Rose Valley Historic District

Rose Valley began as a cluster of 18th-century farms and water-powered mills along Vernon Run and Ridley Creek, in the Delaware County hinterland of Philadelphia. In 1901 the Rose Valley Association, led by the architect William L. Price, bought Hutton's Mill and surrounding land, and the community was reorganized around shared paths, a guild hall, and buildings of local rubble stone finished in stucco. Price and his circle built houses of common materials for large and small households alike, producing a unified local look. Architects including William Grey Purcell and Howell Lewis Shay later added modern houses, and the Hedgerow Theatre, which opened in the former mill, became a notable theater. The borough was incorporated in 1923 to preserve the community's separate identity. The district is regarded as an unusually complete record of this utopian experiment and its architecture.