The Struggle to Save Oakwell Continues

In 2018, The Lower Merion School District announced plans to construct two middle school athletic fields on the Oakwell Estate in Villanova. The location is an environmentally sensitive 13-acre site. Executing this plan would mean tearing down at least 500 trees. The trees absorb water and filter the air. The trees have prevented the neighborhood from flooding.

Kathleen Abplanalp, Director of Historic preservation at the Lower Merion Conservancy said that these historic

resources help to illustrate the character of the community.

Abplanalp said that the school district and the Lower Merion Conservancy can work together to make this a win for everyone.

“This is not about us against them,” said Abplanalp. “There’s room for compromise with the school district.

There’s a better way to do the fields here. Our interest is in encouraging a plan that has a better preservation outcome. We’d like the school district to look at those properties again to determine if there’s a way to place their fields there but to preserve some of the irreplaceable assets, which would include some of the mature trees and some of the trees that date to the era of the beginning of the landscaping.” She elaborated that preserving these assets can make it feel like a community asset rather than just a middle school playing field. “With some creative work, that can be done. But there are going to have to be compromises,” Abplanalp said.

She does not object to the school district placing athletic fields there. She believes that it can benefit the community. When athletic events and practices are not taking place, people can walk along these athletic fields to see the historic buildings on the property. Currently, that is somewhat difficult because a huge portion of the neighborhood does not have sidewalks.

“We work with the school district on other programs,” said Abplanalp. “we support the school district with work around sustainability. We don’t want to be at odds with the school district.

According to https://lmconservancy.org/, the site

also contains unprotected buildings that have architectural value. These buildings belong to a historic brick and limestone greenhouse complex designed in 1901 by Frank Miles Day, a celebrated Philadelphia architect. High brick walls with arched openings enclose three sides of the complex, making the entire composition, which cleverly blends Pennsylvania colonial with Flemish design features, feel like a secret garden.

The History

According to the link: https://stoneleighgarden.org/garden/our-story/history/

Stoneleigh’s history dates back to 1877 when Edmund Smith, a rising executive with the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, purchased 65 acres of land in Villanova and constructed a residence there. To shape the grounds, Smith hired landscape gardener Charles H. Miller, who trained at Kew Gardens in England and later served as chief gardener for Fairmount Park.

At the turn of the 20th century, Samuel Bodine, head of United Gas Improvement Company, acquired the property.

In 1908, he retained the Olmsted Brothers of Massachusetts—sons of Frederick Law Olmsted, and the most prestigious landscape architecture firm in the country—to “guide him in the gradual transformation of the place.” Over the next 50 years, the Olmsted Brothers firm returned periodically to Stoneleigh to plan vistas and pathways, establish gardens and terraces, reroute points of entry, select plant species, and transplant trees.

Following Samuel Bodine’s death in 1932, Stoneleigh was subdivided and sold. Otto Haas, entrepreneur and co-founder of Rohm and Haas Company, purchased the southwestern portion of the estate, launching a more than 80-year tenure of careful stewardship by the Haas family. Otto and Phoebe’s son, John, and his wife, Chara, acquired the property in 1964 and lived there for the next five decades.

In 1996, John and Chara Haas placed the property under conservation easement with Natural Lands, ensuring this special place—the home where they’d raised their five children—would be preserved.

The Lower Merion School District now owns an approx. 13-acre property (formerly associated with Stoneleigh).

“The school district has the right to tear the property down, and to construct athletic fields,” said Abplanalp. “I’m referencing the three-acre parcel that contains buildings that do not have historic preservation protections. That property includes the greenhouse complex and an associated building, Acorn Cottage. There is still an open question now (which the Zoning Hearing Board will be considering) about whether the district's plan to take the trees down is consistent with the township code.” But the question of how to make it a win for everyone still lingers.