Malvern is a city in Chester County in southeastern Pennsylvania. This article also covers the villages of Berwyn and Paoli.
Located 23 miles southeast of Philadelphia, Malvern is 1.3 square miles and has a population of approximately 3,200.
Malvern is the quintessential Pennsylvania, all-American style town. If you want to sample Pennsylvania's "small town USA", Malvern is a good place to check out. Malvern was settled by colonists two centuries ago, and it is full of history, including the Civil war exploits of Pennsylvania's 52nd Regiment Infantry.
Malvern dates back to the Victorian era and this is reflected in the Victorian facades in the business district, the Victorian street lamps and the brick pavement.
However, it began as three tracts of land that were given as grants in 1631 to Quakers who responded to William Penn. Known as the West Chester Intersection, after an 1832 rail line to West Chester joined the Philadelphia Columbia Railroad under construction, this town developed slowly in the beginning. In the 1870s it was called Malvern. It incorporated in August 13, 1889, and at that time business in Malvern was very prosperous. For this reason there is a high concentration of buildings from the 1880-1910 period.
A tremendous amount of revitalization in both the residential and commercial districts has been funded by the Borough government and the County of Chester. This revitalization represents an opportunity to preserve Victorian style heritage often present in Pennsylvania small towns.
2nd-order administrative division
Primary administrative division