Which may explain why one of Montgomery County<\/a>\u2019s most famous sons, former Daily News<\/a> contributor<\/a> Bradley Cooper<\/a>, is often<\/a> reported<\/a> to be<\/a> from<\/a> Jenkintown<\/a>, but he is not. <\/p>\n He is from Abington<\/a> Township and, like many Abingtonians, he has been living a lie.<\/p>\n Where is Bradley Cooper from?<\/p>\n Cooper grew up not in Jenkintown, but a mile away in the unincorporated Abington community of Rydal<\/a>, in a house his parents bought before he was born, property records show. <\/p>\n In the 1980s he attended Rydal Elementary, where he played a mime, according<\/a> to a playbill shared on social media.<\/p>\n The Oscar-nominated actor later enrolled at Germantown<\/a> Academy, a private school in Whitemarsh Township whose reunions<\/a> he still attends.<\/p>\n Cooper is known to call<\/a> nearby Jenkintown his hometown from time to time \u2014 maybe because the borough is more well known, and because that is what his childhood mailing address was. His reps did not return a request for comment this week.<\/p>\n Some Abingtonians don\u2019t know where they live<\/p>\n But unlike people who grew up in the tiny enclave, Cooper could not have attended Jenkintown School District or participated in its National Geographic-famous<\/a> Color Day.<\/p>\n \u201cAs someone who grew up in Jenkintown and loved cute boys and is about the same age as Bradley Cooper, I can tell you he is not from the Borough of Jenkintown,\u201d writer Lauren McCutcheon said.<\/p>\n Many Abingtonians think they live in J-town, Borough Manager George Locke<\/a> has said \u2014 so much so that his staff starts resident service calls by asking for an address. Otherwise they could spend 45 minutes on the phone, Locke said, before realizing the caller is in Abington.<\/p>\n Residents of unofficial neighborhoods like Glenside<\/a>, or towns that span counties like Telford, may be more aware of their official designation. Some Glensiders attend school in Cheltenham<\/a>, while others attend Abington School District.<\/p>\n For people without a kid in public school, an invisible municipal boundary may not matter much day to day. But it matters for local elections and during tax season.<\/p>\n Nye Stevens, a longtime Postal Service expert for the U.S. Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Research Service, said mailing addresses can also affect people\u2019s insurance rates, which are often based on zip code instead of municipality.<\/p>\n And a zip code across two towns is nothing, Stevens added \u2014 some people get their mail from another state.<\/p>\n Bob O\u2019Brien of Wyncote<\/a> used to think his practice, Relief Counseling & Art Therapy, was located in Jenkintown \u2014 until the tax bill from Abington arrived.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was confusing,\u201d O\u2019Brien said \u2014 especially since there is a Jenkintown post office in the same building. <\/p>\n \u201cHow it got this way, I\u2019m not sure,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n The demands of mail delivery<\/p>\n U.S. post offices began primarily as a pickup service in cities until the agency introduced home delivery<\/a> in the late 1800s.<\/p>\n Then cars expanded the suburbs, townships shifted, and assigned post office locations grew increasingly messy. <\/p>\n \u201cAs townships grow, post offices seem farther away,\u201d a New York Times headline about South Jersey observed<\/a> in 1997. <\/p>\n The U.S. has also closed tens of thousands of post offices in the last several decades, Stevens said, which may mean losing a mailing city that reflects where people actually live.<\/p>\n Around 1990, some in Congress tried to fix the issue with a bill<\/a> requiring the Postal Service make zip codes match municipal boundaries if towns request it.<\/p>\n But such a change would \u201cabsolutely ruin the postal system,\u201d Stevens said. \u201cYou can\u2019t have a post office for every little borough.\u201d<\/p>\n The bill failed, and years later, the Postal Service was routinely rejecting zip code change requests, Stevens wrote<\/a> in a 2006 Congressional Research Service report. <\/p>\n \u201cSome communities that lack delivery post offices complain that the need to use mailing addresses of adjacent areas robs them of a community identity,\u201d he noted in the report.<\/p>\n But at the end of the day, \u201czip codes are basically a delivery system. They\u2019re not a neighborhood recognition system,\u201d Stevens said this week.<\/p>\n As for Bradley Cooper, the confusion around his addresses in the Philly suburbs has not ended. <\/p>\n He supposedly<\/a> owns<\/a> an estate in New Hope Borough. But he really lives in Solebury Township.<\/p>\n Inquirer Greater Abington<\/p>\n A Weekly Newsletter<\/p>\n Want to get Inquirer Greater Abington straight to your inbox every week? Sign up here for our guide to the news, stories, and events shaping life in your community.<\/p>\n This suburban content is produced with support from the Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Editorial content is created independently of the project donors. Gifts to support The Inquirer\u2019s high-impact journalism can be made at inquirer.com\/donate<\/a>. A list of Lenfest Institute donors can be found at lenfestinstitute.org\/supporters<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min Unlike Philadelphia \u2014 a city, county, and school district all in one \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":793341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[337108,236,88],"class_list":["post-793340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-bradley-cooper-jenkintown-abington","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/793341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Inquirer](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1785415877_37_I_circle_black.png\")
<\/p>\n