Merion Cricket Club

Frank Furness's astonishing crimson building on its perfect carpet of lawn tennis courts is the quintessential Main Line landmark. The stone walls surrounding the grounds date from the original club, which the architects created in 1892 by joining two existing houses; that clubhouse burned to the ground and was rebuilt along the present lines in 1895, but it too burned and was rebuilt in 1896. The brilliant red brick walls and rough-textured terra-cotta of the porch columns are similar to Furness's palette of materials for the Horace Jayne house (1895; PH98) in Philadelphia, but the skewed colonial references link it to the earlier cricket club by McKim, Mead and White for the Manheim Cricket Club of 1890–1891 in Philadelphia's Germantown. The interior has suffered a number of indignities as tasteful Colonial Revival has replaced Furness's original detail. The unfortunate modern metal windows finished in a nonhistoric green fail to duplicate the original warm autumnal yellow paint colors that complemented the reds of the terra-cotta and brick. Allen Evans was an ardent cricketer and served as president of the club in its early years. Presumably this building reflects his hand—as did the 1880s pavilion which once stood in Ardmore. Evans was also responsible for the nearby St. Mary's Episcopal Church of 1887 on Ardmore Avenue.

In the immediate vicinity of the club were half-a-dozen important houses by Furness and Evans including several houses for the Evans family as well as the alteration to the home (demolished) of Alexander J. Cassatt, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad and brother of artist Mary Cassatt, who is memorialized in a handsome bas-relief at the Grays Lane Corner of the Cricket Club, and in a handsome plaque on the north aisle of the Church of the Redeemer in Bryn Mawr ( MO10).