Avondale, PA

Avondale is a Chester County borough of 1,272 people at the 2020 census, built along the East Branch White Clay Creek in the southern part of the county. It grew across New Garden and London Grove township lines, with farm properties, mills, and roads gradually forming a village before borough incorporation in 1894. Pennsylvania Route 41 runs through the center, the East Penn rail line crosses the borough, and U.S. 1 is about a mile and a half north.

The local tell is mushrooms. Avondale sits in the heart of Chester County's mushroom-growing region, with growers and the American Mushroom Institute woven into the local economy. The borough's history also includes White Clay valley Native American occupation, old farmsteads, and the mill and water-power story along the creek. St. Rocco Church, established in 2011 as the Philadelphia archdiocese's first National Hispanic Parish, serves a Spanish-speaking Catholic Latino community shaped heavily by Mexican immigration. Avondale is a small crossroads where mushroom houses, a rail yard, a creek, a church, and Route 41 all fit into the same half-square-mile borough.