Once the East Coast home of billionaire/philanthropist Walter Annenberg and currently the place that Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie calls home, Wynnewood is largely a residential neighborhood but does have some large-scale, readily identifiable sites. Lankenau Hospital, which joins Bryn Mawr and Paoli hospitals in the Main Line Health System, has held down its acreage just off City Avenue since relocating from Philadelphia in the 1950s. Its immediate neighbors are the well-regarded Friends’ Central School, which arrived here a quarter-century earlier, and Green Hill Condominiums, one of the first high-rise residences built in the western suburbs. The imposing grounds and buildings of Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary loom a few blocks to the east, where City Avenue intersects Lancaster Avenue. 

The sizable Wynnewood Shopping Center, notable years ago for John Wanamaker’s flagship suburban store, retains its vitality and distinctive exterior. Additional retail strips, including Wynnewood Square, line Lancaster Avenue.

A half-mile square, the adjacent borough of Narberth is compact and the only Main Line community that does not have a major road running through it. Many Main Line locales like to term themselves “villages,” but Narberth, surrounded on all sides by Lower Merion Township, truly resembles one. Residents walk to the shops, the train station, a “playground” of tennis and basketball courts, and commodious ball fields. Competition here on summer nights is quite keen.

The action began in earnest in the late 19th century, when the growing town of Elm overspread its neighbor, Libertyville, primarily a trading post. “Narberth Park,” the area then slated for development near the train station, seized the focus of evolving Elm, which became a borough and changed its name in 1895.