Local advocacy group continues years-long effort to preserve Abolition Hall

WHITEMARSH >> During the mid-19th century, the Corson Estate, which sits at the corner of Butler and Germantown pikes, was a crucial hub along the storied Underground Railroad. It was a place where runaway slaves could find shelter and nourishment, readying themselves for the journey farther north.

It was on this estate that George Corson built Abolition Hall, a meetinghouse visited by such notable abolitionists as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

For the last two years, a small group of local advocates have been fighting to preserve the Corson Estate and its attendant historic structures – including Abolition Hall, the neighboring Hovenden House, and a barn that once gave refuge to escaped slaves – as a proposed 67-townhouse development edges closer to being built on the land.

Since the developer, K. Hovnanian Homes, first announced an agreement of sale with the heirs to the 10.5-acre Corson Estate in early 2016, the firm has also reached an agreement of sale on the adjacent, 2.7-acre Haub tract. Folding the Haub tract into the development plans brought Hovnanian’s total from 48 to 67 townhomes.

In order to move forward, the developer must be granted conditional use approval by the Whitemarsh Township Board of Supervisors, as the land is zoned Village Commercial II. The board held a public meeting March 22 to hear arguments for and against granting the conditional use. The meeting was continued to Thursday, April 26, at 7 p.m.

Hovnanian’s plans do not call for the removal of Abolition Hall or its neighboring buildings, all of which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Rather, the townhomes would be built around the structures.

“We are not demolishing any of the historic structures. They are all being preserved,” said Julie Von Spreckelsen of Eastburn & Gray, the law firm representing Hovnanian. Spreckelsen declined to expand on her statement in any way, citing ongoing litigation.

However, the issue is not purely about preserving the structures, which are already protected, as they stand in the Plymouth Meeting Historic District. People protesting the development said they are also interested in preserving some of the land around the structures.

Sydelle Zove, of the advocacy group Friends of Abolition Hall, which is leading the opposition to the proposed development, said recently, “We have a townhouse development that is … far too dense, given the nature of the site and the proximity of the historic structures.”

“This is not just a group of old buildings. They’re extraordinarily significant,” said David Contosta, a professor of history at Chestnut Hill College. “And once they’re detached from their context, they lose part of their meaning. I think one of the problems with historic preservation is we preserve the buildings but we don’t preserve the land around them.”

Abolition Hall, he added, “is not just important locally. It’s important nationally. It’s one of the most important sites of the anti-slavery movement in the United States.”

The legacy of the land

During the mid-1800s, Abolition Hall was a roughly 200-capacity venue for meetings of the Montgomery County Anti-Slavery Society, a group George Corson helped found in 1837. After arsonists burned down a nearby abolitionist meetinghouse, Corson built a second story on his carriage house, so he could host speakers in stealth.

According to National Register of Historic Places documents, Corson’s barn, which still stands on the estate, “sheltered many slaves during that period. They would lie low there during the day and then, under cover of darkness, continue their journey to freedom in Canada.” Slaves, according to Contosta, also hid in Cornson’s cornfields.

Filed in 1969, those NRHP documents noted that developers were then attempting to realign the intersection of Butler and Germantown pikes, which would have resulted in a roadway cutting through the Corson Estate. These many decades later, the original Hovnanian plans also called for such a realignment of the intersection, but Whitemarsh Township Manager Rick Mellor noted that this is no longer present in the developer’s plans.

One of the reasons the Corson Estate is such a precious piece of history, Contosta said, is that “most of the so-called Underground Railroad stations aren’t documented. The reason being, if you were caught helping slaves to escape, you could be fined and imprisoned. So, often there were no records kept.” Corson’s Underground Railroad site, unlike so many, is known.

Corson sheltered escaped slaves at great risk to himself and his family. Under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, aiding runaway slaves was considered an offense punishable by six months in prison and up to $1,000 dollars in fines.

Even so, “There were perhaps few more devoted men than George Corson to the interests of the oppressed everywhere. The slave, fleeing from his master, ever found a home with him, and felt while there that no slave-hunter would get him away until every means of protection should fail,” wrote abolitionist William Still in an 1872 history of The Underground Railroad.

Operating a station along the Underground Railroad “was a really brave thing to do,” Contosta said. “And George Corson did it as a matter of conscience. George Corson did it because he thought God told him to do it.”

By the 1880s, the Hovenden House, which hugs against Germantown Pike at its intersection with Butler, became the home of Corson’s daughter Helen, a sculptor, and her husband, the revered painter Thomas Hovenden.

During his lifetime, Hovenden earned renown for his paintings, which depicted with solemn realism the lives of African Americans and low-income farmers. His piece “Breaking Home Ties” was voted the most popular painting of the 1893 Chicago world’s fair and now hangs in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He “was the most popular genre painter in the United States by the time he died” in 1895, Contosta said.

Hovenden incorporated many local persons and places in his paintings-particularly the fields behind the Hovenden House. This is why those fields, which have remained open space for nearly two centuries, factor into the Friends of Abolition Hall’s mission.

“We would like that somehow some land, an acre or two of land perhaps, could be set aside behind the buildings,” Contosta said. “The fields that Hovenden painted and that were there when people came to speak at [Abolition Hall], the fields that were there when slaves were hidden in the cornfields. That would be the compromise. There would be a buffering around the building.”

Beyond that buffer of open land, the Friends of Abolition Hall, which acts under the umbrella of Preservation Pennsylvania, a statewide nonprofit organization, has proposed various other changes to the development plan.

Those changes include a small park, which the group has referred to as the Plymouth Meeting Welcome Park, and interpretive signage “that would help people understand the unique history of this property,” said Zove. Contosta also mentioned wanting a small lot where people could park their cars and visit the standing structures.

None of these suggestions have been incorporated into the plans, Zove said.

“From the very start, what we’ve been asking for is that the township and the developer sit down with us and anyone who’s concerned, and figure out what is the best possible development for this parcel,” she said. “Basically, let’s find a solution that helps to preserve the legacy of this historic homestead yet gives the developer the right to pursue his townhouse development.”

To learn more about the Friends of Abolition Hall, visit the group’s Preservation PA page: http://www.preservationpa.org/page.asp?id=65.