By DAN SOKIL, staff Writer

Take a look down Lansdale’s Main Street, facing west from Railroad Avenue, and you can see shadows of the past.

Well, maybe not today, but on Oct. 4 the past century of downtown Lansdale will come alive, when the Lansdale Historical Society hosts “Revisiting Historic Downtown Lansdale: A Sunday Stroll Back to an Earlier Time.”


“This is something we thought we’d try in place of our Holiday History Tour, and see how it works out; we wanted to do something with a lot of community involvement and that focuses on Lansdale and the historical aspects of the town,” said LHS President Dick Shearer.

“At first blush, people may look at our downtown and think ‘What’s so historic?’ and in many respects it’s a little bit hard to visualize because so many buildings that were part of Lansdale’s development in the

early years are gone, but there are some that are still there,” he said.

The walking tour, to be held from noon to 4 p.m. on Sunday Oct. 4 (with a rain date of Oct. 11) will be a combination of both old and new, starting with a 15- minute film showing at the Lansdale Center for the Performing Arts.

“The video basically explains how Lansdale came to be: how the railroad coming through here and the junction of trolley lines created Lansdale and made it the center of commerce for this region for more than a hundred years,” Shearer said.

Showings of the video will be held three times each hour, starting at 11:45 a.m. and running through 2:30 p.m.; tickets are required to see the video but get you much more than just a seat in the theater.

“Tickets are $15 per person, and we’ll be selling them at the Performing Arts Center that day, and for the $15 you’ll get to see the video, you’ll get a 40-page tour book we’re putting together, you’ll get a map which will have on one side, a building by building look at the tour route as it appeared in about 1886 and on the other side will be a current map,” Shearer said.

Groups of up to four people can also share one tour book and map, while watching the presentation and walking the tour together, by adding up to three people to their group for $5 each.

The downtown walking tour will replace LHS’ annual Holiday History Tour this year.

“Our volunteers have done that Holiday History Tour for about five years now, and we wanted to give them a chance to enjoy the holidays for themselves this year, while still doing something fun,” he said.

After the video, those who take part can walk the tour route by themselves (Shearer said the route takes about 90 minutes to walk), and LHS volunteers will be stationed at about a dozen points of interest around the borough.

“For example, I’m sure we’ll have somebody in front of the Dresher Arcade building, which a lot of people don’t realize was originally built as a garage back in the 1910s by a gentleman by the name of Dresher,” said Shearer.

“He opened a Dresher Motor Company which sold Buicks, and the walk through in the middle of the building was the entrance into the garage; they’d drive cars in there for servicing until the late 1920s, when the building was converted into what you see there now, which is a really quirky, neat building,” he said.

The tour route will start by heading from the arts center west down Main Street to Towamencin Avenue, cross over Main to come back to Railroad Avenue, head from there down South Broad Street, cross north on Broad to Third Street, take Third west to Walnut Street to the borough’s train station, and end back in the Madison Parking Lot.

You’ll hear stories about buildings long gone, like the Geller Emporium that once stood on the current site of the Lansdale School of Cosmetology.

“Geller’s Brand Emporium, in the last two decades of the 1800s, was Lansdale’s answer to a department store. Mr. Geller sold everything from furniture to coffins, feed for animals, foodstuffs, clothing, you name it and Mr. Jacob Geller would find it for you,” Shearer said.

“Right on the opposite corner where the parking lot is now, next to the Boys & Girls Club was the good old Norwood Hotel, which was one of the oldest hotels in town. It stood right at that intersection where two trolley lines came together, but both were on different scales so they could never merge together,” he said.

And if you know a thing or two about downtown Lansdale’s history, or would just like to help out, plenty of volunteers are needed to help sell tickets, guide tour groups, man the video presentation, act as crossing guards, and much more.

Anyone interested in volunteering can call the Historical Society at (215) 855-1872 or visit www.LansdaleHistory.org. An organizational meeting for volunteers is tentatively scheduled for Sept. 26.

“If anybody needs more information, call us and we’ll be happy to fill you in. This is something we’ve wanted to try for a while, and if it doesn’t work we won’t do it again, but if it does work then there may be other similar types of tours we can do, of homes and other things in town, in the future,” Shearer said.