Our story two weeks ago on the imminent sheriff’s sale of the long-empty Greylock Mansion quickly became the most read story of the year for us online and one of the top stories of the last five years.

The narrative is one that resonates with people in Northwest Philadelphia and the nearby suburbs that are home to numerous Gilded Age and Progressive Era estates. They crowd Chestnut Hill, Wyndmoor and Wyncote. They often suffer from similar challenges.

For too many of these fading estates, the economics are against them. They were built in a time when homeowners had staff – housekeepers, drivers and gardeners. They were lived in by titans of industries that have disappeared or migrated long ago. And the economics of living in them as single-family homes don’t make sense.

In 2016, the usefulness of these homes, in many cases, is more as historical records. They are no longer homes but artifacts. Works of architecture that argue to be saved not because they are suitable or desirable homes but are monuments to bygone era.

When these homes go up for sale, they often fall into a long period of abandonment. In addition to Greylock, Laverock Hill in Wyndmoor has been empty for years. George Howe’s masterpiece High Hollow looks poised to begin a period of abandonment if high debts and maintenance costs scare away buyers and investors. They’re caught in a limbo in which there is neither the will nor the cash to restore or to develop.

In a long series of comments on the online version of the story, there is quite a bit of blame heaped on local organizations that have done the most to preserve these homes. Some of the preservation efforts have been through the easement process – rights on land development and the physical improvement of homes sold to responsible easement holders. Those easements guarantee that historic homes cannot be carved into condominiums or even razed and replaced with town homes without the say of the easement holder.

It’s true that easements can represent disincentive to investment. At a time when the land under the historic homes of Chestnut Hill is far more valuable than the building, investors looking for the largest returns possible on their money will look for property not tied up in a knot by third party rights holders.

And the question of what value easements that preserve private open space offer the public is an open one. It is not clear that lost tax revenue is worth a view that is often only enjoyed by a few.

But if not for easements, what? Anything would be possible for a property like Greylock. It could be razed and replaced with a set of town homes. High Hollow, which has no historic protection whatsoever, appears only to be protected by sizable tax liens on the property that would prevent the same.

If not for organizations like the Chestnut Hill Historical Society, Chestnut Hill would likely be a much different place, its stock of historic homes is fodder for contemporary development. The CHHS works to protect historic homes in the neighborhood, not simply to prevent the steady march of progress, but because it realizes that these properties are important parts of the neighborhood’s history and character. They are the reason why many who live in Chestnut Hill chose to do so in the first place.

-- Pete Mazzaccaro