We sometimes get too focused on Hohenadel House and forget that Indian Queen Lane is probably the single most architecturally diverse street in East Falls, if not Philadelphia, with Gothic, Greek Revival, Federal, and Italianate houses interspersed among classic rowhomes. It’s one of the oldest roads in Pennsylvania, first appearing on maps in 1692 when it was the main trail from the Falls of Schuylkill to Philadelphia. This former Native...
Yep, just when we were digging for more details about the Indian Queen Lane house, we find a whole ‘nother Hohenadel House. A few blocks north, the Timmons House was John William Hohenadel's last residence in East Falls, a spacious colonial revival mansion now serving as an events & reception hall on the grounds of William Penn Charter School. Built in the early 1900's by Henry Waterston Brown, the house sits on The Oak Road, a tiny lane...
"I always thought if I win the lottery, I am going to restore the mansion and make it a bed and breakfast. Thank you thank you thank you for restoring this house." -- East Falls resident regarding Hohenadel House "Sometimes when I can’t sleep, I’ll take a memory tour of the house in my head….sooo many sleepovers and great times there." -- Kellie Flanagan Carroll (next door neighbor to Hohenadel House 1978 - 2003) Why would anyone want to...
Keeping your Hohenadels (and their breweries) straight when you dig into historical records can be a bit confusing. The family had a thing for naming their sons John, though not all were in the brewing business. One was a successful machinist who turned down a chance to run the family brewery when his father, the Reverend John Hohenadel, died. That opened the way for a relative, probably a cousin, John William Hohenadel, to take over the brewery...
July 3rd through August 11: The "dog days" of summer. These sticky, stagnant couple of weeks when the weather seems aggressively hot. Greenery takes on a yellow tinge of drought, the family dog refuses his afternoon walk and humans everywhere hunker down in dark, air conditioned homes...trying to move as little as possible until the sun goes down. For most of us, the dog days are mostly just an inconvenience. But before air-conditioning, hot...
Pity the beer snobs who don’t "get" lager. They think of an entire style of beer as something that comes in 12 packs of aluminum cans with mountains on the label. It’s thin, it’s watery, and it doesn’t punch you in the face with a fistful of hops. For them, ales are where it’s at and always will be. No matter how silly... Funny thing -- ales were once the hip beer in the early 19th century, until a bunch of German immigrants came along...
Tony Gallagher asks a deceptively simple question about when some of the streets in East Falls were renamed. Email to EastFallsHouse.com: Loved your article on East Falls street names. One question I've always had, what year were the street names changed? I'm a fourth generation Fallser and when I lived on Division St. my mother, who was born in 1908, always referred to Conrad St. as 35th St., Vaux St., as 34th St. and Henry as 33rd. St. The...
Today's players: Tom (brewer) Lou Farrell (local chef, historian/archaeologist, craft beer judge, and pickle aficionado) Steve Fillmore (writer and beer geek and home brew groupie) Mission: To taste-test the pilot batch to determine if the combination of the cluster and noble hops evokes the flavor of a historic 19th century maibock beer -and- to make as much yeast as possible for the Hohenadel throwback lager. Notes: We’d be lying if we said...
The pilot batch tasting is this Saturday! After a couple weeks in Tom’s basement, we’re ready to sample the Maibock beer he made last month, to see if cluster hops produce the desired citrusy flavor (which can also, in certain beers, have hints of tropical fruit essences). Tom’s also hoping for a light and crisp body, but at this early stage of the game, the primary goal is to just “avoid beer that tastes like the first Rheingold you had...
Old houses attract passionate people – especially houses that are falling down and need rescue. Since we’ve been blogging about East Falls’ own fixer upper, we’ve encountered all kinds of other history nuts who’ve been thrilled to open their collections and share everything they know, including crazy theories, alternate histories, and dream scenarios. But they’ve also provided wonderful insights about the history of their found...
