Laverock is a small unincorporated community in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States. Part of it is in Cheltenham Township and part is in Springfield Township.

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Laverock
Unincorporated community Neighborhood of Cheltenham Township
Laverock Location of Laverock in Pennsylvania Show map of Pennsylvania Laverock Laverock (the United States) Show map of the United States
Coordinates: 40°5′42″N 75°10′52″W
Country	United States
State	Pennsylvania
County	Montgomery
Township	Cheltenham
Commissioner	Art Haywood
Elevation	344 ft (105 m)
Time zone	UTC-5 (Eastern Standard Time)
• Summer (DST)	UTC-4 (Eastern Daylight Time)
ZIP Code	19038
Area codes	215, 267 and 445

Mansions on large pieces of ground were built in the area in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Few were built after the 1929 onset of the Great Depression, and the area remained that way until after World War II. Today, the area is a residential-only neighborhood known for the abundance of large black oak trees throughout. Laverock shares its zipcode with Glenside, Pennsylvania and is a close-in suburb of Philadelphia.

Laverock Farm

Arthur E. Newbold built a Colonial-Revival mansion and estate, "Farleigh," on the north side of Willow Grove Avenue in 1895.[1] His son, Arthur Jr., hired architect Arthur Ingersoll Meigs of Mellor, Meigs & Howe to transform the mansion into a Norman-Revival manor house. Between 1919 and 1925, Meigs created "Laverock Farm" – a working farm housed in a group of exquisitely-crafted buildings that deftly mixed the antique and the modern.[2] It was awarded the 1925 Gold Medal for Excellence in Design by the Architectural League of New York.[3]

In an influential review in The New Republic titled "The Architecture of Escape," critic Lewis Mumford denounced "Laverock Farm" and buildings like it as "architectural anaesthesia" and "hocus-pocus":

The critical weakness of the romantic architect is that he is employed in creating an environment into which people may escape from a sordid workaday world, whereas the real problem of architecture is to remake the workaday world so that people will not wish to escape from it.[4]

"Laverock Farm" lasted barely 30 years, it was demolished in 1956.[5] A development of split-level houses was built on the former estate and as infill around other existing houses.

Notes

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