Builders like the Muzantes, Barry, Braunstein and Rigg followed a time-tested formula to build "nice dwellings of moderate size with modern conveniences for working men." Arranged in rows or twos, they were built of brick on a stone foundation with a full basement, six rooms, and an outhouse. The Muzantes estimated the cost of their houses at $1,500 each, and rented them for $2.50 per week which was the equivalent of $130 per year, a 6% return on their investment. The demand was so great that houses were frequently rented as soon as they were completed, and as late as 1907, real estate investors like Plummer Jefferis still thought there was a demand for more low cost housing. -- from Chapter 5

The stock market started its collapse in the last week of October 1929. On November 12, the day before the market bottomed out, the Sharples Milker Company filed for bankruptcy. A month later, Fred Wood, now the company vice president, told a reporter that the federal government needed to raise tariffs against European imports. The national economy continued to decline--the industrial index reached its lowest point on July 8, 1932--and on March 29, 1933, Philip M. Sharples asked a judge to place the Sharples Separator Company into bank receivership, claiming it owed him $495,000. Fred Wood and E. Raymond Scott, the former president of the Chester County Trust Company, were appointed to liquidate the company, and they sold most of the factory buildings to the ESCO Cabinet Company of West Chester. The Daily Local News purchased the F&M Building for only $40,000 (it cost &100,000 to build) and Celia Hoffman of Philadelphia bought the Greentree Building. Wood and his personal secretary, Anna Fitzpatrick, salvaged what they could and used it to found the United Dairy Equipment Company. -- from Chapter 7