Layle Lane, an educator, social activist, humanitarian, and political leader, lived on this 23-acre property and ran Lacitadelle Camp, later called Manor, for inner-city youth from Philadelphia and New York, New York. The camp was named after the fortress in Haiti representing high ideals and principles. During the Depression years of the 1930s, she operated a farm camp cooperative at Lacitadelle to help feed poor inner-city families in Philadelphia and New York. She also played a major role in the first March on Washington in 1941, which led to the Fair Employment Practice Act and Commission under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and in 1948 she played a major role in encouraging President Harry Truman to desegregate the American military.