Upper Dublin: The Making of a 21st Century Suburb ← All Chapters

Schools

Public Schools

In those years, pursuant to state law, Upper Dublin constructed schools, under the supervision of the Montgomery County Superintendent of Public Instruction.35 Even prior to Pennsylvania’s adoption of a compulsory education law in 1916, Upper Dublin had grammar schools, adding only North Glenside after 1916, until the 1950s.

Until 1951, the district organized numerous public elementary schools-previously known as grammar schools-serving children from grades one through eight in Upper Dublin (although the formation date of the district is unclear as it has not posted a date of its founding though its first school buildings appeared in the 1870s):

Old Fort Washington School (1891, as expanded 1917-1969, was leased to Montessori School in 1969? (the Montessori School has since moved to Jarrettown Road), until demolished for new homes, with a park maintained across Madison at Prospect); it is now Klosterman Park;36

Jarrettown School, 1896, 1465 No. Limekiln (at Mundock), now Village Schoolhouse, now a preschool center that opened in 1982, was damaged by the 1896 tornado, replaced by new building on other side of Limekiln Pike in the 1960s.

Thomas Fitzwater School, (originally 1962; new building 2000-)

Limekiln & Twining Rds., per Robi’s history

Three Tuns School, originally built in the 19th century,37

then rebuilt in 1973 until property was sold, after much controversy, in 1982.38

East Oreland School (1909-1968) (later transformed into the EPI Center East Oreland Program & Intergenerational Center, Senior Adults Upper Dublin Center, and the Upper Dublin Library, and, after the building was demolished in 2013, the East Oreland Park (see Robin Costa, History of the East Oreland School-Twining & Wischman Roads, Oreland, PA (citing Upper Dublin New School, Ambler Gazette (July 9, 1908). Costa notes that there was an interior fire, but the school was rebuilt in the fall of 1910 and that “[c]hildren came mostly from Fitzwatertown and North Glenside, known at the time as Edge Hill. At the time there were only 4 or 5 houses in the East Oreland neighborhood.”39

(Matthias) Sheeleigh High School (1907-1914), thereafter Sheeleigh Elementary School until 1968 (torn down in 1970s, later became Sheeleigh Park) As an elementary school, it had an extremely active PTO as exemplified in frequent meeting notices in the Ambler Gazette during the first twenty years of its existence.

8. North Glenside Elementary School (1929 to 1965), now the North Hills Community Center) In the documentation published in connection with the Upper Dublin Township Tricentennial (July 11, 2019), it exclusively served African Americans.40 The school served children grades 1-8, and later a kindergarten-after grades 7 and 8 were moved to Sandy Run, the new Upper Dublin Jr. High School.41

When Ambler advised that, despite the compensation it had paid for decades for taking students from Upper Dublin, it would no longer enroll students from Upper Dublin, and after the end of litigation filed by a group of parents opposing the opening of high school classes by the District before the new building was completed so their children could finish their high school education in the high schools in Abington and Jenkintown (, George & Walder v. Towne, et al., (C.P. Montgomery Cty., 1952) (Dannehower, J.), as reported by North Penn Reporter, Extension of School System is Opposed, The Reporter, July 1, 1952, p. 1, and Upper Dublin School Hearings Under Way, July 10, 1952, p.1, with the resulting loss, Foes of Upper Dublin School Extension Fail in Court Pleas, The Reporter, July 11, 1952, p.1), the School District would no longer do so, the majority of the Upper Dublin School Board was free to proceed with opening its new high school without a building (Second Century, at p. )42

D. CONSTRUCTION OF NORTH GLENSIDE SCHOOL IN AN AREA IN WHICH THERE WAS A SUBSTANTIAL BLACK POPULATION RECOGNIZED THAT RACIAL DIVISION WAS THE UNDISPUTED PUBLIC POLICY OF THE ALL-WHITE SCHOOL BOARD.

Per Evelyn Wright’s obituary, in 1926 Pennsylvania school districts were first permitted to hire Black teachers. A resident of Ambler, she was hired by the Upper Dublin School Board to teach Black sixth graders at the new East Oreland School.43 At that time, the school district reported a total of 40 elementary school students from Oreland, the existing grammar school nearest North Hills. School Notes, Ambler Gazette, Sept. 10, 1925, p. 1 (In that era, prior to the opening of Upper Dublin High School in the 1950s, eighth grade was the highest grade in the district. Ambler Gazette, June 3, 1926, p. 8 (referencing grammar school graduates).

When the North Glenside School was opened in September 1929, Wright was transferred to the “new” all-Black school and served as its principal from 1952 until it was closed in 1966. Evelyn Wright obituary, Phila. Inquirer, Jan. 2004; Martin Kilson, Trailblazing teacher inspired legions of African Americans: Evelyn Amanda Brown Wright also taught against great odds, Phila. Inquirer, Jan. 22, 2004, at p. B07.44 A second article, Phila. Inquirer, Feb. 11, 2004, at p. B02, includes a sketch of Evelyn Brown as instructor. After North Oreland was closed, Wright served as assistant principal at Sandy Run Junior High School until her retirement.

Newspapers at that time rarely dealt with issues pertaining to race. (In this period there was a reference in the Ambler Gazette to the Penn Jersey Colored League, with no additional information for a reader unfamiliar with that Black baseball league.)

A hostile atmosphere by some to the growing population of Blacks was manifest. Months after enactment of the 1926 law permitting blacks to teach in Pennsylvania public schools and three years before the North Glenside School was opened, a large ad appeared in the Ambler Gazette inviting the public to hear the Imperial Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Dr. Hiram W. Evans, in Worcester, about fifteen miles west of Upper Dublin. Ambler Gazette, August 19, 1926, p. 4.45 However, at the same time, less than three miles away, in Upper Dublin, at least one Black student attended a nearby Upper Dublin’s elementary school. It appears that at the very same time another Upper Dublin grammar schools was not racially segregated. See obituary. of Winnifred Saunders Sudler, November 13, 1924 to February 18, 2024, (Craft-Givnish Funeral Home, February 23, 2024),noting that, while living at a farm on Highland Avenue [as confirmed by the 1930 Census], she attended Fort Washington Elementary School through fifth grade, in the early There was no discussion of this paradox in the press or public so far as can be determined.

Two years before, in 1924, there had been a Klan rally, including a cross burning on the grounds of Haverford College, attended by 200 and a Lower Merion police officer was shot and ultimately died in attempting to quell that disturbance. Phila. Inquirer, July 5, 1924, at p.1; Office of District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman, Montgomery County Fallen Hero Plaque Dedication Honoring Lower Merion Township Police Officer Francis X. “Buck” Roy, Sept. 28, 2012.46

As discussed below, North Glenside School ceased operation in 1965, when both it and the even more aged all-White East Oreland School were closed, concurrent with the opening of Sandy Run Elementary School, an annex to the new Sandy Run Junior High School. Accordingly, it took more than nine years for Upper Dublin to end racial segregation in its elementary schools after the Supreme Court issued its 1954 opinion in Brown v. Board of Education ordering the end of segregated public education “with all deliberate speed.”47

DEVELOPMENT OF THE NORTH HILLS COMMUNITY AS ILLUSTRATING THE CHALLENGE OF UPPER DUBLIN’S BECOMING A MODERN MID-20th CENTURY SUBURB

In the signal event in North Hills becoming a fundamental part of Upper Dublin’s 20th century: “(In 1926) The school board, led by C. E. Karlson,48 wrestled with whether to build a school in North Glenside and how to finance construction.” Robin Costa history.49

In Camburn’s The Story of Greater Glenside, at pp. 100-101, he states that the school opened in 1928 (apparently based on the date carved into the stone façade), with the school serving “the North Hills area from Chelsea Avenue to Jackson Avenue, Limekiln Pike to Pennsylvania Avenue, all within Upper Dublin Township, …” He continued: “[in 1965] the North Glenside pupils transferred to the new and larger [Sandy Run Elementary School] as part of the racial integration of the township school system.”50

Camburn continues, based upon an interview he conducted with Evelyn Wright:

Evelyn Wright [principal of the school at the time of its closure] speaks warmly of the school and its relations with the surrounding community, a small and closely-knit one of black residents. … She states that this school was a “spin-off” of the [East] Oreland

School, affording the area its own school just as Oreland had one in its area. According to Mrs. Wright it was always called North Glenside, to avoid confusion with the North Hills School established on Central Avenue (in Abington) in 1896. …Enrollment was about 285.”51 CITE

Although the new North Glenside School was less than a quarter mile (as the crow flies) from the East Oreland School (noting that the only street access between the two neighborhoods being East Pennsylvania Avenue [previously known as Township Line Road], a busy thoroughfare at the southern boundary of each neighborhood and forming the border with the part of Oreland in neighboring Springfield Township), the two served entirely different populations due to racial segregation that confined African Americans to North Glenside.52 As explored below, the history of that division, it appears to have been a reflection of the times and concerns by the neighboring all-white community.

North Hills’ territorial boundaries were, in major part, the result of the September 1929 annexation of North Oreland by Abington, one of the four annexations of Upper Dublin territory into neighboring municipalities. See Citizens Ask Severance: Some Dublinites Seek Annexation In Abington Township, Phila. Inquirer, April 12, 1929, p. 15. The petitioning citizens in area extending west to middle line of Chelsea Avenue were described as wanting “better school facilities, more police protection, better highways and street lighting facilities” that they believed would be provided in adjoining Abington, a First Class township under Pennsylvania law, rather than they had experienced in Upper Dublin. Id.

Although Upper Dublin was still a Second Class Township in 1929, Abington had long been a First Class Township. Under state law setting forth the classification of townships under Pennsylvania law, there were (and remains) considerable differences in the authority of the governing bodies between First Class and Second Class townships. Due to these differences maintenance of roads was a typical focus in Second Class Townships, whose supervisors were often referred to as “road supervisors” due to their more limited powers. See Pennsylvania Second Class Township Manual (need edition year).

In 1929 Upper Dublin had not officially reached the requisite population density to conduct a referendum to elect First Class status. That density was achieved by Upper Dublin as a result of the 1930 census, thereby enabling the township to seek voter approval after receiving that census report to become a First Class Township. Upper Dublin Grows to First Class Size, North Penn Reporter, Nov. 14, 1927, p. 3 (sufficient population density to qualify for First Class status first determined in census of school children). As discussed elsewhere, the referendum to approve the transformation to a First Class Township did not occur until November 1945. Consequently, some of the concerns raised by the residents in their annexation petition were no doubt reflecting the interests of residents of an already developed residential subdivision in a township where, with the exception of the long-established municipal power center of Old Fort Washington, there were no others.53

The residents’ petition for annexation by Abington was apparently timed to be filed with the Court of Common Pleas of Montgomery County months prior to the anticipated opening in September 1929 of North Glenside School, a segregated all-Black school the Upper Dublin School Board had authorized in mid-1928. As a result, absent the annexation when the new Abington residents’ children (all of whom were white as disclosed in the 1930 federal census) headed to school on Tuesday, September 3 (the very first day after Labor Day), they would be walking in the opposite direction from the paths being used by the Black students attending Upper Dublin’s new North Oreland School. The students from the annexed section would be attending an Abington School District elementary school (an all-white school) immediately adjacent to the area seeking annexation. Ironically, for a time, that Abington school was named North Glenside School and, at other times, North Hills School. History of Abington Schools, Abington Ghost Stories, p. 6 (Spring 2018).

As a result of the annexation a small residential street, the mid-line of Chelsea Avenue, became the new dividing lines between the municipalities.54

G. DEVELOPMENT OF THE NORTH HILLS COMMUNITY WAS UNLIKE OTHER UPPER DUBLIN NEIGHBORHOODS

According to Camburn,

in the early 1920’s there were perhaps half a dozen dwellings in the North Hills area west of North Hills Avenue. Little pillared cottages or huts, southern style, were erected here. The roads were also primitive. Black families came here from the South, at least for the most part, but often by way of Philadelphia. They learned of jobs at the Edge Hill quarries, and at the lumber companies, etc., and in digging ditches, cesspools and general construction work. Thus began the present black community where an excellent school and two churches were established.

Greater Glenside at p. 50.

Camburn also provides an extensive history of one of the two churches referenced above, Antioch Baptist Church. Greater Glenside, at pp. 75-79. The first property for that church, acquired in the 1910s, was at Ruscomb and Limekiln Pike. He continues: “Local opposition to a black church at this location led to sale of the lots and with the money realized two lots at the present (in 1977) site of the church, the northwest corner of Chestnut and Logan Avenues, were purchased from a Mr. Freihofer.” Greater Glenside at p. 76. Camburn noted that radio broadcasts of the church’s services, begun in 1939, “contributed to improved interracial relations in the area and on several occasions pulpit exchanges occurred between Antioch and white congregations.” Id. at 77.

The 1930 federal census showed that Chelsea Avenue, the new dividing line between Abington and Upper Dublin, included a significant African-American population on the western side of both the 100 block of Chelsea and the 200 block of Chelsea above. CITE Further, there was an increasing African-American congregation of the Antioch Baptist Church that had begun with a small congregation in this area in 1904 and grew, with its first church building at 207 Chelsea in 1915 (prior to its move to nearby 200 Logan Avenue in 1931).55

Reflecting these times, the federal Home Owner Loan Corporation (“HOLC”) issued maps in the mid-1930s detailing the creditworthiness of neighborhoods for mortgages. However, these maps had the effect of redlining, the practice of keeping African-Americans from owning homes in other areas. The HOLC map for the Philadelphia area in 1935 redlined what was then North Glenside, now known as Upper Dublin’s North Hills.56

Exhibit 4 in Larry Santucci, Documenting Racially Restrictive Covenants in 20th Century Philadelphia (2020), maps the Location of Racial Covenants on HOLC (Homeowners’ Loan Corporation) Residential Security Map (1937), Esni .HERE, using HOLC data by census enumeration districts, attributed to Robert K. Nelson, et al., “Mapping Inequality, American Panorama, eds., indicates that racial covenants were commonly used in the area adjoining what is now referred to as North Hills (recognizing that the map in Santucci’s presentation does not provide an exact physical location for redlined areas outside the City of Philadelphia).57

It is not known whether the supervisors and later commissioners serving Upper Dublin knew of the prevalence of such covenants in the municipality in the 1930s and 1940s, but they likely did given the widespread use of covenants during that era, as demonstrated by Santucci’s extraordinarily detailed study of deeds filed during those decades.58 However, the 1940 and 1950 federal censuses for North Hills evidence that it was not totally racially segregated except when children residing in the neighborhood were sent to public school. CITE

The relation between race and territorial limits became an unstated concern as early as the 1920s. As Camburn notes, in 1929, while the Ardsley annexation petition was pending, the Old York Road Chamber of Commerce was advocating merger of Abington, Cheltenham, Jenkintown, Springfield into one large “suburban” city as a means of thwarting a feared effort by the City of Philadelphia to annex its northern suburbs. Camburn, Greater Glenside, Chronology (b). The threat of annexation and the proposed “counter-merger” was not realized.

H. UPPER DUBLIN WAS SLOW TO RESPOND TO THE MANDATE OF BROWN v. BOARD OF EDIUCATION TO DESEGREGATE PUBLIC SCHOOLS WITH “ALL DELIBERATE SPEED”

The ten-year interval between the issuance of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and the end of the North Glenside School could be attributed to a reluctance to accept the mandate of “all deliberate speed” from the United States Supreme Court, but that may not fairly portray the events to its residents at that time.

In late 1947 the Upper Dublin School Board sought and obtained what would now be called seed financing from the Pennsylvania School Building Authority toward construction of a junior high school. CITE At the same time, the district had just undertaken the transformation of the existing junior high school property on Loch Alsh into its first high school (ending the practice of paying a stipend to neighboring districts for each student from Upper Dublin). That construction began in 1949, with Upper Dublin High School’s first graduating class in 1955. CITE The board then moved forward with constructing a new junior high school that became Sandy Run. CITE

In 1955, a new controversy emerged when the Pennsylvania Legislature began what became a years-long debate of the need to consolidate school districts. In early drafts of the legislation, the state would have mandated the consolidation of Upper Dublin with another district as Upper Dublin’s student population was just below the proposed requisite minimum number of students to establish a school district. That controversy effectively froze all action by the School Board, including what was the apparent closing of the two oldest elementary schools, East Oreland (opened in 1908) and North Glenside (opened in 1929) with their consolidation, at least at that point, into the new Sandy Run building.

The then president of the School Board, Jack Robbins, testified before the key legislative committee in Harrisburg against the draft legislation. Although he won support for his position from similarly situated districts around the state and their state legislators, at least one newspaper editorial excoriated his testimony. Where Ignorance, Selfishness Show, Bristol Daily Courier, April 6, 1963, p. 6 (characterizing Robbins’ testimony as “the sort of thinking …typical of the provincial school directors who have spearheaded opposition to enlightened and critically needed district reorganization and reflects their monumental ignorance of basic educational problems in the state.…. [D]oes Pennsylvania really have to resign itself to such patent foolishness at the expense of the welfare of its school children?”).59

Only when the final version of the school district consolidation legislation became clearer could the Upper Dublin School District breathe easy with its survival and proceed with its next agenda to get its elementary students into modern quarters. Accordingly, although in 1961 the board had made the decision to proceed with building Sandy Run,60 construction began only when the legislative clouds cleared. The School Board had retained the architect and building contractor for that building in mid-1962. Pennsylvania’s Superior Court opinion in Framlau Corp. v. Kling, 233 Pa. Super. 175, 334 A.2d 780 (1975), following Framlau Corp. v. Upper Dublin School authority, 19 Pa. Super. 369, 281 A.2d 464 (1971).. It appears that consideration of the closing of the two older, segregated elementary schools had begun at least a year or two earlier. with the result that the elementary students at North Glenside and East Oreland moved to the new facility in fall 1965.

This strategy of integration through building a school rather than integration through ending racial assignments to the existing elementary schools might not have complied with the Supreme Court’s requirement of “all deliberate speed,” but there was no recorded community protest at that time.61

North Glenside School ceased operation in 1965, when both it and the even more aged all-White East Oreland School were closed, concurrent with the opening of Sandy Run Elementary School, an annex to the new Sandy Run Junior High School.

So far as can be determined, the Upper Dublin (perhaps tied with neighboring Abington) was the last Montgomery County school district to integrate at the elementary school level.62

UPPER DUBLIN’S FIRST AND ONLY PUBLIC HOUSING, NORTH HILLS MANOR, HAD ITS ORIGINS IN THE RACIALLY SEGREGATED POLICIES OF THE 1930s

In 1953, North Hills Manor, new county-financed housing in North Hills for low-income county residents, was built. Ground Broken For Homes Project, Philadelphia Inquirer, at p. 33 (Feb. 13, 1953) (“Officiating were Henry Lee Willet, president of Upper Dublin Township Commission; Edmund J. Koser of the [Montgomery County Housing Authority; and Felix Perry, authority chairman.”)63 However, North Hills Manor’s completion in 1953 was actually a decade later then intended, as it was clearly then intended to be racially segregated in a New Deal era than recognized the need to address poverty while evidencing no interest in racial equality.

In 1940, when Upper Dublin was still a Second Class Township, the Montgomery County Housing Authority and the then Upper Dublin Township Board of Supervisors began discussing construction of homes by the authority in what was then called North Glenside (now North Hills). UD Bd. of Supervisors Minutes, Dec. 16, 1940. The proposal was originally for six blocks of housing, but it was trimmed to two blocks by “Washington” (agency not identified in the Township’s minutes). UD Bd. of Supervisors Minutes, April 4, 1941. By October 1941 the necessary documents for construction of sixty units were signed by “Washington,” the Authority and the Township. The Mercury, Oct. 13, 1941, p. 10; Phila. Inquirer, Oct. 10, 1941, p. 11; UD Bd. of Supervisors Minutes, Nov. 6, 1941. The onset of the attack on Pearl Harbor one month later and the United States’s decision to enter World War II intervened, halting any further progress.

After World War II, efforts to secure this housing were renewed and successful, though with its scale was further reduced. Upper Dublin Gets 50 Housing Units, Phila. Inquirer, Nov. 4, 1949, p. 13 (announcement by U.S. Senator Myers of approval of federal funding); Federal Housing Units Go to Upper Dublin, The Mercury, Nov. 4, 1949, p.2. Consequently, the 1953 dedication of the new housing in North Hills was the outgrowth of local decision-making in an earlier era, more than a decade earlier.

In 2016 the County Housing Authority began to rebuild North Hills Manor within the same footprint as the original, with the project being managed by Penrose. MCHA (Montgomery County Housing Authority), North Hills & Crest Manor, Investment & Efforts (2022).

FURTHER EFFORTS BY THE TOWNSHIP TO FOCUS ON NORTH HILLS HAVE HAD UNCLEAR RESULTS

In the late 1959 the Upper Dublin Board of Commissioners created the North Hills Improvement Survey Committee.64 From Board of Commissioner meeting minutes it appears that committee was last in existence in 1960. Its members consisted of seven members, including the Health Officer and the Township Engineer, and five others, at least one of whom, Mrs. Odessa Johnson, was an African-American. CITE She was active in the Missionary Church of the Antioch Baptist Church, an African-American congregation in North Hills (see p. --- above), and a Township employee apparently involved in providing recreational services.65 That committee functioned less than a year. CITE It never produced a report, and its termination was never announced.

However, in 1964, using federal community development funds, the Township authorized and constructed its community pool in North Hills. CITE. Whether this was an outgrowth of The North Hills Improvement Survey Committee is unclear.

UPPER DUBLIN AS A POSSIBLE LOCATION FOR MORE AFFORDABLE HOUSING

The township had been called to provide in its zoning more opportunity to develop affordable housing. School Board President Jack Robbins, who also served as chair of the Montgomery County Council for Affordable Housing. CITE-1961 meeting. His call was not heeded.

The issue of suburban housing economic (and racial) segregation in Upper Dublin reemerged almost a decade later in 1969, in the early days of the Nixon Administration. The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, under the leadership of Secretary (and former Michigan Governor) George Romney, considered an Open Communities program to diminish racial segregation in suburbs through an attack on exclusionary zoning joined with federal subsidies for lower-income housing. A staff draft of that plan specifically targeted two municipalities in Pennsylvania, Horsham and Upper Dublin, as well as similar economically developing suburbs in other states. Charles M. Lamb, Housing Segregation in Suburban America since 1960: Presidential and Judicial Politics at nn. 95-105 (2005).

As Lamb recites, Romney, reflecting internal White House concerns, was leery about targeting suburbs. Although elements of the Open Communities program were included in the draft of the 1970 Housing and Urban Development Act submitted by the Nixon Administration to Congress, the House voted that year for an amendment that barred withholding funds from suburbs that did not comply with the policy mandates favoring desegregation. Id. at fn. 106-125. The Nixon Administration and subsequent administrations did not revive the Open Communities concept.

L. WHAT TO DO WITH THE NORTH GLENSIDE SCHOOL BUILDING AFTER THE SCHOOL CLOSED

In 1986 the Board of Commissioners considered a plan to demolish the old school building, then known as North Hills Community Center. “The township had received a $18,000 Community Development Block Grant from Montgomery County to raze the building and construct a community park…. Melvin East, Opportunity Board of Montgomery County executive director, and North Hills resident Neil Rines first approached the board two months ago seeking to try to salvage the building. Over the last several years various groups have attempted to save the former school. [Board President] Zollo said for the amount of use the community center gets the cost of maintaining the building is excessive. A feasibility study is expected in mid-July as scheduled, Rines said.” Theresa Sullivan Barger, New Plans for Three Tuns site, Philadelphia Inquirer, p. 120 (June 12, 1986). See also obituary for Neil Pierce Rines, September 2020.

Ultimately, the building was preserved and continues in operation today. More than three decades after the 1985 decision, the Township closed the library at that site when a study concluded that patrons would be best served at the new library facility and the diminished use of the North Hills site (in part due to the advent of access to Internet services, including the School District’s distribution of Chromebooks to its students). CITE The building serves as a Head Start site and, more recently, as the site of the North Hills Health Center staffed by the Visiting Nurses Association. CITE

M. POSSIBLE EXTERNAL INFLUENCES ON UPPER DUBLIN’S DEMOGRAPHICS

In the early 1970s, the Philadelphia School District argued that, to achieve racial integration in its school population as demanded by the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, it should be merged with its immediately adjoining suburban districts, including, but not limited to, the Abington, Cheltenham and Springfield School Districts. Ultimately, after the passage of a few years, that remedy was rejected by the courts as impermissible under state law. Malik Morrison, An Examination of Philadelphia’s School District’s School District Litigation, Perspectives on Urban Education (University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, Feb. 13, 2013). It is not known whether the threat of this regional merger spurred the already rapid residential growth in suburbs, like Upper Dublin, that were not part of the proposed merger.

N. OTHER RACIAL ISSUES EMERGE IN THE CIVIL RIGHTS ERA check this

In 1969 there was a five month-long failure to supply water due to a dry supply well. The delay in resolving the problem was viewed by some as racial. Water Problem in Phila. Suburb Said Gaining Racial Undertones, Indiana Gazette, March 7, 1969, p. 10 (referencing complaint by Gladys Gould to Township Clerk Brown); Phila. Inquirer, April 22, 1969, at p. 84 (CHECK THIS). In the 2010s issues were raised nationally about al equality in high schools, raising concerns that differences between white and Black students in advanced placement course work and in disciplinary actions were the result of discriminatory actions. In both instances, Upper Dublin parents initiated actions asserting that the differentials were the result of racial discrimination. CITES After administrative and judicial proceedings were instituted, the School District resolved these disputes through settlements. CITES No subsequent complaints have been publicized. UPPER DUBLIN P.A.C.—explain-assume “Parents Advisory Council”? & Commission on Black Students?

Judith Thomas, consultant engaged by Upper Dublin School Board’s Commission on Black Students Issues, reported in Christine Donato, School districts prepare for cultural diversity, Inquirer, at p. 108 (Sept 6, 1990) (disciplinary policy will include physical and verbal intimidation of a racial, physical or religious nature).

Notes

  1. 35.Despite the title “County Superintendent of Public Instruction,” that office was, as reflected in an Opinion from Pennsylvania’s Attorney General, not a county official, but a state office (45 Opinions of the Attorney General No., 548, June 26, 1946, county superintendents are not county officials; 46 Opinions of the Attorney General No. 568, Sept. 3, 1947, providing a thorough explanation of duties of county superintendents)), selected by local supervisory principals from local school districts, until 1960, when, by a change in the School Code, the position was abolished and local supervisory principals became district superintendents. (CITE) The founding of that system is traceable to the efforts of Thomas Burrowes, Pennsylvania’s first state superintendent of education. Thomas Henry Burrowes: A Visionary in Pennsylvania Educational History, unchartedlancaster.com (May 2, 2024); The PSEA Story, Pennsylvania State Education Association website. He served in that capacity from 1838 to 1852. A listing of 19th century county superintendents is found in Soumitra Kayal, County School Superintendents (PA) Record Book, 1854-1918 (Power Library) (the position of county superintendent was established in 1854). In the 20th century, Joseph K. Gotwals served from 1900 to 1905 (per Nancy Sullivan, Desegregation in Norristown, Historical Society of Montgomery County (undated), he believed that segregated school would have been better in Norristown, his home base). He was succeeded as county superintendent by John Horace Landis, who served until his death in 1924. and then by Abram M. Kulp, who served from 1924 to 1954 (per his obituary). There is very little evidence of the involvement of these county superintendents in Upper Dublin schools, although no doubt annual visits occurred.
  2. 36.1930s, before her family moved to Abington Township where she attended the Park School (described in that incredibly fascinating obituary as “an African-American elementary school.”).
  3. 37.Wm. J. Buck, Upper Dublin Township, in Bean’s History of Montgomery County, Ch. LXXV at 1096. See also Newton M. Howard, The Village of Ambler 125 Years Ago (undated) (available on website of Wissahickon Valley Historical Society)
  4. 38.The controversy, as discussed below, tore Upper Dublin school politics apart for years. During the height of the controversy, the School Board’s solicitor, Charles Potash, Esquire, sought by letter dated October 27, 1981, an opinion from the State Ethics Commission, in response to accusations of conflicts-of-interest from “Concerned Citizens of Upper Dublin,” that two school board members had conflicts due to their employment by local banks financing school construction. The Commission issued an opinion, No. 81-647, dated December 4, 1981, advising (after the 1981 school board election was held) that there was, in the opinion of counsel to the Commission, no conflict.
  5. 39.The labeling of “North Glenside” appears for a portion of Upper Dublin from East Pennsylvania Avenue north including Chelsea and Linden in the Sanborn Insurance Fire Map of Glenside, Montgomery County, PA, 1925 at Image 13. That map depicts a very few buildings along those streets. The term “North Glenside” not apply to anything in Upper Dublin beyond Linden and includes a section of what is known as Ardsley in Abington Township, but it does not include the section of Upper Dublin now referred to as part of Ardsley. This confusion about names suggests that there was something more than a name attached to each community. Nick Brown, What Local History Has to Say About Ardsley vs. North Hills, Home Scribe History, House History Research (March 3, 2016). The North Glenside School building as later converted to the North Hills Community Center.From 2003 until 2013 there was a spirited effort by The Friends of The East Oreland School to preserve that school for an alternative use to preserve its historical nature. Friends of the East Oreland School Schoolhouse, Upper’s East Oreland Schoolhouse, Home of the EPI Center, edlaundria.com/EOSinfo.pdf (2013). The effort, which was unsuccessful, was led by among others, Michelle Brennan, as chair, and former Upper Dublin School Board member Robin Costa, then a vice president of the Fort Washington Historical Society.
  6. 40.Pennsylvania’s School Code of 1854 had required separate schools for African-Americans be established in any county with more than 20 black students. Both the courts and then the Legislature reversed this in 1881, requiring, at least in theory, integration in all public schools in the state. Although some record that school as opening in 1926 (Fort Washington and Upper Dublin, at p. 22; Open Space and Environmental Resource Protection Plan), the land was purchased in 1928 (Second Century, at ---), and the contract for its construction was authorized by the School Board in mid-1928, providing for a five-room school, with domestic service and manual arts rooms in the basement. Designs New School: Ambler Architect Gets Contract for Building at North Glenside, North Penn Reporter, July 2, 1928, p. 2 (architect Watson K. Phillips of Ambler engaged by the school board); Upper Dublin New School, Evening Bulletin, July 9, 1928; Ambler Gazette, July 9, 1928. When the North Glenside school was closing Upper Dublin School District’s senior administrative personnel implemented various strategies to secure racial integration at its various elementary and junior high schools following closure of North Glenside. Rick Murray, Upper Dublin integration is low key, The Reporter, Sept. 1, 1977, at pp. 1 & 6 (whether these Black student assignment strategies were publicly disclosed at or around the time North Glenside was closed is not apparent from this news report some twelve years later; however, according that article, parents at the receiving school were notified in advance of the number of Black students being assigned to their school; whether those parents or others raised concerns is not referenced in that article).
  7. 41.The practice of having only Black staff providing services to Black students was common in the 1920s (if not before) and thereafter. Until at least the 1940s. Dale Mezzacappa, Philadelphia has a history of grappling with teacher segregation, Chalkbeat (formerly The Notebook), Dec. 26, 2018 (describing the practice in Philadelphia during that period). The first Black teacher hired by the District other than at North Glenside appears to have been Genester Nix Miller, who taught at Jarrettown Elementary in 1949. Phoebe Wyncote’s Genester Nix on Carving Her Path as a Black Teacher, Phoebe, Sept. 20, 2024 (noting that she left after one year or a position in the Centennial School District for a position advertised for a Black teaching position). Salem Baptist Church of Abington, Facebook (May 2, 2019) (noting that the church’s long-serving historian and the first Black teacher in Upper Dublin [ignoring the existence of Blacks employed at North Glenside] had later relocated to Boston). Evelyn Wright, who became the principal of North Glenside, was, at the opening of Sandy Run (then both an elementary and junior high school), appointed vice principal and she continued to serve in that capacity until her retirement. Evelyn Wright, obituary.In all likelihood the African-American hire by the District after the Brown decision was John W. Parker who, in 1957, began his 42-year tenure with the district, first as an industrial arts instructor and later serving as principal of Sandy Run Middle School. John W. Parker, educator and pro official, Phila. Tribune, Jan. 12, 2018. As noted above, he was preceded only by Evelyn Wright and others who taught at North Glenside and then by Genester Nix Miller, who served at Jarrettown Elementary for one year in the late 1940s.In 2025 Leon Smith, a graduate of Upper Dublin’s public schools, while being named Pennsylvania’s Teacher of the Year for his service as social studies teacher at Haverford High School, observed: “When I went through my K to 12 education [in Upper Dublin] I never had a teacher who looked like me, …I was definitely looking for others that I could ask questions and see how they do it, and that didn’t exist.” Anna Gustafson, Teacher of the Year Leon Smith says Pennsylvania schools need teachers of color.” Pennsylvania Independent, Dec. 17, 2024. Smith attended Upper Dublin schools during the 1980s and 1990s.
  8. 42.At the very same time, the Upper Dublin School District (along with several other Montgomery County school districts) was reclassified upward by the State to be a Third Class District, enabling it to hire its own superintendent. Districts Move Up, The Reporter, July 10, 1952, p. 1. It is unclear whether the anticipation of this change in classification precipitated the decision of the majority of the School Board to proceed with the interim high school arrangement before the new high school building was ready for use.
  9. 43.41 The Upper Dublin School District’s use of the name “North Glenside” is itself interesting, as during that period, the definition of North Glenside’s boundaries was unclear to say the least. At the same time, the Abington School District also had, for about a year, a nearby school named North Glenside Elementary School. A brief history of Abington’s schools, Abington Ghost Stories (Spring 2010) (in describing the history of North Hills Elementary, at p. 8: “From 1908 to 1914 it was called the Edgehill School, then North Glenside, finally North Hills in 1928.”). There is no reported discussion of how the name “North Glenside” was chosen by The Upper Dublin board, and this author has found nothing reported as to the likelihood of confusion between the Abington school and the Upper Dublin School of the same name. As late as September 30, 1928, the Abington school was still referred to as “North Glenside.” Millions Going into Mont. County Schools, Phila. Inquirer, Sept. 30, 1928, p. 68, and numerous newspaper articles continued to refer to the Abington school as “North Glenside” for several years thereafter.At almost the same time Abington was renaming its North Glenside School in 1928, Upper Dublin purchased the property for its new “North Glenside” school. Dager Sells Several Properties, The Reporter, May 11, 1928, at p. 6, noting, somewhat inaccurately, that 28 lots “fronting on Pennsylvania Avenue, Chestnut Street and Girard Avenue in North Glenside” were sold by a couple from Philadelphia to Upper Dublin Township as the location for a new school building. Garden Project Under Way, The Reporter, March 8, 1933, p.1 (many families in North Glenside “are dependent wholly on organized charity for food and fuel.”).It is likely that the Abington’ North Glenside school only served white students., while Upper Dublin’s had only black staff and students. The practice of having only Black staff providing services to Black students was common in the Contemporaneous commentary with respect to the Upper Dublin section of North Glenside painted a picture unlike the Abington portion of North Glenside. Joseph H. Reiney, Xmas is Xmas, Turkey is Turkey,---But Prices is Still Prices, Phila. Tribune, Dec. 25, 1930, p.1 (“men, women and their families were found herded like cattle in dilapidated wood frame houses in North Glenside”); Community 1920s (if not before) and thereafter. Dale Mezzacappa, Philadelphia has a history of grappling with teacher segregation. Chalkbeat (formerly The Notebook), Dec. 26, 2018 (describing the practice in Philadelphia during that period). As Kilson noted in his book cited below, that was not the case in the Ambler schools in which he was educated.
  10. 44.Kilson graduated Ambler’s high school in 1948 [Wikipedia] prior to creation of Upper Dublin’s high school and therefore had interaction with Upper Dublin students attending Ambler High School on a daily basis, as reflected in his book (published shortly after his death) on his experiences growing up in the area. Martin Kilson, A Black’s Intellectual Odyssey: From a Pennsylvania Milltown to the Ivy League (2021), which includes, as chapter 5, “Ambler: A Twentieth Century Company Town.” In that chapter Kilson detailed both this life and the role Evelyn Wright served within Ambler’s Black community and beyond. E.g., North Wales Over Top in Fund Drive, THE REPORTER, Nov. 16, 1944, p.1 (Wright served as the head of the Negro Committee of the North Penn Community Center-United War Chest of the North Penn-Ambler district during World War II).The 1940 federal census records Kilson’s family living in Ambler Borough, but during the ensuing years, as reflected in the 1950 census, his family had moved to Ambler Road in the most western section of Upper Dublin (a fact not noted in his book). As noted above, in the 1930s Fort Washington Elementary was integrated, at least for a time, in the 1920s.
  11. 45.The Wikipedia entry for Evans presents a truly staggering picture of his influence and number of adherents throughout the United States during the 1920s and 1930s. The temper of that time was further demonstrated by two incidents in Upper Dublin a decade apart. The first reported as “Negress Beats Up Tax Collector,” The Central News (Perkasie, PA), Sept.26, 1928, at p. 10. The article described a purported incident in which a North Hills homeowner described as a “colored woman” had an angry, physical confrontation with Upper Dublin tax collector Kaiser while she was allegedly being cheered on by a group of sympathetic neighbors. Ultimately, she was sentenced to an indefinite time in county prison until she paid her taxes. Local newspapers in that era often referred to “Negroes,” particularly in relation to crimes. E.g., Centhalia Tolson Guilty of Murder, The Reporter, Nov. 21, 1928, p. 1. In 1939 Upper Dublin Police Chief Ottinger was struck during an attempt to break up a fight in North Hills. A local newspaper described the melee as involving “50 Negroes in North Hills.” North Hills Crowd Turns on Upper Dublin Chief During Fight, The Reporter, August 8, 1939, p.1. Ultimately a jury convicted the two persons arrested. Jury Convicts Pair for Beating Officer: Man and Woman Go Free on Probation on North Hills Case, The Reporter, Oct. 5, 1939, p.1. References to “Negro” in crime reporting continued to at least 1948. Faces Firearms Charges, The Reporter, Nov. 1, 1948, p. 1 (incident in North Hills section of Upper Dublin). The Upper Dublin community has, like many others, faced issues involving hate based on race, religion and sexual orientation. The most recent: An Interfaith Event on Addressing Hate and Bias in Our Community, March 30, 2025 (held at the Upper Dublin Lutheran Church). Anonymous leaflets have frequently been distributed in Upper Dublin and nearby communities purporting to be authored by the Klan or a white nationalist group. Widespread outrage of community members in response to these leaflets. “Fighting Hate,” Upper Dublin Human Relations Commission and Abington Human Relations Commission, conducted meeting on September 28, 2023, at the Upper Dublin Library with the Executive Director of Regional Anti-Defamation League as speaker, while hate pamphlets were distributed at Upper Dublin homes that morning, 6abc Philadelphia, September 28, 2023, and the livestream of that program interfered with by hate group., Abington Human Relations Commission minutes, Oct. 4, 2023; followed by another round of leafletting, Annie McCormick, Flyers promoting white nationalism distributed across neighborhood in Montgomery County, 6abc Philadelphia, Dec. 11, 2023, following earlier incidents: Jim Melmort, Swastika Incident at Montco Middle School Ignited Concern, CBS News Philadelphia, April 22, 2015; Davis Craig, KKK Fliers Found Outside Homes in Upper Dublin Township, NBC10 Philadelphia, May 5, 2017, culminating in a community meeting, Linda Finarelli, Vigil against hate draws hundreds in Ambler Gazette, June 3, 2017 (meeting at Church of the Brethern); David Chang, KKK Fliers Found Outside Homes in Montgomery County Community, NBC10 Philadelphia, May 13, 2018.
  12. 46.It should be noted that the most serious criminal injury of an Upper Dublin police officer appears to have occurred in 1961 when Officer Harold Urban, Jr. was attacked. 3 Seized in Vicious Attack on Upper Dublin Policeman, Phila. Inquirer, July 10, 1961, at p. 1; Stiff Terms in Brutal Attack on Policeman, Phila. Inquirer, May 16, 1962, p. 41 (noting that Officer Urban was still hospitalized for the injuries inflicted in that attack). The race of those criminals was not referenced in the newspaper reports of that attack and its aftermath.
  13. 47.A history of public education in Philadelphia recites a similar disinclination to deal with Brown’s mandate:Responding slowly to the Supreme Court’s landmark decision,  Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the School District of Philadelphia did not adopt a non-discrimination policy until five years later. In 1963 a committee appointed by the Board of Education recommended that school boundary lines be redrawn and a school building program be developed to promote integration. But lacking the political will to implement such controversial plans, the board soon faced a discrimination suit filed by the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. It remained unresolved for many years. In 1983 Constance Clayton, the first African American to be named the district’s superintendent, tried to convince the commission to withdraw its suit by preparing and implementing a “modified desegregation plan” that depended heavily upon voluntary compliance. It met with widespread approval, but many white Philadelphians shunned the city’s public schools anyway, especially in blue collar neighborhoods, and by 2010 white children comprised only 20 percent of the district’s student population. William W. Cutler, III, Public Education: The School District of Philadelphia, philadelphiaencyclopedia,org (2012).
  14. 48.Karlson, an instructor at Cheltenham High School, had been president of the Upper Dublin School Board for at least four years at that time, died in the summer of 1929, days before the North Glenside school opened in September 1929. Ancestry.com.
  15. 49.These issues were common in suburban districts. For more unusual twists in the widespread practice of creating Black-only schools, note the following: a) Roger Thorne, Segregation on the Main Line, The “School Fight” of 1932-34, 42 History Quarterly Digital Archives, No. 1, pgs.3-20 (Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society), Winter 2005 (describing an effort by the Tredyffrin Easttown School Board in 1932 to segregate its previously racially integrated elementary schools and the successful opposition to that effort by the local Black community with threatened litigation and support from other members of the community) and b) in the Abington School District attendance boundaries of the Park Avenue School (1905-1966) were drawn, per the recollection of one attendee, to limit its reach to the Crestmont neighborhood, with the effect that at least for a time only one white student attended. See Obituary of Winnifred Saunders Sudler, 1924-2024 (having attended Fort Washington Elementary in Upper Dublin, she then attended Park School in 1930s, describing it as an “African-American elementary school”), Craft-Givnish Funeral Home; History of Abington Schools, Ghost Stories, at p. 6 (Spring 2018). However, in Robert S. Camburn, A Town Called Crestmont, Crestmont-Willow Grove Heights, Abington Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania at pp. 15 and 16 (1975) (relying upon information supplied by Mrs. Helen Johnson, a Crestmont resident who taught at the school from 1930 to 1955), the author describes it as a racially integrated school that became mostly Black in 1930 after a Black teacher was assigned to the school, with “[t]he voluntary transfers [of white children] were handled very quietly.” However, although it may have never been totally segregated, Camburn states that “[b]y 1955 …about 95 percent of the Park School students were black, although there was a somewhat lower percent of black children in the lower grades,…” At the same time, the then existing area high schools (Ambler, Abington and Jenkintown) were apparently integrated, although with very few Blacks attending. In Martin Kilson’s autobiography’s chapter devoted to Ambler, he states that at time Evelyn Wright attended Ambler High School during years 1916 to 1920 only six students were Black and of those they were predominantly, if not entirely, females with graduates becoming teachers by attending either Cheyney State Teachers or Temple University) despite Ambler Borough and nearby Upper Dublin having significant Black populations at that time.
  16. 50.In 2025 Leon Smith, a graduate of Upper Dublin schools, while being named Pennsylvania’s Teacher of the Year for his service as social studies teacher at Haverford High School, observed: “When I went through my K to 12 education [in Upper Dublin] I never had a teacher who looked like me, …I was definitely looking for others that I could ask questions and see how they do it, and that didn’t exist.” Anna Gustafson, Teacher of the Year Leon Smith says Pennsylvania schools need teachers of color.” Pennsylvania Independent, Dec. 17, 2024.
  17. 51.See also Letter to Editor, A Solid Foundation, Walter Johnson, Phila. Inquirer, Jan. 15, 1997, p. 14 (Johnson, then a resident of Absecon, New Jersey, praised preparation he received in his education at North Glenside School before attending integrated schools). Unlike graduates of most elementary schools, the alumni of North Glenside School had annual reunions. North Hills Community Group, notice of event, Phila. Inquirer, Feb. 15, 1996, p. 98.
  18. 52.In the post-World War II, underlying racial divisions were never far from the surface in the suburbs. See, e.g., Morton M. Hunt, The Battle of Abington Township: A Case History in Cooperative Housing, Commentary (March 1950) (asserting that racial concerns led to defeat of a post-World War II effort to bring cooperative housing for veterans to Abington, suggesting that the formation of the Rydal-Meadowbrook Civic Association formed to successfully oppose that housing). In 1965 the Abington School District demolished the Park School, a similarly all-Black elementary school, built in 1908 (or earlier), serving its Crestmont neighborhood (Madeline Krassner, Where is Abington’s Time Capsule, The Abingtonian, April 7, 2025; Hon. Lawrence Coughlin, Abington School District Celebrates 100 Years,, Cong. Record 50629,Oct. 12, 1988) with a new school, the Willow Hill Elementary School, which serves a far larger and integrated student population. According to one source, Abington achieved segregation through defining the territory assigned to that school, so on occasion a white student or two may have attended. CITE The original Roslyn Elementary School was constructed in 1926, thereby providing a school for an adjoining white neighborhood. Roslyn Elementary School, Holdings of Old York Road Historical Society.
  19. 53.Further, under state law, a First Class Township could annex part or all of a Second Class Township, but not vice versa. CITE
  20. 54.The use of residential streets as municipal dividing lines can generate legal complications, as demonstrated in Armstead v. Township of Upper Dublin, 347 F. Supp.2d 188 (E.D. Pa. 2004), which adjudicated the authority of Upper Dublin police to make an arrest on the Abington side of Chelsea Avenue.
  21. 55.Camburn also notes that in 1929 the Glenside Manor Civic Association of North Glenside changed its name to Ardsley Civic Association and Ladies Auxiliary. For a more extensive discussion of this community naming roulette, see Nick Brown, What Local History has to say About Ardsley vs. North Hills, Home Scribe History, House History Research blog (March 2016).
  22. 56.A recent paper, although not specifically referencing Upper Dublin, provides informative background on the federal, municipal, banking, insurance and realtor policies that mandated (or in some instances merely encouraged) racial segregation in housing and public education in the metropolitan area. Nina Nayiri McKay, Promises Unfulfilled: Integration and Segregation in Metropolitan Philadelphia Public Schools, 1954-2009 (Bowdoin (College) Digital Commons 2021).
  23. 57.Santucci explains how racial covenants became widely used following the 1917 United States Supreme Court decision in Buchanan v. Worley, 245 U.S. 60 (1917), barring municipally mandated racial zoning, until Shelley v. Kramer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948), barring judicial enforcement of racial covenants, and later the 1968 federal Fair Housing Act that barred use of those covenants.As an aside, Santucci notes that use of exact street addresses was not common in the 1930s, something exemplified in the 1930 census for the North Hills and other sections of Upper Dublin (in contrast to the very exacting street addresses in Fort Washington, as identified in Trudy and Lewis Keen, A Brief History of Fort Washington: From Farmland to Suburb (2006) (chapter 8, The Properties of Fort Washington Heights, pp. 117-120).
  24. 58.A recent county study shows that concentration of Black population within small areas surrounded by overwhelming White suburban communities remains. Montgomery County Planning Comm’n, Office of Housing & Community Development, and Capacity for Change LLC, Homes for All: A Plan in Montgomery County, PA (March 2021), at p. 41 (depiction of Racially/Ethnically Concentrated Census Tracts).
  25. 59.We do not know whether Robbins ever saw this condemnation of his views, but his distinguished history in prosecuting cases against leading Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg demonstrates that he likely had a thick skin. CITE
  26. 60.In mid-1962 the School Board had retained the famed architect Vincent Kling and Framlau Corp., a building contractor, for that building. See Superior Court opinion in Framlau Corp. v. Kling It appears that consideration of the closing of the two older, segregated elementary schools had begun at least a year or two earlier.
  27. 61.The histories of school integration in Lower Merion and Wissahickon were much more contentious, resulting in earlier integration of elementary schools. In those communities the existence of 19th century Pennsylvania law barring racial segregation in public education played a major role in protests and litigation. In Upper Dublin, the existence of that state law seemed to play no role. See also Roger D. Thorne, Segregation of the Upper Main Line: The “School Fight” of 1932-34, 42 Tredyffrin Easttown Historical Society History Quarterly Digital Archives No. 1, pp. 3-20 (Winter 2005).
  28. 62.in the fall of 1965 Abington opened its Willow Hill School, replacing the long-existing Willow School, and thereby ending its segregated school. In Pennsylvania the litigation that gave rise to the creation of the Woodland Hills School District, originally filed in 1971 as Hoots v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 334 F. Supp. 20 (W.D. Pa. 1972), unsuccessfully challenged the 1966 school district consolidation law where it resulted in segregated schools, and its holding effectively terminated school segregation whether by official action or de facto means (such as attendance zones) in Pennsylvania.
  29. 63.Willet’s obituary states: “His work in local government gave him as a reputation as a slum fighter. He won federal funds for housing in blighted sections of North Hills.” Stained-glass artist Henry L. Willet, Phila. Inquirer, Oct. 1, 1983, at 6-A. However, as the history of that development demonstrates, North Hills’ new housing was originally approved by the Board of Commissioners and other governmental agencies on the eve of World War II (before Willet was involved, so far as can be ascertained), but, in fairness to Willet, it resumed following the war, while he was the long-term president of Upper Dublin’s then new First Class Township government.
  30. 64.Neighborhood improvement committees were not uncommon in the earlier part of the 20th century. The Tradition of Municipal Improvement, Contemporary Urban Planning, ebrary.net. Histories refer to a Fort Washington Improvement Committee that undertook securing utility service and road improvements. CITE. In 1916 that association considered becoming a borough as the township did not yet have the density to secure First Class status under Pennsylvania law. Fort Washington May Become a Borough, News Herald, June 14, 1916, p.2; Pennsylvania News in Brief, Sykesville Post-Dispatch, June 9, 1916, p.5. There is no further report as to that effort. Later, Upper Dublin did have local neighborhood associations, such as the Maple Glen Civic Association. However, their function has been replaced in the 21st century through internet links, such as neighborhood pages used to share information among residents and encourage their collective action..
  31. 65.Per the 1940 Census, she lived at 43 Girard Avenue in North Hills, but by 1950 she lived in Lower Merion. Ancestry.com.