Main content
Wallace Township historic property research files
Notifications
Held at: Wallace Township Archives [Contact Us]P.O. Box 670, Glenmoore, PA, 19343
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Wallace Township Archives. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
Although the first official land survey of Wallace Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania took place in 1729, the Township was created in 1852 by way of a division of West Nantmeal Township and has had multiple changes to its boundaries since. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, farms, mills, and forges dotted the landscape, but the late 19th century brought the railroad and considerable development of the area. A Pennsylvania Turnpike entrance was created near Wallace in 1950, and during the late 20th century many residential subdivisions were built in the Township resulting in a substantial population increase.
"[With the approach of the US Bicentennial in the 1970s]...the Chester County Redevelopment Authority held a public meeting in Downingtown that was seminal in approaching efforts to preserve the county's historic resources. At this meeting it was suggested that money be utilized to identify historic buildings and structures using Chester County's Community Development Block Grant funding from Housing and Urban Development. In 1966 the United States Congress had passed the National Historic Preservation Act that enabled such a survey to take place.
"At the same time, similar historic surveys were beginning elsewhere in Pennsylvania, which made it one of the first states to undertake such an initiative. The Commonwealth's Historical and Museum Commission brought an expert from Canada to teach six regional coordinators on historic survey methodology.
"The Chester County Commissioners...[formed] a partnership with the Chester County Historical Society, the Brandywine Conservancy and...many volunteers to organize the proposed Chester County Historic Sites Survey. This survey, conducted between 1979 and 1982, would include all of Chester County except for the Boroughs of West Chester and Downingtown, which would have their own survey projects initiated around this time.
"Volunteers attended meetings to learn how to identify historic resources, fifty years and older, and specific Architectural Styles prevalent in Chester County from William Penn's "Penn Plan" to Twentieth Century Sears Roebuck and Company Bungalows. They were taught how to (1) complete Architectural Inventory Forms (AIF); (2) take architectural photography; (3) log photography; and (4) prioritize the property's historical significance (in some cases)."
Bibliography:
Quoted text from: County of Chester, Pennsylvania. "Chester County Historic Resource ID." Accessed February 25, 2014. http://webapps.chesco.org/ccparks/cwp/view.asp?A=1553&Q=625110.
Wallace Township Historical Commission. "A Brief History of Wallace Township." Last modified 2012. Accessed February 24, 2014. http://www.wallacetwp.org/commissions/historical-commission.
This collection consists of folders for buildings more than fifty years old in Wallace Township at the time of the survey, 1979-1982. The collection is organized into two series. I. Glenmoore Historic District, and II. Wallace Township (excluding Glenmoore). Within these series, folders are organized by survey code and labeled with street location and building name if applicable. Most files contain photocopies of Chester County's Architectural Inventory Form (AIF), 1981, and/or Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission's Historic Resource Survey forms, 1982. Some files contain additional documentation such as memoranda, correspondence, handwritten notes, photocopies of relevant primary documents, and newspaper clippings. A few files have photographs. Although many different volunteers worked on the project, most forms for the Glenmoore Historic District buildings were recorded by John Shrader and Jane Davidson, and some of the photographs in the collection were taken by them as well.
A card catalog is available on-site.
Summary descriptive information on this collection was compiled in 2012-2014 as part of a project conducted by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania to make better known and more accessible the largely hidden collections of small, primarily volunteer run repositories in the Philadelphia area. The Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories (HCI-PSAR) was funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
This is a preliminary finding aid. No physical processing, rehousing, reorganizing, or folder listing was accomplished during the HCI-PSAR project.
In some cases, more detailed inventories or finding aids may be available on-site at the repository where this collection is held; please contact Wallace Township Archives directly for more information.
People
Organization
Subject
Place
- Publisher
- Wallace Township Archives
- Finding Aid Author
- Finding aid prepared by Celia Caust-Ellenbogen and Sarah Leu through the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories
- Sponsor
- This preliminary finding aid was created as part of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories. The HCI-PSAR project was made possible by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
- Access Restrictions
-
Contact Wallace Township Archives for information about accessing this collection.