The Calm Before the Storm

All was quiet Thursday afternoon at Main Line School Night's home, the Creutzburg Center in Radnor.

But there was one rush going on. The school is trying to get a sprinkler system installed before classes start next week.

Last year Radnor Township found multiple code violations in the former mansion, which the township owns but the organization leases. The second and third floor of the mansion are not able to be used until certain items are brought up to code.

Watch a television interview with the executive director and the chair of the board of Main Line School Night.

According to the Radnor Historical Society,

In 1971, the house known as Harford became the Creutzburg Center, home of the Main Line School Night. The Radnor Township acquired the property from the estate of the granddaughter of Judge Hare. John Innes Clark Hare (1815-1905) became a Philadelphia Judge in 1851.

He was a Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania and a trustee of the University from 1859 to 1868. He was a founder of the Union League in 1862, a non-partisan group lending support to President Lincoln during the Civil War. Hare was a dedicated abolitionist.

In 1879, Judge Hare bought a 30-acre property in what was then called Morgan’s Corner. He engaged Allen Evans of the Frank Furness Architectural Firm to design a summer home and farm for his grandchildren and widowed daughter-in-law.The building is in the “Stick Style” of somewhat exaggerated and stylized expression of wood framing in a more three-dimensional manner than English half timbering. Machine-made ornamentation appears on the gable fronts and decorative millwork. It is also the strongest feature of the interior woodwork.

Judge Hare intended that the house be used by the extended family for the season and had large third floor bedrooms for the grandchildren. Son Horace, with his six children, turned it into a yearround residence in 1916. The Hare family always wanted it to become a public park.