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.
In the spring of 1923, Augustus Hake and Harry Ebert laid out the streets of Springdale for the Yorktown Land Company, the company Grier Hersh had formed with them and William Dodson to develop his family’s land. The city engineer, Robert B. McKinnon, drew the plan. York’s City Planning Commission approved it on 5 September 1923.
Most of the streets running north and south were simply extensions of city streets that already existed, and they kept their names. The new ones were named for the Hersh family and for the company’s circle.
Newlin Road remembers Nathaniel Newlin, an ancestor of Grier Hersh. Merion Road is named for Merion, Pennsylvania, which a distant relative, Roland Ellis, helped establish. Arrow Alley is named for an arrowhead that Hersh’s daughters found there.
Kain Alley is for George Hay Kain, a prominent York attorney of the 1920s, who lived at 45 East Springettsbury Avenue, in a house designed for him by his friend Edward Leber. Rodgers Alley is for Charles L. Rodgers, secretary of the Yorktown Land Company. Hart Alley and Cadot Alley are named for other associates.
Lombardy Alley, the neighborhood’s northern boundary, is the exception: it isn’t named for anybody. In the 1920s, Lombardy poplars lined both sides of it from Court Alley to Duke Street.
East Springettsbury Avenue, the first street here to be built up, was known at first as Springettsbury Place.
One more thing the plan explains. Stand at Newlin Road and look along any cross street: west of Newlin the grid lines up with George Street, and east of it the grid lines up with Queen Street. The two alignments meet in the middle, which is why East Springettsbury Avenue and Arlington, Merion and Springdale Roads all bend as they cross the neighborhood. Newlin and Rathton curve more than that, following the lie of the land.