WCGN has its roots in the late 1950s when some residents of West Central Germantown pooled their resources and successfully blocked the destruction of the Ebenezer Maxwell Mansion—at the corner of Greene and Tulpehocken Streets—by a petroleum company that wished to replace it with a gas station. It is now a significant house museum, and a jewel in the city’s crown of Victorian architecture.
WCGN became formally organized in the mid ’70s, when a group of homeowners saw that increasing purchases of Victorian structures for institutional use was threatening to erode the residential quality of the neighborhood, and it was important to have a mechanism for garnering support when needed in order to contest a zoning waiver by the city’s Zoning Control Board.
For example, strong neighborhood cohesiveness and willingness to work together made it possible for single families to occupy three large houses on West Walnut Lane that had been targeted for institutional use by Gaudenzia House. More recently, residents successfully blocked—at the PA Supreme Court level—a local nursing home’s plan to build a mammoth four-story structure surrounding and dwarfing Maxwell Mansion.
In the mid-eighties, a group of dedicated neighbors took on the project—spearheaded by Louise Strawbridge—of making architectural descriptions of all the buildings in the six-block area closest to the Tulpehocken Train Station in order to put together a successful application to get the area on the National Register of Historic Places. It now has the official designation: Tulpehocken Station Historic District.
Important projects in the years 2007-2017 have been the Save the Tulpehocken Station fundraising campaign; cleaning up the train station grounds; and then installing and maintaining there a garden that contains a small fruit orchard, native trees and shrubbery, and a native pollinator garden. More information is available on our Tulpehocken Station Garden Page.
Over the years our means of connecting has changed. Beginning approximately 2010 WCGN replaced monthly meetings with three regularly scheduled potluck parties that are open to everyone living in the neighborhood. Towards the end, a brief business meeting is held. This shift has proved to be very successful: the parties are popular and the meetings are productive. (Our fourth official meeting is held on the last Wednesday in March and is not connected to a potluck.)
Other meetings are held as needed. WCGN is a Registered Community Organization (an RCO). In this capacity it receives advance notification of requests to the city’s Zoning Board of Adjustment for zoning variances within its geographic boundaries. Thus, from time to time WCGN, along with other neighborhood RCOs, convenes meetings of near neighbors to consider whether to challenge such requests.
