George William Childs - Other Ventures

Other Ventures

Close friends with Anthony Drexel for more than 40 years, Childs served as the second President of the Board of Trustees of Drexel University, succeeding the founder.

In 1880 Childs and Drexel purchased 300 acres (1.2 km2) west of Philadelphia along the tracks of the Pennsylvania Railroad, an area which was to become known as the Pennsylvania Main Line, from banker J.H. Askin. The two laid out roads, public utilities, community amenities, churches, and building lots to create "Wayne Estate", later the unincorporated community of Wayne, Pennsylvania, an early example of a planned community.

The suburban village known as Wayne, on the Pennsylvania Railroad, fourteen miles from Philadelphia, differs so much from the ordinary town allowed to grow up hap-hazard and to develop conveniences as population increases, that it is necessary, in describing it as it appears, to keep in mind some facts about its history. Wayne is not an accidental aggregation of cottages; it is a town built by design, and provided at the start with all the conveniences to which residents of cities are accustomed and which they are so apt to miss and long for when they go into the country or even into the suburbs of a great city. The scheme of the town was well thought out and planned before any of the new cottages were built, and, as it was undertaken by liberal gentlemen of abundant means, no expense was spared in the preliminary municipal work.