Tennis Court

Just behind the water tower, you’ll see what remains of two grass tennis courts, with lowered ground bordered by brick walls and pillars. These courts provided year-round entertainment for the Foerderer family: In the winter months, they flooded the area for ice skating.

You might notice that the ground here is a little wet. Before this feature was a tennis court or an ice-skating rink, it was actually a holding place for water that would be pumped up into the adjacent water tower. A valved pipe allowed water from the Poquessing creek to flow into the “courts” directly.

Across the creek, you’ll see an apartment complex, which was built on land that was once part of another endeavor at Glen Foerd: the gentleman’s dairy farm. Glen Foerd’s Foerderer family was deeply enthusiastic about business and product performance, as were their in-laws, the Tonners. Glen Foerd Farms was the brainchild of William Tonner, husband of Florence Foerderer Tonner. The claim to fame for the farm was its award-winning Ayrshire cattle.

Glen Foerd might have become the site of a similar apartment complex itself without the hard work of neighbors who fought to save it in the 1980s. When the estate was threatened by development, a grassroots group came together to transfer the land and its assets to the city of Philadelphia, and establish the nonprofit that stewards Glen Foerd today.