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Wayne and Vicinity

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Lancaster Avenue is Wayne's main street and in the past few years has become a thriving commercial district in the center of what Wayne native and journalist David Brooks, in Bobos in Paradise (2000), tells us is a “Latte-town.” The town center developed near the train station and is the site of the major churches, the most significant of which was the Wayne Presbyterian Church at 125 E. Lancaster Avenue (1892, John Fraser and Son) that was savagely mauled in the 1990s by George Yu, who added the shopping mall–like arcade across the front. Across Lancaster Avenue at Louella Avenue is St. Mary's Protestant Episcopal Church (1889) with its round stair tower accenting the great stone belfry, one of Wilson Brothers’ most historicizing architectural works. The exterior is very much as originally designed, but the interior was rebuilt with modern laminated wood beams after a disastrous fire. Most of Wayne's commercial buildings are the typical modest brick structures of the regional village, but the cast-stone Wayne Theater (c. 1928; 109 W. Lancaster Avenue), a handsome Art Deco commercial building, is rivaled by the contemporary terra-cotta tile–skinned Anthony Wayne Buick and Ford automobile dealership (325 E. Lancaster Avenue).

Writing Credits

Author: 
George E. Thomas

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