Farmhouse

Montgomery Township supervisors once jokingly referred to Thomas O. Witthauer's restoration of the Lower State Road farmhouse as "the waiver property. " The township Zoning Hearing Board Tuesday night ruled that Witthauer - who has been before the board at least nine times - deserved some more help. Voting 3-0, the board decided to amend a ruling from last spring. The change would allow Witthauer to sublet five rooms of the 22-room, three-story building as one-person offices for a three-year period.

The modest farmhouse of a peace-loving Quaker family figured in one of the great battles of the American Revolution. That farmhouse will reopen this weekend after a three-year restoration project. Ceremonies marking the reopening of the Gideon Gilpin House are scheduled for tomorrow and Saturday, said Gayle Bartell, education coordinator for Brandywine Battlefield Park in Chadds Ford. The Gilpin House, popularly called Lafayette's Quarters, was built in 1745. The young Marquis de Lafayette, an aide to Gen. George Washington, is believed to have stayed at the house on the night before the Battle of the Brandywine, fought on Sept.

The Lumberton Township Planning Board last week denied a revised site plan for a proposed Route 38 strip center, leaving uncertain the fate of the former Jones farmhouse on the site. Heated discussions on whether the 180-year-old farmhouse should be torn down to accommodate the strip center, as developer Maple Grove Associates wants, or restored, as the Lumberton Historical Commission proposes, have dominated the last four meetings of the Planning Board. The issue shows no signs of being resolved.

The tattered frame house of Eagleton Farms near the northernmost point in the township is in danger of losing its nearly two-century-old existence. That is, unless the local historical commission has its way. Developers, who plan to build 78 houses on the 79-acre tract just northwest of the intersection of Stoopville and Eagle Roads, say it would be too expensive to save the old farmhouse. The house, which sits at almost the lowest point of the tract, is the perfect place for the retention basin required by the township, said William J. Carlin, attorney for the Pulte Home Corp.

The home where Al Jones was raised and spent 33 years is the last farmhouse on Route 38 from Camden to Route 206. And soon, it too may be gone. "Once you tear these houses down, that's it," said Doris Priest, referring to the 180-year-old Lumberton farmhouse slated for destruction. The subject is slated when the township Planning Board meets on Feb. 2. On one side are the developers, Maple Grove Associates, which bought the 110-acre farm a year ago and which wants to build a shopping center on the front 11 acres where the former Jones farmhouse now sits.

Over 195 years, the Benjamin Jacobs House on Ship Road has been home to a judge, to farm families and to boarding students from the Church Farm School, which used the house as a dormitory. The house would take on still another identity under plans by Rouse & Associates, which has proposed restoring the structure for use as project headquarters during the development of 1,325 acres adjacent to the Church Farm School. Rouse, which has an agreement to buy the acreage from Church Farm, presented restoration plans for the Jacobs house on Monday during a conditional-use hearing by the West Whiteland Board of Supervisors.

Fascinating murals painted by Charles Demuth and a group of friends in a Lancaster County farmhouse in 1930 are the subject of the autumn exhibit at the Demuth Museum in Lancaster. The display is based on a project that produced a roomful of murals and that, here at the museum, at first glance look like the real thing. This is because, as a life-size photo re-creation, they are meticulously realistic and true to the originals, which are in the private setting of a historic house and cannot be moved.

A 153-year-old Willistown Township farmhouse will probably be the site for professional offices. The township supervisors have granted developer Ed Weingartner conditional use of the farmhouse, at the northeastern corner of West Chester Pike and Garrett Mill Road. Under the conditional-use guidelines, Weingartner is required to seek the supervisors' approval for all changes to the farmhouse. He must also get Chester County's approval for the addition of water-supply systems and sewage facilities.

Preservation efforts in the 1970s saved Washington Township's Old Stone House, one of the municipality's oldest homes. Now residents hope that similar efforts will result in the reopening of the Creese-Quay farmhouse, long closed to the public. The three-story white clapboard house was built in 1825 by John Turner of Turnersville. This section of the town was named after Turner, a Methodist minister, carpenter and prominent landowner, said Bob Gruber, the township's chief park ranger, who is leading restoration efforts.

The architects for the Blue Bell office of Roach Brothers Realtors have won a second award for their redesign of a farmhouse built in 1750. The National Association of Realtors has selected the office as one of the five best real estate office designs in the nation in 1988. The office will be featured in the association's October issue of its trade magazine, Real Estate Today. In February, Roach Brothers and the architects, Ann Capron Architects and Philadelphia Design Company, were given the Planning Merit Award by the Montgomery County Planning Commission for successfully adapting a historic building.

It all began when a friend of a friend joined an after-work gathering attended by Leigh Goldenberg, marketing and public-relations manager of communications for Arden Theatre Company. Conversation meandered at this mini-version of Girls' Night Out, and landed on the unusual job of the friend's friend: She was a producer for Nancy Glass Productions in Bala Cynwyd, which produced content, often home-themed, for cable TV. Goldenberg was all ears. "We always knew that someday we'd redo our kitchen, and the time had come," Goldenberg, 31, says, recalling that fateful conversation.

MINAMI SOMA, Japan - The farmhouse sits at the end of a mud-caked, one-lane road strewn with toppled trees, the decaying carcasses of dead pigs and large debris deposited by the March 11 tsunami. Stranded alone inside the unheated, dark home is Kunio Shiga. He's 75 and cannot walk very far, and doesn't know what happened to his wife. His neighbors have all left because the area is 12 miles from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant - just within the zone where authorities have told everyone to get out because of concerns about leaking radiation.

ELLIOTSBURG, Pa. - Hundreds of mourners, many of them Amish and Mennonite, gathered here to remember the seven young children who perished in a fire that swept through their farmhouse a week ago. Family members and religious leaders recalled the brief lives of the Clouse children, ages nine months to 11 years. Side by side, along the wall of the Perry County Mennonite Reception Center, were seven small white caskets. Fears of a protest by a fundamentalist sect from Kansas went unrealized when members of the Westboro Baptist Church did not show up. Last week, when the sect labeled the parents "God-less" and vowed to protest at the funeral, hundreds of people volunteered to shield mourners from pickets if need be. "Thankfully, they didn't come," said Doran Wray, senior pastor of Church of the Living Christ in Loysville, where the Clouse family worshipped and the children attended weekly Bible classes.

BLAIN, Pa. - Through her picture window, Beth Pasquali saw the flames light up the night sky over Sherman's Valley. It was almost 11 on Tuesday night. She woke her husband and told him the Clouse farmhouse was burning. Inside were seven of the Clouses' eight young children. Their father was making his evening milk-truck run. Their mother was milking cows in the barn, barely 100 feet from the house. Chris Pasquali was racing to pull on his clothes when a loud boom shook this farming community 30 miles west of Harrisburg.

Patrick O'Neill was 17 and a senior at Deptford High School when he was shot to death in October 1975 in the kitchen of his family's white-shingled farmhouse on a rural road just a few hundred yards from the New Jersey Turnpike. Nearly 35 years later, Gloucester County authorities issued a public plea last week for help in cracking the seemingly cold case - and hinted that investigators' initial theory, that O'Neill had been killed after coming home and surprising intruders, may not have been accurate.

It sits back off a country road in Moorestown, and to all outward appearances, it is a quintessentially charming colonial farmhouse. That impression continues in many areas of the home of Dr. David and Lyn Steinberg - but definitely not in all. To the Steinbergs, their home is truly a castle, a medieval European one. "I drove into the driveway and fell in love," says Lyn, who brought David to visit the 1831 farmhouse immediately after seeing...

It sits back off a country road in Moorestown, and to all outward appearances, it is a quintessentially charming colonial farmhouse. That impression continues in many areas of the home of Dr. David and Lyn Steinberg - but definitely not in all. To the Steinbergs, their home is truly a castle, a medieval European one. "I drove into the driveway and fell in love," says Lyn, who brought David to visit the 1831 farmhouse immediately after seeing...

On a warm spring night, Sara and Harry Robbins and their friends from the 80 Percent Old Time Spring Band sit on their gracious porch and play Appalachian mountain music. A melody fills the air, and neighbors, accustomed to these impromptu concerts, wander over to listen. Some bring harmonicas, guitars, fiddles, or mandolins and join in. Some just bring their children. It's a scene repeated on many a pleasant evening on this quiet street in West Mount Airy. "I've lived a lot of places," said Harry Robbins, "but this is the best neighborhood I have ever lived in. " For Harry and Sara Robbins, music and the outdoors have as much to do with their home life as the antiques that fill their rooms.

When Maria Hasenecz sees a mess, she doesn't see chaos; she sees possibilities. The daughter of a builder, she watched her mother move into house after house surrounded by dirt piles, and she tagged along with her father to job-site inspections. The turmoil of a house (or a garden) under construction never scared her. Quite the opposite. Eleven years ago, when Maria and her husband, George, outgrew their Center City house, they headed for Wyndmoor to find more space - especially room where she could throw herself into her gardening.