Olde Stratford Homes for Sale

Living in Olde Stratford

Olde Stratford is the original town — the grid that was here before the rest of Stratford filled in around it. The streets run in a proper block pattern rather than the curves of the postwar subdivisions: the university avenues (Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Vassar, Princeton), Columbia, Central, Union, Grand, Wright, Whitman, Webster, Lafayette and Kirkwood, all laid out off the White Horse Pike. The PATCO station sits at the eastern end of it.

The housing spans seventy-four years, which nothing else in the borough comes close to. Records here start at 1888 and run through 1962 — Victorians from the 1880s and 1890s standing a few blocks from 1930s and 1950s colonials, postwar ranchers, and the occasional early-sixties bi-level filling a leftover lot. Every decade of this town's history is on these streets, and no two blocks read the same.

That range is the whole point. The Victorians are the largest and oldest houses in Stratford — five bedrooms, high ceilings, the original detail where it survived. The Colonials run three and four bedrooms with two to three baths, most of them two stories with basements, and they are the backbone of the neighborhood. Ranch/Ramblers from around 1950 fill in at three bedrooms on a single floor with full basements underneath. Central air is common but not universal, gas heat throughout, public water and public sewer.

Garages are the exception here rather than the rule, which is what you would expect from streets laid out before the car reorganized the American lot. Driveways and street parking are the norm. Lots are deep and rectangular in the way old grids produce, with mature trees and sidewalks on both sides.

Walkability is the real argument for this neighborhood, and in a county where almost nothing is walkable it is worth taking seriously. The PATCO Speedline station is at the edge of the grid — not a drive to Lindenwold, a walk — putting Center City Philadelphia on a direct train. The White Horse Pike is the town's main street and business spine, so the shops, the diner and the library are on foot from most of these blocks. Rowan University's School of Osteopathic Medicine and Jefferson Stratford Hospital form a working medical campus inside the borough, and the physicians, residents and staff who want a short commute end up on these streets specifically.

Condition varies more here than anywhere else in Stratford, and it has to — a house built in 1888 and a house built in 1962 do not age the same way. Some have been restored carefully; others need work; a few have been updated in ways that fought the original architecture rather than working with it. That spread is most of the price range, and it rewards a buyer who looks at each house on its own terms rather than at the neighborhood average.

Students attend the Stratford Borough schools through eighth grade — Parkview Elementary and Samuel S. Yellin School — and continue to regional Sterling High School. Buyers looking here should also see Laurel Mill Farms and Stratford Estates for postwar construction on curved streets, and single-story ranch homes if one floor is the requirement. For where these have actually been landing, see recently sold homes.