A Change to Suburbia

For the third and final event in our Parish History and Archives Committee Summer series, Jeff Groff will join us to talk about the changes to our Radnor/Wayne region leading into and following the Second World War. This will include mention of the impact upon the parish of St. David’s, Radnor.

A Change to Suburbia, examines the period from the 1930s to the 1960s, the end of the great estate era and the development of the Main Line as the suburb we know today. Many large country places were sold and new houses built. Commercial districts expanded in the Main Line towns. New corporate centers were built. The work of architects such as Walter Durham as well as mid-century modern designs are featured.

Jeff Groff retired in 2021 as Estate Historian at Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library. He also had served as Director of Public Programs, and then as Director of Interpretation. For sixteen years he was Executive Director of Wyck Historic House and Garden in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. He directed the Osterville Historical Society on Cape Cod, and early in his career was Registrar/Asst. Curator at the Philadelphia Maritime Museum (now Independence Seaport). A graduate of Bates College where he majored in history, he holds an MA from the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture of the University of Delaware.

For over forty-five years he has studied and lectured on American country houses and gardens, particularly those of Philadelphia’s “Main Line” and surrounding areas, with an emphasis on country life and sports, and gentleman farming. Currently he is assisting Chanticleer Garden in Wayne, PA in developing an updated interpretive plan and history.

He served as co-curator of Winterthur’s very successful exhibitions “Costumes of Downton Abbey” and “Costuming The Crown.”

Suggested donation of $5 per person to cover refreshments and honorariums.