Lost and Found

Written by in the Lost and Found category and the Fall 2004 issue Topics in this article: Brandywine Conservancy, Crawford County, Pimlico, Preakness Stakes, Radnor Hunt Club, Radnor Hunt Races, Shadeland, Smarty Jones
Lost and Found features brief profiles of historic landmarks and structures, one lost and one saved.

Lost

With millions of eyes this past spring on Triple Crown contender Smarty Jones – the three-year-old colt bred in Pennsylvania-it was only natural for many to express interest in the Keystone State’s thoroughbred heritage and equine industry. At its peak a century ago, Shadeland, the Powell Brothers Purebred Stock Fan=rm in Spring Township, Crawford County, was noted worldwide as one of the largest importers and breeders of Clydesdales and trotting roadsters, chiefly used for carriages. The eclectic Queen Anne-style mansion at Shadeland was the centerpiece of a fifteen-hundred-acre operation that consisted of fifty buildings, including its own telegraph office. Named to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983, the circa 1880 mansion – the last vestige of Shadeland – was deliberately burned to the ground by its owner in 1992.

 

Found

The Radnor Hunt Club in Willistown Township, Chester County, is among the oldest of the 171 recognized hunts in the United States. The club, founded in 1883 at the height of the American aristocracy’s fascination with gentleman fanning, foxhunting, and all things equestrian, moved to its present site in 1931. Each spring the club hosts the Radnor Hunt Races – “Racing for Open Space” – to benefit the Brandywine Conservancy’s award-­winning conservation programs. The 2004 race was run the same day Smarty Jones took first place in the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico in Maryland. (The seventy-fifth annual Radnor Hunt Races will be held on Saturday, May 21, 2005.) An excellent example of early rural vernacular architecture, the club­house is testimony to the region’s breeding of horses for both recreation and industry.