Lansdale Historical Society

10/25/2026

BACK THEN by Pat Rieker

Today’s post is the third in a series about Red Top Farm on White’s Road.

Part 3: The Racetrack

Francis W. McDowell (1837-1907) owned a paper manufacturing company along the Schuylkill River in Manyunk. He lived in a fine home in Germantown, and in 1880 he purchased Red Top Farm southwest of Lansdale as a summer home.

For more than 25 years, McDowell and his family spent the months of June thru September at Red Top or at another nearby farm he owned on the east side of S. Broad St. near Allentown Road. McDowell hired a farm manager and farmhands to grow crops and tend livestock while he entertained his friends and hobnobbed with Lansdale businessmen. In 1897, several of these men decided to build a racetrack on McDowell’s 40-acre Red Top property.

The Lansdale Driving Park opened on a Saturday in June, 1897. About 500 people paid the entrance fee, while a few hundred more parked their carriages and watched the harness races free of charge from nearby roads. The half-mile racetrack was situated along Valley Forge Rd. roughly between White’s Rd. and Mt. Vernon St. Today’s residential streets had not yet been developed at that time.

The Lansdale Driving Park continued to host races every year throughout the summer months until about the start of WWI. After the war, auto racing became more popular, and local racing fans shifted to the racetrack at Hatfield. The high-banked turns of the Lansdale Driving Park remained through the 1930s, but were eventually leveled as the area was developed.

10/24/2026

Come see our table today during the Harvest Heritage Day at Morgan Log House! 🍂

10/24/2026

We are just one week away from our Halloween History Hunt at Lansdale Cemetery!! Who's excited?! 🙋‍♀️ **𝐉𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐚 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐥𝐲 𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫: 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐲-𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐝 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫. 𝐀 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐫 𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐲 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐚𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬.**

10/23/2026

WAIT TILL NEXT YEAR By DICK SHEARER

Once again, the Phillies didn’t disappoint us this season - high hopes and little to show for them. But we still have memories of years’ past if we grew up in a time when the national pastime was less commercialism and more about the game, the players and the experience of going to the game in person.
Dad played local baseball into his 40s and took me to Shibe Park for the first time in 1950 when I was five. He knew some of Connie Mack’s Athletics when they played amateur ball together, and they introduced him to Mr. Mack. Of course I don’t remember a whit of this.
As I grew up through elementary school, Dad and I – along with some other neighborhood kids from Perkasie and their fathers made the trip to North Philly to see the Phillies during the mid-1950s. Always the same routine - car to Lansdale, train to North Broad Street Station and a spirited walk down Lehigh Avenue to the newly-renamed Connie Mack Stadium.
The walk provided life-long memories for the kid from rural Perkasie:
-- Across Broad from the station, a car wash that was once the Baker Bowl, a relic of a ballpark where the Phillies once played.
-- A crowd increasing block-by-block until it closed down a traffic lane on each side of the street (only when the team was winning).
-- Bars of all types, some with blackened windows. I asked Dad what that was about. He said he’d tell me later.
-- Pawn shops. Interesting stuff in the dirty windows.
-- Eateries not to be confused with the Hotel Tremont.
-- Kids running out in front of cars, offering to watch them for a dollar.
-- People selling rooftop seats on their houses. Eventually, the right-field fence was raised to block the view.
Lots of stuff for a kid from the country to digest. But once through the gate, we saw pro baseball like never before. First of all, there was this beautiful field in front of us – lush and green and flawless. And we thought it was black and white grass like we saw Sundays on TV. The seats, all 33,000 of them were color coded to match their price range - $2.75 for box seats, $2 for Reserved, $1 for the bleachers. My memories of the day:
-- Ushers wiped your seats and vendors roamed the aisles hawking with constant refrains like “Doggie. Doggie, Get Your Red Hot Doggie “and “Peanuts! Just Roasted!”
-- The infield’s soil was so fine it looked like it came from a coffee grinder.
-- Up in the pressbox sat broadcasters By Saam, Gene Kelly and Claude Haring, who would inform listeners on a cloudless night that the game was being played “under a Lehigh Avenue moon.”
-- Players and coaches mingled with fans along the ground level seats without being coaxed.
-- Then there was the scoreboard on the right centerfield fence. Huge is the only way to describe it. “Ballantine” b**r endorsed it in letters large enough to be seen all over North Philly. Atop that was a square Longines clock, bigger than any we kids from the country had ever seen.
Nine innings worth of this wonderment were an overwhelming experience for this 10-year-old. The walk back up Lehigh Avenue to the train station seemed longer, the grade more uphill. Bleary eyes peered out of the rail car’s windows as dusk turned to darkness with light provided by street lights and neon signs.
Soon those bleary eyes drifted shut, urged on by the rhythm of the rails.
Suddenly, Dad’s shaking my arm. “Wake up” he said. “We’re in Lansdale.” One eyelid popped open and there was the Lansdale Post Office slowly rolling past us.
Then back to our car, back to Perkasie and back home where Mom demanded a full report on the day. After that, it was off to bed promising myself I wouldn’t forget the details to share with my friends at school.
Now, 70-plus years later, some of details have faded with time but my love for baseball lives on no matter how time, money, rule changes and commercialism try to meddle with it.
The Phillies finished 77-77 in 1955, 88-74 this year as a result of the September flop. Likely, they will disappoint us again, perhaps in 2027. But, darn it, they’re OUR Phillies -we learned from a young age how to accept unhappy endings.

10/22/2026

BACK THEN by Pat Rieker

If we ask high school students to tell us their favorite subject, we might hear a number of different responses. But if we ask the same kids to tell us their favorite time in the school day, most would say— lunchtime.

This photo montage shows the cafeteria scene at Lansdale High School, and later North Penn High School through the later decades of the 20th century. Food favorites changed with the times, from Sloppy Joe’s and North Penn hoagies to pizza boats and Tater Tots. But the best part of lunch was time spent with friends.

10/21/2026

BACK THEN by DICK SHEARER

Bell Telephone was always looking for ways to expand its technological horizons beyond the Alexander Graham Bell era, and when the company succeeded, it made sure the public was told about it.
One of its most effective tools was a series of professionally produced newspaper advertisements like this one that appeared in a 1929 issue of the North Penn Reporter.
It was an eye-catcher. What it really told readers is that Bell equipment would soon be offering news photos via phone lines from any place that had dedicated phone lines and equipment to handle it. For example, a photo of a plane crash in Chicago or Paris could be transmitted to a faraway city as soon as the photographer could process a print in the darkroom.
Prior to this, the finished photo had to be delivered by a land carrier – train, truck, car, even the mail – a process that could take days to appear in a daily paper.
Bell developed this process but it wasn’t until 1935 that the Associated Press news service inaugurated it on a widespread basis.
The technology has changed drastically since 1935 but the concept is still there – even though satellite dishes and other technology came along to phase out traditional phone lines.

10/20/2026

BACK THEN by DICK SHEARER

As you entered Lansdale by train in the early 1900s, one of the first places you came across was Broadway – not the Broadway of New York City fame, but the Broadway Hotel.
Located at Broad and Vine Sts, and Railroad Ave., it occupied the space where the Lansdale Post Office was built to replace it in the 1930s followed by Borough Hall in more recent years.
The hotel was owned and operated by Frederick Schlumberger, a native of Germany, who returned to Europe ln 1928 while the Broadway was being sold for the post office site.
While in Europe he participated in several huge parades in France where he worked at a number of hotels and drinking establishments before coming to the U.S. Many of his former co-workers came out to greet him along the parade routes.

10/19/2026

10/18/2026

BACK THEN by Pat Rieker

Last week we began to tell the story of the property that was once known as Red Top Farm on White’s Rd. Today we’ll continue with some of the early history of the house and farm.

Part 2: Red Top Farm

The stone house and 40-acre farm that came to be known as Red Top was built in the early 19th century. It was sold to Asa Thomas (1809-1884) in the 1840s. Thomas was a gentleman farmer who employed farmhands and servants. A large red barn stood behind the house. It’s possible that the farm was named for this red barn, although some accounts say that the name Red Top came from the former color of the roof of the house.

When the railroad was built nearby in the 1850s, Asa Thomas invested in several parcels of land closer to Lansdale station. He built a house for himself on Susquehanna Ave. where he lived while he still owned the farm on White’s Rd.

In 1880, Asa Thomas sold Red Top Farm to Francis McDowell, an industrialist from Philadelphia. Thomas died in 1884 at the age of 75. He is interred at Lansdale Cemetery.

10/17/2026

BACK THEN by DICK SHEARER

Time can take an incredible toll on the history of a town. Back in April of 1977 the owners of Souderton’s Yocum and Godshalk department store decided to call it quits in the stately building their relatives erected in the 1890s.
With it went much of the merchant to customer friendship and knowledge that existed for decades.
Fortunately, the Milton Bean-designed building was taken over by neighboring Union National Bank (Univest) and to this day retains its commanding position near the top of the Main Street hill.