gned cast-iron road
sign; instead of the unsightly wooden ones, cast-iron automobile
warnings were placed at every dangerous spot; community
bulletin-boards, to supplant the display of notices on trees and poles,
were placed at the railroad station; litter-cans were distributed over
the entire community; a new railroad station and post-office were
secured; the station grounds were laid out as a garden by a landscape
architect; new roads of permanent construction, from curb to curb, were
laid down; uniform tree-planting along the roads was introduced;
bird-houses were made and sold, so as to attract bird-life to the
community; toll-gates were abolished along the two main arteries of
travel; the removal of all telegraph and telephone poles was begun; an
efficient Boy Scout troop was organized, and an American Legion post;
the automobile speed limit was reduced from twenty-four to fifteen
miles as a protection to children; roads were regularly swept, cleaned,
and oiled, and uniform sidewalks advocated and secured.

Within seven years so efficiently had the Association functioned that
its work attracted attention far beyond the immediate neighborhood of
Philadelphia, and caused Theodore Roosevelt voluntarily to select it as
a subject for a special magazine article in which he declared it to
"stand as a model in civic matters." To-day it may be conservatively
said of The Merion Civic Association that it is pointed out as one of
the most successful suburban civic efforts in the country; as Doctor
Lyman Abbott said in _The Outlook_, it has made "Merion a model suburb,
which may standardize ideal suburban life, certainly for Philadelphia,
possibly for the United States."

When the armistice was signed in November, 1918, the Association
immediately canvassed the neighborhood to erect a suitable Tribute
House, as a memorial to the eighty-three Merion boys who had gone into
the Great War: a public building which would comprise a community
centre, with an American Legion Post room, a Boy Scout house, an
auditorium, and a meeting-place for the civic activities of Merion. A
subscription was raised, and plans were already drawn for the Tribute
House, when Mr. Eldridge R. Johnson, president of the Victor Talking
Machine Company, one of the strong supporters of The Merion Civic
Association, presented his entire estate of twelve acres, the finest in
Merion, to the community, and agreed to build a Tribute House at his
own expense. Th