This small but picturesque Wyndmoor house built by Russell and Elizabeth Medinger in the 1950s was suddenly demolished last month, leaving neighbors upset and township preservationists looking for reforms to prevent similar demolitions in the future. (Photo courtesy of 8600Montgomery.com)

by Elizabeth Coady

The unexpected razing of a storybook two-story stone house that stood at 8600 Montgomery Avenue in Wyndmoor has provoked grief for the former owner and nearby neighbors who believed that the home sold in 2017 would be preserved.

The tiny Colonial-style house, measuring only 1,125 square feet, was built in 1954 by Russell and Elizabeth Medinger following 25 years of meticulous planning and the accumulation of historic building materials. Designed by architect Miles Boyer Dechant, the house had characteristics of a 1700 farmhouse with planked pine floors as wide as 12 inches, beamed ceilings and walls constructed with 20-inch “uncut field stone” from a now-closed quarry.

“It was a treasure,’’ said Sandy McBride, 71, the youngest of the Medingers’ two daughters who was gifted the house from her mother about 25 years ago. “It was always a delight to pull into the driveway. It was so warm.’’

The surprise demolition of the French Normandy style dwelling has motivated Springfield Township officials and historians to renew efforts to pass a preservation ordinance that would prevent the destruction of homes deemed to protect and or enhance the historic or aesthetic character of the community.

It also prompted one miffed anonymous local to create the website 8600Montgomery. com, which details what it calls “the sad tale of the destruction of 8600 Montgomery.’’

The buyer of the property, identified as Chris Colquitt of Alpha Real Estate Management, purchased the house and surrounding lot for $500,000 in June 2017. Through his builder he sought and received a zoning permit to build an addition to the house, situated on an acre of lush land at the intersection of Montgomery and Evergreen avenues. Instead, the house was completely demolished after the historic tiles and windows were removed. Efforts to reach Colquitt at four different telephone numbers traced to him were unsuccessful.

Springfield Township officials on Sept. 17 initiated a notice of violation of the construction code to the owner. He can plead guilty or appeal the charge in the Magisterial District Court of Montgomery County. If found guilty, he could be fined up to $1,000 for the violation.

McBride and neighbors observed the house being deconstructed over several weeks this summer. Initially, the house’s 18th and 19th Century terracotta roof tiles were removed, followed by the excision of window panes, some of which were hand-blown in Sweden. Neighbors had thought that these architectural details were being removed temporarily before the approved addition was built.

But McBride, who was nine years old when she moved to the house with her parents from an apartment above their Germantown Avenue flower shop, knew it was “sayonara” when she saw that the window openings were left unsealed after the glass was removed.

Another neighbor, Pam Love, who also noted the house’s gradual demolition, said when saw that the last wall left standing had too been razed, “I just stopped the car and stared. I couldn’t believe it.’’

“I’ve just been so tense and anxious about it, and so remorseful,’’ said McBride, who moved to a retirement community for safety and to be free of the burden of her home’s upkeep and repair. “My sister and I are so glad that mother and dad are not here to see this. It would break their hearts as it has broken mine. I am heartbroken.’’

The house’s demise is a “terrible loss for the township,’’ said Christine Fisher Smith, who lives several doors north of the property and who is a friend of McBride’s. “I mean, it was beautiful stone. It was also a gateway house to Montgomery Avenue...A lot of people called it the ‘Hansel and Gretel House.’’ She said many people have told her that it was their favorite house in the area.

A last bit of the Medinger house before it was demolished. (Photo courtesy of 8600Montgomery.com)

“It’s really a loss of a distinctive, unique property, and I think that’s what everybody sad about,’’ she said.

Robert S. Dunlop, Springfield Township’s code enforcement and zoning officer, said a stop-work order has been sent to Arkadiy Bondarenko of First Choice Renovations, the owner’s builder, and new construction plans will have to be submitted and approved before construction at the site can begin.

Bondarenko said the owner, whom he declined to name, had intended to save portions of the original home. But as demolition began, he said it became clear that marrying portions of the old home with contemporary market demands would create “clashes of styles, sizes and proportion.’’

The owner’s intent was not to upset the neighbors, and he promised that the new property was “going to be a really, really nice place,’’ he said.

“They may be upset that that tiny cute little house is gone, but I think in the broad scheme it actually makes more sense for the neighborhood,’’ he said, adding that the house had termite damage and small doorways.

McBride said the demolished house was “not meant to be a McMansion with unbelievable amenities” and would have made a beautiful home for an artsy couple.

She said when she met her friends in the neighborhood after the house was destroyed, “they just came to me with arms open with such sympathy and sorrow. It was very heartwarming to have support like that. One of the gals said we should have all worn black.’’

The house’s original owners, the Medingers, grew up in Reading and relocated to Chestnut Hill where Russell operated a flower shop at 8430 Germantown Avenue for five decades. He was one of the neighborhood’s most prominent citizens.

The house’s construction history, and the couple’s painstaking plans to conceive, collect materials and build it, were documented in a paper written by Phyllis Bieber Willis in 1988 for a history class at Chestnut Hill College. McBride remembers that her parents stored the terracotta tiles they methodically collected for 20 years under her and her sister’s beds at their previous apartment.

Ironically, construction on the original house was delayed for four years after Springfield Township officials denied the Medingers’ original building permit request because then-zoning laws required homes in the area to measure a least 1800 square feet. The couple sued the county, and the case made its way to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which ruled in 1954 that the original ordinance flew “in the face of our birthright of Liberty and our American way of Life, and is interdicted by the Constitution.’’ Construction began soon afterward.

The house’s demise may birth the passage of a historic preservation ordinance in Springfield Township where townspeople have express chagrin over the house’s loss to commissioners.

“That’s the one thing good to come out of this – in trying to light a fire to get anything done,’’ said Springfield Township Commissioner President Jeff Harbison, who lives a block away from the razed property.

“I was crushed,’’ Harbison said of the demolition. “I was very excited when said the buyer was going to try to save it.” Nevertheless, he recognized that the house’s size may have been impractical for modern families.

T. Scott Kreilick, president of the Springfield Township Historical Society, said the group was notified by alarmed parties about the demolition and sought to get answers from township officials. He said he was “very happy to hear’’ that movement on a historic preservation ordinance was moving forward.

“Commissioners need to make it a priority,’’ he said. “Yes we’ve loss 8600 Montgomery. But my hope is it provides the impetus to move forward to establish a preservation ordinance for the township.’’

A draft ordinance previously written provides several levels of protection for historically significant structures, including nationally recognized properties and for those for which preservation interests are primarily local like that of 8600 Montgomery Avenue. The ordinance would also not prevent every old house from being razed, but would buy local residents time how to determine how to proceed or organize should a property deemed locally significant be threatened, Kreilick said.

“Part of the process in creating that ordinance is establishing a list of historic properties,’’ Kreilick said. “Would this house have made that list? Possibly. But we don’t know because it’s after the fact at this point.’’

“Our material culture is a direct link to our past, and to remove it lessens the importance of learning from the past,’’ he said.

The idea of implementing a local historic preservation ordinance has been floated as far back as the early 1980s when Whitemarsh Hall, the private estate of Edward T. Stotesbury and his wife Eva, was demolished. The estate was built by Horace Trumbauer, hailed as an architect of the Gilded Age, and its destruction is considered to be one of the worst architectural losses in American history.

McBride lived in the Montgomery house from the time she was nine until she left for college at age 18, and then again for 25 years until 2017. Growing up there with her parents and older sister was a gift, she said. Every Christmas, the house would fill with the smells of baking cookies, and every Easter would include egg hunts.

“They were just an unbelievable partnership,’’ she said of her parents. “Mother was the brains and daddy was the brawn but they both had the same like-mindedness about music and art….And they were fabulous parents. I mean, I had just a blessed childhood.’’

“This is the most important message of this whole article...This little house laying down its life to move the neighborhood and the township to move forward and get a historic preservation ordinance on the books now.’’