Throwback Thursday: The Township Building
From Grain Farm to Arts Hub, This Space Has Been Inspiring People for Over 100 Years
Setting the Scene
Visitors to 1645 Art School Road in the Village of Yellow Springs today will be met with a large, off-white building. A sign out front identifies it as the West Pikeland Township building and proclaims the presence of the SALT Theater.
Beyond the Township Building’s small courtyard and across a small parking lot, visitors will notice the West Pikeland Police Department. It is situated in what was once an old chicken coop.
At first glance, it looks settled and simple. Beyond what we can see today, though, these walls hold older lives close to the surface. Beneath that pale paint sits a place that has changed with the times, but never drifted far from art, labor, and performance. This building has worn many names and many purposes, and each one left a mark.
The past here keeps working quietly underneath, like a sketch that shows through a finished canvas. We are not looking at one story here- we are looking at a whole stack of them.
Before the Barn Grew Roots
The Settling of Yellow Springs
Long before the barn rose here, this land belonged to the Lenni-Lenape, whose ancestors used it since at least around 3500 BCE. Their presence still speaks through projectile points found on the property of Historic Yellow Springs.
In 1681, King Charles II granted William Penn the land that became Pennsylvania to repay a debt owed to Penn’s father, Admiral Sir William Penn. That grant included what we now know as Pikeland, the township that holds Yellow Springs.
Then, in 1682, Quaker leaders hoped Pennsylvania and New Jersey would create a wide region where Friends could govern themselves with religious freedom. William Penn and eleven other Quakers purchased East New Jersey after George Carteret’s death, and the group later divided ownership among twenty-four proprietors.
Also in 1682, Dr. Daniel Coxe became one of those proprietors. He was one of the few owners who was not a Quaker.
By the 1680s, Dr. Daniel Coxe, Sir Matthias Vincent, and Major Robert Thompson became the original landowners whose properties later formed Vincent and Pikeland Townships.
Springs, Roads, and a Rising Village
During the 1700s, European settlers, especially German immigrants, began living on this land more permanently. In 1705, William Penn granted more than 30,000 acres to Matthias Vincent, who then leased over 10,000 acres known as “Pikeland” to Joseph Pike.
By 1721, the “Iron Springs” of modern-day Yellow Springs appeared on a map of the Township of Pikeland by Isaac Taylor. A year later, the American Weekly Mercury reported a letter from New York describing a mineral spring in the Great Valley about 30 miles from Philadelphia. That spring would later be known as “Yellow Springs.”
For a time, it remains unclear what the current site of the Township Building was used for. Even so, settlement began forming around the Yellow Springs tavern, which operated as an early colonial spa.
On May 5th, 1763, Sheriff John Fairlamb advertised the sale of the Yellow Springs Plantation and Tavern previously owned by James Martin. The notice suggests the sale may have covered only half the property, though this remains unclear. Even so, stage wagons from Philadelphia continued running on May 19th, 1763, bringing visitors and goods to the spa, and the tavern remained active until the Revolutionary War.
War Came Calling
During the Revolution, Yellow Springs stood as a working plantation owned by Dr. Samuel Kennedy and his wife, Sarah Ruston Kennedy. The village also saw important visitors, including General George Washington and Alexander Hamilton.
On September 11th, 1777, the Battle of Brandywine sent wounded and retreating soldiers through the region. In its aftermath, fleeing troops found shelter and care in the homes of immigrant farmers near Yellow Springs. Even earlier, in 1776, a Hessian soldier passing through recorded “Rebel Hospitals” operating out of barns in Yellow Springs. While we cannot currently identify those exact barns, the account shows that medical care had already begun shaping the village.
Just days later, the Battle of the Clouds in Frazer collapsed under a nor’easter. The American army then marched to Yellow Springs and camped in heavy rain. George Washington stayed at the tavern, while roughly 11,000 soldiers encamped across the property. Though unconfirmed, troops likely camped where the Township Building now stands.
Between 1777 and 1781, the Yellow Springs property became a major Continental Army hospital complex. Washington Hall rose between 1777 and 1778 as both a general hospital and the headquarters of the Hospital Department. Around it, several barn-based “rebel” hospitals operated as flying hospitals, and the site also supported the supply depot for the Middle Department’s medical network. Although the Township Building does not appear directly in the records for this period, the entire landscape reflects that wartime medical presence.
After the war, in 1783, Captain Alexander McCaraher, a close friend of the Kennedy family, reopened the tavern at Yellow Springs, now the Brick Room of the Washington Building, and restored “the baths and bath houses.”
From Spa to Selling Point
After the war, ownership and ambition continued to shift. In 1789, an auction sold all of Pikeland Township, East and West, to settle the debts of Andrew Allen to Samuel Hoare. At that time, 115 terre tenants held land in the area, and the sale transferred their properties to new owners. This included the Yellow Springs plantation and all of its land.
Still, the story did not end there. After the Revolutionary War, Yellow Springs entered a second spa era. Figures such as Mrs. Margaret Holman, Colonel James Bones, and Dr. George Lingen helped shape this period. They drove business rivalries, hosted elegant gatherings, and welcomed well-known visitors who defined the region’s social life for nearly a century.
By 1810, Yellow Springs appeared in The Portfolio, a national magazine. Around the same time, Colonel Bones, who had owned a large portion of the village since 1806, tried to sell his holdings at auction under the name “Town of Bath.” The sale failed, and buyers purchased fewer than half of the advertised lots.
Even so, the spa continued to attract visitors. Ownership passed between Bones, Holman, Lingen, and others, but the resort kept growing its reputation as a place of rest and luxury. Guests from Philadelphia and beyond came for both health and leisure. During this second spa era, notable visitors included Jenny Lind, Fanny Kemble, P.T. Barnum, and Chang and Eng Bunker.
The Large Barn Rises
For the Township Building specifically, the original structure, known (for now) as the Large Barn, first took shape here. Builders constructed it in 1845 as a barn for a large farm at the eastern edge of Yellow Springs Village.
In 1867, Yellow Springs entered its final season as a resort. That year, A. U. Snyder, Esq. owned and operated the village and Washington Hall, and guests still stayed at the hotel. After that summer ended, the resort era closed for good. The Civil War had already disrupted travel and tourism, and Yellow Springs no longer welcomed the stream of debutantes, actors, and circus figures who once visited.
Soon after, the property shifted into a new public role. From 1868 to 1912, Yellow Springs operated as the Pennsylvania Soldiers’ Orphan School. This change reshaped the village again, but it kept the grounds active with daily routines, structured life, and the voices of children living and learning here.
When PAFA Heard the Light
After 1916 and until 1952, the Village of Yellow Springs belonged to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA) as a summertime painting and sculpture colony. PAFA itself, founded in 1805 in Philadelphia, stands as the first and oldest art museum and school in the United States.
In the 1920s, as student admissions rose, the Academy purchased a 100-acre chicken and grain farm beside the school property and remodeled the barn into a modern sculpture studio. This building became one of the most visible signs of the Country School’s success.
To celebrated sculptor Angelo Frudakis, who attended PAFA’s Summer School in 1940 and 1946, Yellow Springs was a “Shangri-la”, and “the Sculpture Barn was like a cathedral, with great north light–the three-dimensional lighting that you needed.”
Frudakis later became known for public sculptures in Philadelphia, including “The Signer” at 5th and Market Streets.
The Sculptors’ Studio soon became the domain of Albert Laessle and later his student, Charles Rudy. Outside, the models stood in the “corral” in front of the barn.
The Evening Bulletin Philadelphia, on August 12, 1939, described them as “the temperamental goats, Nip and Tuck, the bad-tempered ducks, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, and horses, cows, and pigs”.
Grace Russell Raymond may have painted this vibrant watercolor from the balcony of the Sculptors Studio, looking across the meadow to the Crystal Diamond Spring.
Reels, Rehearsals, and New Acts
Good News Productions
In 1952, PAFA sold the property to Good News Productions, a faith-based film company headquartered in the historic village from 1952 to 1974. Run by filmmaker Irvin Shortess “Shorty” Yeaworth Jr., the studio transformed the sculpture barn into a theater and used it as Studio C for movie making. Production lighting went in, sound stages followed, and the chicken house became a prop shop.
That era brought the cult classic film THE BLOB, starring Steve McQueen in the role that launched his career. Good News also produced more than 400 Christian-themed films, along with television and radio programs, before it closed in 1974.
The Yellow Springs Association and the People’s Light and Theatre
Historic Yellow Springs, then the Yellow Springs Association formed in 1965 and headed by Connie Fraley, purchased the entire village in 1974 and began renovations. The barn then opened its doors to People’s Light and Theatre, which produced plays here until moving to its current site on Rt. 401 in Malvern.
People’s Light began in 1973 when Dick Keeler, Ken Marini, Megan Fruchter, and Danny Fruchter left Hedgerow Theatre to start a new theater company. They first performed in a historic mill in East Bradford Township. In 1976, the company moved some of its productions to the Center for the Performing Arts at Yellow Springs, in the Township Building. They made this move to give more people the chance to attend performances.
Their first Yellow Springs production was Mother Courage and Her Children. For three years, the theater brought live performances to the Yellow Springs community before moving to Malvern in 1979. During its time in Yellow Springs, People’s Light added to the area’s long history as a place for learning, culture, and the arts.
The Yellow Springs Institute
The New York Public Library Archives hosts a collection on The Yellow Springs Institute. You can view the index here. The information below comes from materials available in that online archive.
In 1975, the Yellow Springs Fellowship for the Arts, later Yellow Springs Institute for Contemporary Studies and the Arts, was founded to “establish an interdisciplinary laboratory for creative individuals whose work interprets aspects of contemporary experience, encourage creation of works that expand artistic boundaries, enlarge cultural understanding, and employ art and artists in the life of communities.” John A. Clauser, an architect, served as founding director for the Institute’s entire life.
Residencies ran from one to three weeks between mid-May and October. Performing and visual artists received room, board, and a stipend to develop unproduced works, then showed a work-in-progress performance before an audience. At its height, the Institute received more than three hundred applications from troupes and individuals from around the world, and it accepted sixteen.
Late in the 1970s, the physical facilities took shape, including a two-story performance facility with an amphitheater. People knew this outdoor experimental space as the Earthwork. In 1990, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation funded the conference center complex.
Among the most notable programs were Six Saturdays: Explorations in Six Archetypal Themes in 1980, with workshops by mythology scholar Joseph Campbell and poet Robert Bly. Ages Apart in 1982 explored cultural transformation and change, also with Robert Bly. ACCIONES in 1989 focused on the cultural realities and concerns of Latino interdisciplinary artists from the two Americas.
Artists on the cutting edge came through too. Ping Chong and Company appeared in 1990. Mabou Mines came in 1993. Morton Subotnick worked here in 1992. Ridge Theater came in 1991, Shaliko Company in 1989, Holly Hughes in 1992, John Kelly in 1992, Pauline Oliveros in 1983 and 1991, Orchestra of Our Time in 1980, the Philadelphia Trio, Relâche, Kei Takei in 1980, Joan Lombardi in 1983, and Toby Vann in 1991.
Drastic cuts in government funding in the late 1990s forced the sale of the Institute’s fifteen-acre site. In 1997, Historic Yellow Springs, Inc. purchased the Institute’s buildings and land.
To Us, Today
In 2005, Historic Yellow Springs sold the property to West Pikeland Township. Since then, the township offices have lived here, along with a meeting room, and the black box theater has remained leased by SALT Theatre.
That makes this building more than an office. It makes it part of a long line of spaces that welcomed gathering, making, rehearsing, teaching, filming, and performing. Yellow Springs has never treated art as an afterthought. The land has carried it again and again, from PAFA’s sculpture studio, to Good News Productions, to People’s Light and Theatre, to the Yellow Springs Institute, and now to SALT Theater.
Today, Historic Yellow Springs stewards this village as a community center, a place for art classes, and a keeper of historic structures. That work matters because the Township Building reminds us that the arts did not arrive here recently. They have lived here for generations, changing shape as the village changed.
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Works Cited
People’s Light and Theatre Company Records, 1972-2021. The New York Public Library Archives & Manuscripts. Accessed July 2, 2026. https://archives.nypl.org/the/21747.
“People’s Light and Theatre Company.” Wikipedia. Last modified as of the version accessed July 2, 2026. Accessed July 2, 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Light_and_Theatre_Company.
Moore Archives Resources at Historic Yellow Springs