From Preservation Online, the online magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation

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Pa. Developer To Raze Main Line Estate


Story by Margaret Foster / Aug. 30, 2007

UPDATE: The Dunminning Mansion was razed on Dec. 7, 2007.

A Pennsylvania developer is preparing to demolish a c. 1897 mansion in Newtown Square, Pa., outside Philadelphia.

At a so-called "pre-demolition sale" last weekend, many of the Dunminning Mansion's interior features, including several of its six mantels, were marked "sold." Owner Bentley Homes plans to raze the 15,000-square-foot mansion within the next 30 days, according to Mitch Kotler, president of the West Chester-based company, which plans to build 17 luxury houses on the site.

Architect Theophilus Parsons Chandler (1845-1928), founder of the University of Pennsylvania's architecture department, designed the Normandy-style mansion for Philadelphia banker John A. Brown.

Bentley had listed Dunminning Mansion for sale for $1.6 million with no viable offers, Kotler says. The mansion's former owner, a nonprofit called the Devereaux Foundation, used it as offices before selling it to Bentley, which tore down several historic structures to make way for another neighborhood across the street.

"Unfortunately, the institutional use really destroyed any historic fabric that was inside the home," Kotler says. "It had been cut up and used for that institutional use.”

Despite Bentley's Web site's description of "a community of 17 estate homes, which surrounds the original Dunminning Mansion," the developer was never interested in keeping the mansion, says Chris Driscoll, vice president of the Newtown Square Historical Preservation Society. Driscoll says he saw plans for the 17-house development, and they didn't include the mansion.

"In our opinion, [Tom Bentley] never really made an effort to sell it," Driscoll says. "It's more profitable to tear it down and have two extra lots and two $2 million houses on them."

Next month, the township's board of supervisors will consider granting a demolition permit to Bentley Homes. The board approved Bentley's development last November after the company downsized the project by one house. According to the minutes of a Jan. 22, 2007, meeting of the board of supervisors, Don Petrosa, Bentley's lawyer, stated that the proceeds of the sale of the mansion's contents would go to the township.

"We don't have a historic-preservation ordinance, which is kind of ridiculous since [Newton Square] is one of the oldest townships in the state," Driscoll says. "Without a historic-preservation ordinance, there is little we can do."

Bentley will salvage some of the mansion's stone and reuse it in some of the new houses, Kotler says.

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