionals. However, she also agreed with Harris that there was a new sense of hope, noting the commissioners’ nearly unanimous acknowledgement that the home meets the criteria for historic listing. “I look forward to working with commissioners, township planning, and preservation staff, and the property owner to ensure this property, and its critical role in women’s and LGBTQ+ history in the township, can remain protected for future generations,” Harris said.

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