The "E" street in the Narberth Park development.
Essex Avenue appears to have been opened in stages. On the 1889 plan of the Edward Price Estate, it runs from Haverford Ave. to the south boundary of the E. M. Richards property. On Baist's 1893 Atlas of the Properties in the Northwest Suburbs of Philadelphia, it has been extended to Sabine. By the 1895 incoporporation map of the new borough of Narberth, it has reached it current length, to Montgomery Ave.
Its curve north of Sabine roughly shadows the path of the 1834 Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad, vacated in the 1850s, whose contours are still visible on the 1889 Price plan. But more likely, the route bends around F. M. Justice's 1889 property line.
Belmar’s Main Street
In 1890 the newly formed Elm Land Improvement Co. acquired 14 acres of the Edward Price Estate north of the E. M. Richards property, mostly between Essex and Dudley Avenues. This development was dubbed Belmar, "back of Elm", by the Public Ledger of November 13, 1890. Instead of the 2–4-acre lots required by Price, they subdivided into 50 by 125-foot parcels. Two exceptions were plots sold to the Lower Merion School District for what would become Narberth Public School, and a corner lot on which the Methodists would build their church.
