Name That House!
This appeared on Sunday, May 13, 2007
The news came last week that the Scott family had decided to sell its Radnor estate, known far and wide as Ardrossan, which got me to thinking about the practice of giving names to houses.
I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, in a historic neighborhood called Clifton. Although my family lived in a modest bungalow, we didn’t live too far away from sprawling Victorian mansions that had been built in the late 19th century by the millionaires who, I guess, pretty much ran Cincinnati at the time.
Walking past them on thousands of occasions, however, I never saw signs outside proclaiming their names — even though I now understand that at least one of my grade-school classmates lived in something called the McAlpin Bridal Cottage.
But around Chester County, people seem ready to slap a name on just about any place of residence, no matter how modest or new or nondescript. I‘m not here to say that it‘s the fixed-land asset equivalent of a vanity license plate, but you can draw your own conclusions.
I recently noticed while driving through the tweed, cheese and horse dung territory of West Vincent and Upper Uwchlan how easy it is to brand your home. You can easily find Pickering Place and Wind‘s End Ranch or Millbank. There‘s a gated property with a sparkling pond that is all too proud to refer to itself as Goosewalk, although the last time I walked around a pond that had been visited by Canada geese the experience was not one I found pleasant. Goose guano central, if you catch the way I‘m drifting.
I ran across one named set of homes on a side road in Chester Springs, the first called Break Neck and its neighbor named Wind Crest. This, of course, led to private speculation that if the son of the Break Neck clan married the daughter from the Wind Crest family, they would have to name their house Break Wind.
Sorry.
I started noticing house names all over the county, from Wind Rise and Bamboo Bend in West Bradford to Greystone Hall and Mayfield in West Goshen and West Chester. The last two, I should not have to mention, are given to monumental estates that scream the need for a name — the first to describe the Jerrehian Estate off Phoenixville Pike and the latter to identify the ”summer cottage“ that Irish immigrant Williams Ebbs built for himself and his family — the only summer cottage I‘ve ever encountered that had four 18-foot-tall Roman columns on its front porch.
For a moment, I thought that a rule of thumb for a house that truly deserved a name would be, in fact, the presence of at least two Roman columns, or barring that, a set of stone pillars at the front gate. But that, I learned, would fail to meet the test of a place like North Church Street‘s Broadlawn, which has, well, simply put, a broad lawn, or its neighbor, Narrow Lawn, which has, well, you figure it out.
Truth be told, if I ever owned a home and thought of giving it a moniker, I‘d have to reach back to my childhood fascination with A.A. Milne. After all, the House at Pooh Corner was named ”Tresspassers Will,“ and there‘s no finer name than that.
The news came last week that the Scott family had decided to sell its Radnor estate, known far and wide as Ardrossan, which got me to thinking about the practice of giving names to houses.
I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, in a historic neighborhood called Clifton. Although my family lived in a modest bungalow, we didn’t live too far away from sprawling Victorian mansions that had been built in the late 19th century by the millionaires who, I guess, pretty much ran Cincinnati at the time.
Walking past them on thousands of occasions, however, I never saw signs outside proclaiming their names — even though I now understand that at least one of my grade-school classmates lived in something called the McAlpin Bridal Cottage.
But around Chester County, people seem ready to slap a name on just about any place of residence, no matter how modest or new or nondescript. I‘m not here to say that it‘s the fixed-land asset equivalent of a vanity license plate, but you can draw your own conclusions.
I recently noticed while driving through the tweed, cheese and horse dung territory of West Vincent and Upper Uwchlan how easy it is to brand your home. You can easily find Pickering Place and Wind‘s End Ranch or Millbank. There‘s a gated property with a sparkling pond that is all too proud to refer to itself as Goosewalk, although the last time I walked around a pond that had been visited by Canada geese the experience was not one I found pleasant. Goose guano central, if you catch the way I‘m drifting.
I ran across one named set of homes on a side road in Chester Springs, the first called Break Neck and its neighbor named Wind Crest. This, of course, led to private speculation that if the son of the Break Neck clan married the daughter from the Wind Crest family, they would have to name their house Break Wind.
Sorry.
I started noticing house names all over the county, from Wind Rise and Bamboo Bend in West Bradford to Greystone Hall and Mayfield in West Goshen and West Chester. The last two, I should not have to mention, are given to monumental estates that scream the need for a name — the first to describe the Jerrehian Estate off Phoenixville Pike and the latter to identify the ”summer cottage“ that Irish immigrant Williams Ebbs built for himself and his family — the only summer cottage I‘ve ever encountered that had four 18-foot-tall Roman columns on its front porch.
For a moment, I thought that a rule of thumb for a house that truly deserved a name would be, in fact, the presence of at least two Roman columns, or barring that, a set of stone pillars at the front gate. But that, I learned, would fail to meet the test of a place like North Church Street‘s Broadlawn, which has, well, simply put, a broad lawn, or its neighbor, Narrow Lawn, which has, well, you figure it out.
Truth be told, if I ever owned a home and thought of giving it a moniker, I‘d have to reach back to my childhood fascination with A.A. Milne. After all, the House at Pooh Corner was named ”Tresspassers Will,“ and there‘s no finer name than that.
Labels: Chester County, Chester Springs, House names, Tweed cheese and horse dung
