Richard Allen Lane station
railway station in Philadelphia
Richard Allen Lane station (formerly Allen Lane station) is a SEPTA Regional Rail station in Philadelphia. It is located at 200 West Allens Lane in the Mount Airy neighborhood and serves the Chestnut Hill West Line. The station building was built circa 1880. Like many in Philadelphia, it retains much of its Victorian/Edwardian appearance.
The former station building now houses a coffee shop, the High Point Cafe.
The station is in zone 2 on the Chestnut Hill West Line, on former Pennsylvania Railroad tracks, and is 10.1 track miles from Suburban Station. In fiscal 2012, this station saw 307 boardings on an average weekday.
Naming
Allen Lane station got its name from the adjoining street, Allens Lane, which was named for William Allen, a prominent man of the colonial-era Province of Pennsylvania. His estate, Mount Airy, is the source of the surrounding neighborhood's name, was at the top of the hill where Allens Lane meets Germantown Avenue. The site is now the campus of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia.
“Richard Allen Lane station” enters the record as railway station in Philadelphia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Richard, Allen and Lane can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Richard Allen Lane station” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Richard, Allen and Lane provides the most credible route into that argument.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4731749. Authority coordinates are 40.057, -75.195. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1880 and 2012.
A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
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Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Richard Allen Lane station”, its source revision and the description used here.
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Richard Allen Lane station” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.