York,
Pennsylvania
Our historySince 1823

It begins in 1823.

Not the neighborhood; that came a century later. What began in 1823 was a summer house, a spring, and a family. What follows is the estate becoming a place, told from the association's own history and the National Register record.

  1. 1823Charles A. Barnitz buys ten acres along the turnpike for a summer home.
  2. 1837James and Jane (Barnitz) Lewis move to Springdale.
  3. 1863Margaret Jane Lewis Hersh adds the Johnson farm; Grier Hersh is born.
  4. 1868Samuel Hersh adds the Gotwalt farm, the future site of York Hospital.
  5. c.1888Grier Hersh builds the carriage house that still stands.
  6. 1894York County's first golf course is laid out on the estate.
  7. 1920sThe estate is platted; Springdale is planned as a neighborhood.
  8. 1930sThe neighborhood's largest decade of house-building.
  9. 1954The Hersh mansion is demolished.
  10. 1977The Springdale Neighborhood Association is organized.
  11. 2001Springdale is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Engraved portrait of Charles A. Barnitz above his signature

1823: A summer place along the turnpike

Charles A. Barnitz, a York attorney who served in the Pennsylvania Senate and the U.S. Congress, bought ten acres east of the York and Baltimore Turnpike for a summer home. The house was ready in 1828.

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Pen-and-ink drawing of a large house with columns, striped awnings, and climbing vines behind old trees, a dog in the foreground

The Lewis and Hersh years

Through a run of early deaths the estate passed to a five-year-old heiress, then to the Hersh family, who grew it to some 400 acres and gave it a golf course, an octagonal ballroom, and a carriage house that still stands.

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Pen-and-ink drawing of a peacock with its tail fanned

Peacock Hall and the Continental Congress

The farm added to Springdale in 1863 had been the summer place of James Smith, York's signer of the Declaration of Independence. Its farmhouse was called Peacock Hall, and tradition says Smith entertained members of the Continental Congress there.

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Pen-and-ink drawing, printed in orange and brown, of a large stucco house with a steep slate tower, striped awnings, and climbing vines

Candlelit croquet and an octagonal ballroom

Under Grier and Julia Hersh, Springdale was a center of York's social life: some forty rooms, a ballroom that seemed octagonal, an orchestra that played until the last dancer left, and croquet by candlelight.

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Pen-and-ink drawing of the Springdale carriage house, with its cupola, seen through bare winter trees

From estate to neighborhood

At its largest the Hersh property ran to roughly 400 acres. Beginning in the 1920s it was platted into building lots; the houses that define Springdale rose mostly between 1920 and 1950, with the 1930s the busiest decade.

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How the streets got their names

Newlin for an ancestor, Merion for a town on the Main Line, Arrow Alley for an arrowhead the Hersh daughters found, and Lombardy Alley for a row of poplars that are no longer there.

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1975: The neighbors organize

When York rewrote its zoning ordinance in 1975, residents of the city's south side organized and stopped key Springdale properties from being rezoned for commercial use. The Springdale Neighborhood Association grew out of that effort.

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Two ghost stories

Every old estate should have a ghost story, says the neighborhood's history, and it offers two: a headless settler on Spring Lane, and a face on a bedroom wall at Springdale.

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Architecture of Springdale

Eight styles, several architects, and how to tell them apart on a walk.

Historic district: what it means

What National Register listing does, and does not, mean for your house.

A walk through Springdale

Fifteen stops, about a mile and a quarter, on sidewalks the whole way.

The Springdale Archive

The 1982 booklet, photographs, and how to add yours.

Come and see it.

The best way to know Springdale is to walk it: fifteen stops, about a mile and a quarter.

Take the walking tour