York Town Square

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Former Hobbit House resident: ‘We loved that house and the Elmwood neighborhood’

This mansion and its neighborhood share the name Elmwood. This area is known for its diverse architecture. Scott Butcher writes about the mansion, the Spring Garden neighborhood and the Hobbit House (see photo below) in his recently published “York’s Historic Architecture.” (See interior view of mansion below.) Background posts: ‘… A shadowy figure of a hoop-skirted woman…’, Elmwood Mansion book more than history of a house and When mules moved a York County mansion.

A photograph and information about Elmwood’s Hobbit House in my recent York Sunday News column drew a response from a former resident. (See Hobbit House photo at Author: ‘York’s streetscape features almost every style and era of American architecture’.)
Ohioans Kate and Damian Kotecki lived in the architectually unique house, profiled in Scott Butcher’s “York’s Historic Architecture,” from 1974 to 1989… .

This is one of the murals painted by Sue Peterman and Anne Hildebrand at the Elmwood Mansion.
Damian wrote that the house was filmed to be part of a multi-media play “Robin Hood” at the York Little Theatre. The nearby theater group’s production was performed sometime during the period that the Koteckis owned the house.
“We modernized the kitchen of the house, but left the rest of the house unchanged,” he wrote. “Our two children grew up there, and we loved that house and the Elmwood neighborhood.”

Elmwood’s Hobbit House, courtesy of Scott Butcher.