Families began moving to Haverford from the city during the hot summers. In 1872 Dr. Edmund Cadwallader Evans purchased one hundred acres and built a house at the end of what is now Evans Lane. The following year Alexander J. Cassatt (1839-1906) bought fifty-six of these acres, which stretched from the railroad down Grays Lane and over to the present Cheswold Lane. He engaged the firm of Furness and Evans to design a huge mansion for him and his growing family and named his estate Cheswold. Only the gatehouse still stands.

When Alexander Cassatt began his residence in Haverford he was general superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Many other railroad executives followed his lead and built large homes, increased by the developing railroad and the easy commuting to the city.

Alexander Cassatt, running on the Democratic ticket in the heavily Republican suburb, was elected a township supervisor in 1882 and served until 1898. The leadership qualities that brought about his presidency of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1899 had been freely used in the interest of the township. "Within a few years, the township under his guidance had the finest system of macadamized roads in the nation...Believing the best materials were an economy in the long run, he insisted on granite curbstones and sturdy street signs, saving Lower Merion taxpayers a tidy sum, for those curbstones and street signs are still in use" (Patricia Talbot Davis, The End of the Line: Alexander J. Cassatt and The Pennsylvania Railroad 1978, p. 99).

Of Cassatt's service to Lower Merion, Allen Evans, the noted architect, remarked in his journal: "As a simple token of the appreciation of his friends and the citizens of Lower Merion Township for the great work of neighborhood welfare by Mr. Cassatt, a bronze tablet was erected in 1910 on the Marion Cricket Club wall, at the comer of Grays Lane and Montgomery Avenue, setting forth the work that he had done for the countryside" ("Notes on the Main Line," pp. 35-36). The bas relief, taken from a photograph of Cassatt on his horse as he appeared riding around the township looking after the roads, was the work of a talented young sculptor, Karl Bitter.

Alien Evans designed the Haverford Station. The Haverford Civic Association has decided to restore the station, which was damaged by fire in 1978. The civic association is seeking its designation as a historic landmark and has started its project by cleaning the interior walls, which were covered with graffiti.

Another leading citizen who settled in Haverford was Clement A. Griscom, a shipbuilder who became president of the international Navigation Company. He shared an ancestor with Betsy Ross, whose maiden name was Griscom. He bought sixty-two acres across Grays Lane from Dr. Evans and Alexander Cassatt, and named his estate Dolobran, the name of a family seat in Wales. The house, located on Laurel Lane and in 1980 owned by John Griffiths, was designed by the architects Furness and Evans and built in 1891.

Two notable Haverford citizens Lived on Booth Lane in their later years. Catherine Drinker Bowen, distinguished biographer, wrote several books there. Dr. Harold Fender, an outstanding electrical engineer and author of Fender's Handbook for Engineers (1914), lived there until his death at eighty in 1959. In 1903 Dr. Fender proved to French scientists the presence of a magnetic field around a rapidly rotating statically charged disc.

Mrs. Moreau D. Brown, winner of the Gimbel Award in 1974, was recognized as the founder of the Antiques Show held annually to benefit the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. Also notable was a mother in Haverford, the late Frances Conrad (Mrs. J. Weir) Sargent, who waited by her television in Haverford in 1965, as did millions of other Americans, to watch her son "Pete" (Charles) Conrad on the Gemini 5 spacecraft.

Catherine H. Dixon Sharpe bequeathed her home and a 2 1/2 acre property at Montgomery Avenue and Haverford Station Road to the township for a bird sanctuary. In 1978 her house was razed, and fencing and trails for walking through the wooded area were added.