In 1946, West Chester Pike was a two-lane country road, with lots of empty space between the villages of Llanerch, Havertown, Broomall and Newtown Square. Tim McCarthy, newly discharged from the Marines, saw an opportunity. New homes were being built in Marple and Newtown, and that meant more traffic on the Pike. He secured a piece of land near Smith’s sawmill, where the Pike crosses Darby Creek and opened up Tim’s Inn.
From his home at 33 Fairlamb Ave in Havertown, Tim could walk down the road to his “Inn” – really a roadside hamburger stand. Locals remembered it as a place to get a good burger and milkshake. In the days before “fast food,” this was as fast as it got – you sat at the counter, Tim greeted you and cooked your burger and made your milkshake to order.
The business thrived. The rise of the suburbs meant more teenagers with money in their pockets needing a place to take their dates. There were challenges to running the business. In 1951, Tim and a young assistant were robbed at gunpoint, the thieves taking the cash from their wallets – while overlooking the cash drawer. In 1954, a short circuit led to a fire and the Broomall Fire Company put the fire out by pumping water from Darby Creek. A local stolen car ring started using a nearby field to strip the cars – and several of the thieves were arrested in Tim’s parking lot. Suburban growth led to zoning laws; Tim’s Inn should have been grandfathered in, but Tim sought a zoning change. Several other luncheonettes had sprung up nearby – The Thunderbird, Moore’s Luncheonette – and plans were announced to widen West Chester Pike to four lanes. Tim’s business sense told him it was time to move on. Tim’s Inn closed in 1957.
Tim simply moved further west, opening up Tim’s Dairy Bar in Newtown Square, which generated the money to build a beautiful new banquet facility, The Timbers, which became the place for fine dining in Newtown in the 1960s. In 1971, Tim moved further west, taking over the Dilworthtown Inn, where he spent “a fortune” to get the approvals to renovate and restore it as a fine dining restaurant, offering French cuisine in a colonial setting to a clientele he identified as sophisticated and “upper class.” A far cry from his first customers at the Inn. Tim passed away in 1991.
For more on the history of Marple, visit the Marple Historical Society website and Facebook page, and join the Society to keep up to date on coming events: www.MarpleHistoricalSociety.org.
