Laurel Springs revisited

I periodically revisit communities and neighborhoods in the Town by Town series, especially the ones that have impressed me as up and coming.

For example, I went back to Hatboro last December - nine months after my Town by Town visit - to spend some more time walking around its ever-evolving downtown.

When I visited Silverdale for July 24's entry, I stopped by Sellersville and Souderton - the latter to see how the train station project was faring.

I don't usually write about these visits, because my motto is "one Town by Town to a customer and no refunds allowed."

I had no plans to revisit Laurel Springs in Camden County, mainly because Aunt Lo's Ice Cream Parlor is too much of a temptation, but then I received an email from Charles Hagan, who asked whether I was planning to include the leafy borough of 2,000 in the Town by Town series.

Because I don't expect everyone to keep track of the 192 places I have written about so far, I could see how Hagan might have missed Laurel Springs, which was published Sept. 1, 2013 - about the time the borough celebrated its 100th anniversary.

Hagan, who has lived in Laurel Springs since 1977 and is selling "because we are downsizing," said that his old friends refer to the borough as "Mayberry."

I didn't see Opie when I was a-wandering three summers ago, and although I was much impressed by the police station, which is a stone mansion on the Cord Estate, I never dropped by to see if Otis was sleeping it off.

We'll get to Sam Cord in a minute, because this is a real estate column, and Cord was a developer who built homes in Laurel Springs, and Hagan is selling his house and we should look at the latest numbers.

Laurel Springs is where Walt Whitman spent several summers on the Stafford Farm in the late 1870s and early 1880s, apparently writing a portion of Leaves of Grass and taking mud baths - a habit he said improved his health but led locals to call him a "dirty old man."

Each year in June, the borough hosts a "Walt Fest," honoring the poet.

Whitman was not the only summer resident. The train from Philadelphia - and attractions like Crystal Spring and Laurel Lake - turned Laurel Springs into a vacation spot, and Hagan, while warning that he can't guarantee the accuracy of the story, has been told that his house on Park Avenue was a private club visited by the rich and famous - a Drexel, at least.

A lot of these Camden County communities were planned developments, and Laurel Springs was no exception, a piece on the borough written for the bicentennial in 1976 shows.

Among the three development companies that bought land in the soon-to-be borough was Cord's Laurel Springs Land Co.

He bought Stafford Farms West in 1889, and made $40,000 in the first year of operation. Cord also built the Gray Stone Mansion at Atlantic and Tomlinson Avenues that now houses the police and fire department.

Cord and the other developers published their own newspapers to promote the sale of lots.

Their slogan was "Laurel Springs: The Place to Live."

Tickets for free passage on the railroad encouraged buyers to look at the real estate values.

One could buy an eight-room house with a bath, heater and range porches on a lot 50 by 50 feet on easy terms - $300 cash and $20 monthly.

Laurel Springs had five sales in the first quarter of 2016, with a median sale price of $108,245 and an average of 74 days on the market.

You will find all sorts of older homes, lots of them with Victorian charm, that don't take long to sell and for which buyers will be paying reasonable prices, a real estate agent said.

aheavens@phillynews.com
215-854-2472
@alheavens