PLASTERED STONE COUNTRY HOUSES
It is quite possible to preserve random shapes and rock faces in
stonework that is structurally good, yet still fail in a measure to
please the eye and satisfy the artistic sense. A house built of stones
which, although irregular and of variable size, are generally cubical in
shape and set with obvious painstaking to simulate a casual yet
remarkably systematic arrangement, never fails to be clumsy and patchy.
A case in point is Waynesborough in Easttown Township, Chester County,
erected in 1724 by Captain Isaac Wayne. Greame Park, erected in Horsham
Township, Montgomery County, by Sir William Keith five years after he
was appointed governor of Penn's Colony in 1717, instances another
unsuccessful use of stonework and effectively explodes the pet notion of
the indiscriminate that everything which is old is therefore good. The
promiscuous use of rough, long, quarried stones, square blocks and
narrow strips on end results in an utterly irrational effect, a
confusing medley of short lines.
Going to the other extreme, the use of stones so small and irregular as
to suggest a "crazy-quilt" mosaic rather than structural stonework is
equally displeasing. This scheme unquestionably lends texture to the
wall, but it attracts too much attention to itself to the detriment of
such architectural features as doors, windows and other wood trim
intended to provide suitable embellishment as well as to fulfill the
practical requirements of daily use. Inasmuch as rubble used in this
manner becomes merely an aggregate in a concrete wall, the consistent
thing to do is to consider it as such and give the wall an outside
finish or veneer of rough plaster. This fact was recognized and often
acted upon by the early Philadelphia builders wherever the stone readily
available did not make an attractive wall. A few of the best examples
extant serve to indicate that houses of this sort have all the charm of
the modern stucco structure built over hollow tile.
Perhaps the most picturesque of the old houses of this type is Wyck at
Germantown Avenue and Walnut Lane, Germantown, a long, rambling
structure of rubble masonry with an outside veneer of rough white
plaster standing end to the street. Although Colonial in detail and
partaking to a degree of the general character of its neighbors, the
ensemble presents a rare blending of European influences with American
construction. Vine-clad trellises on the entrance front, a long arbor on
the garden front, box-bordered flower beds and a profusion of shade
trees and shrubs all help to compose a picture of rare charm in which
leading American architects have often found inspiration for modern
work.
Wyck is probably the oldest building in Germantown and certainly quaint
of appearance, considering its age, for it has been preserved as nearly
as possible in its early condition. The oldest part was built about 1690
by Hans Millan. Later another house was built near by on the opposite
side of an old Indian trail, and subsequently the two were joined
together, a wide, brick-paved wagon way running beneath the connecting
structure. This passage has since been closed in to form a spacious
hallway with wide double doors and a long transom above, the outer doors
being wood paneled and the inner ones glazed.
Of romantic interest is the use of this great hall of Wyck as a hospital
and operating room after the Battle of Germantown, and later, in 1825,
as the scene of a reception tendered to La Fayette, following his
breakfast at Cliveden, when the townspeople were presented to him by
Charles J. Wister. The doorway to the right, with its molded jambs,
plain, four-paned transom and paneled door divided in the middle like
many of the neighborhood, is of the most modest order, yet its simple
lines and good proportions, together with the green of the climbing
vines about it, in contrast with the white plaster walls, makes a strong
appeal to everybody of artistic appreciation. The position of the knob
indicates the size of the great rim lock within, while the graceful
design of the brass knocker is justly one of the most popular to-day.
Wyck has never been sold, but has passed from one owner to another by
inheritance through the Jansen and Wistar families to the Haines family,
in which it has since remained. One of its owners, Caspar Wistar, in
1740 established the first glassworks in America at Salem, New Jersey.
The most notable house of plastered stone masonry, and one of the
noblest countryseats in the vicinity of Philadelphia, is Clunie, later
and better known as Mount Pleasant, located in the Northern Liberties,
Fairmount Park, on the east bank of the Schuylkill River only a little
north of the Girard Avenue bridge. To see it is to appreciate more fully
the princely mode of country living in which some of the most
distinguished citizens of the early metropolis of the colonies indulged.
[Illustration: PLATE XXXII.--Doorway, Solitude, Fairmount Park; Doorway
Perot-Morris House, 5442 Germantown Avenue.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXXIII.--Entrance Porch and Doorway, Upsala,
Germantown; Elliptical Porch and Doorway, 39 Fisher's Lane, Wayne
Junction.]
Standing on high ground and commanding broad views both up and down the
stream, the house is of truly baronial mien and Georgian character. Two
flanking outbuildings, two and a half stories high, hip-roofed and
dormered, some forty feet from each end of the main house and
corresponding with it in character and construction, provide the
servants' quarters and various domestic offices. Beyond the circle
formed by the drive on the east or entrance front of the house and at
some distance to either side are two barns. Thus the house becomes the
central feature in a strikingly picturesque group of buildings having
all the manorial impressiveness of the old Virginia mansions along the
James River.
The main house rises two and a half stories above a high foundation of
hewn stone with iron-barred basement windows set in stone frames. It is
of massive rubble-stone masonry, coated with yellowish-gray rough-cast
and having heavy quoined corners of red brick, also a horizontal belt of
the same material at the second-floor level, the keyed lintels of the
large ranging windows, however, being of faced stone.
Above a heavy cornice with prominent modillions springs the hipped roof,
pierced on both sides by two handsome dormers and surmounted by a long,
beautifully balustraded belvedere. Two great brick chimney stacks, one
at each end of the building, with four arched openings near the top,
lend an aspect of added dignity and solidity. The principal feature of
the facade on both the east and west or river front is the slightly
projecting central portion with its quoined corners, surmounting
corniced pediment springing from the eaves, ornate Palladian windows in
the second story and superb pedimental doorway in harmony with the
pedimental motive above. Although the detail is heavy, and free use has
been made of the orders, the work is American Georgian at its best and
altogether admirable. The doorways of the two sides are similar but not
the same, and a comparison, as found in another chapter, is most
interesting.
Within, a broad hall extends entirely through the house from one front
to the other, as likewise does a spacious drawing-room on the north side
with an elaborate chimney piece in the middle of the outside wall. The
dining room occupies the west front, and back of it, in an L extension
from the hall, a handsome staircase with gracefully turned balustrade
leads to the bedrooms on the second floor. Throughout the interior the
wood finish is worthy of the exterior trim. Beautifully tooled cornices,
graceful pilasters, nicely molded door and window casings, heavy
pedimental doorheads,--all are of excellent design and more carefully
wrought than in average Colonial work. Finest of all, perhaps, is a
chamber on the second floor overlooking the river that must, according
to the very nature of things, have been the boudoir of the mistress of
Mount Pleasant. The architectural treatment of the fireplace end of this
room, with exquisite carving above the overmantel panel and above the
closet doors at each side, is greatly admired by all who see it.
The erection of Mount Pleasant was begun late in 1761 by John
Macpherson, a sea captain of Clunie, Scotland, who amassed a fortune
and lost an arm in the adventurous practice of privateering. Here he
lived in manorial splendor, entertaining the most eminent personages of
the day with munificent hospitality and employing himself with numerous
ingenious inventions, notably a practical device for moving brick and
stone houses intact. He wrote on moral philosophy, lectured on astronomy
and published the first city directory in 1785, a unique volume giving
the names in direct house-to-house sequence and having such notations
as, "I won't tell you", "What you please", and "Cross woman" against
street numbers where he found the occupants suspicious or unresponsive
to his queries.
Meeting reverses in some of his financial affairs and longing for
further adventures at sea, Macpherson sought the chief command of the
American Navy at the outbreak of the Revolution. This being denied him
he leased Mount Pleasant to Don Juan de Merailles, the Spanish
ambassador. But to be near General Washington, Merailles had to remove
to Morristown and there he soon died.
In the spring of 1779 Macpherson sold Mount Pleasant to General Benedict
Arnold, of unhappy memory, whose remarkable and traitorous career is
known to every American. Arnold had been placed in command of
Philadelphia by Washington, following its evacuation by the British, and
in acquiring the most palatial countryseat in the vicinity he gratified
his fondness for display and apparently saw in it a means of retaining
or increasing his influence and power. It was his marriage gift to his
bride, Peggy Shippen, the daughter of Edward Shippen, a moderate
Loyalist, who eventually became reconciled to the new order and was
chief justice of the State from 1799 to 1805. At Mount Pleasant Arnold
and his wife remained for more than a year, living extravagantly and
entertaining lavishly. Arnold's financial embarrassments and bitter
contentions with persistent enemies became ever more deeply involved.
Here in bitterness, and not without some provocation, he conceived the
dastardly plan of obtaining from Washington command of West Point, the
key to the Hudson River Valley, in order that he might betray it to the
British.
Following the discovery of the plot and Arnold's flight to the British
lines, his property was confiscated, and Mount Pleasant was leased for a
short period to Baron von Steuben, after which it passed through several
hands to General Jonathan Williams, of Boston, in whose family the place
remained until the middle of the nineteenth century, when it was
acquired by the city as a part of Fairmount Park.
At Number 5442 Germantown Avenue, standing directly on the sidewalk as
was often the case, and with a beautiful box-bordered garden of
old-fashioned flowers about one hundred by four hundred feet along the
south end, is one of the most interesting old plastered houses in
Philadelphia. Well known in history, it is no less notable
architecturally. In general arrangement it differs little from numerous
other gable-roof structures of the vicinity, two and a half stories high
with chimneys at each end and handsome pedimental dormers with
round-topped windows between. It is in the excellent detail and nice
proportion of the wood trim, both without and within, that this house
excels. Interest focuses upon the deeply recessed doorway with its
sturdy Tuscan columns and pediment, and the great, attractively paneled
door. The fenestration is admirable with twenty-four-paned windows set
in handsome frames with architrave casings and beautifully molded sills,
the lower windows having shutters and the upper ones blinds. A notable
feature is the heavy cornice with large modillions, and beneath a
relatively fine-scale, double denticulated molding or Grecian fret.
Within, a wide hall extends through the middle of the house, widening at
the back where a handsome winding staircase with landings ascends to the
floor above. Opposite the staircase is a breakfast room overlooking the
garden. The parlor and dining room on opposite sides of the hall, the
bedrooms above and also the halls all have beautifully paneled
wainscots. There are handsome chimney pieces in each room with dark
Pennsylvania marble facings about the fireplaces and ornamental panels
so nicely made that no joints are visible. Throughout the house the
woodwork is of unusual beauty and unexcelled in workmanship.
The house was built in 1772 by David Deschler, a wealthy West India
merchant, the son of an aide-de-camp to the reigning Prince of Baden,
and Margaret, a sister of John Wister and Caspar Wistar. After the
retreat of the American forces at the conclusion of the Battle of
Germantown, Sir William Howe, the British commander, moved his
headquarters from Stenton to the Deschler house. While there he is said
to have been visited by Prince William Henry, then a midshipman in the
Royal Navy, but afterward King William IV of England.
Upon Deschler's death in 1792 the house was bought by Colonel Isaac
Franks, a New Yorker who had served his country well in the Continental
Army and filled several civil commissions after the conclusion of peace
with England. He it was who rented the house to Washington for a short
period in the early winter of 1793 and again for six weeks in the
following summer because of the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia.
Here met the President's cabinet--Jefferson, Hamilton, Knox and
Randolph--to discuss the President's message to Congress and the
difficulties with England, France and Spain. Aside from Mount Vernon, it
is the only dwelling now standing in which Washington lived for any
considerable time.
[Illustration: PLATE XXXIV.--Doorway, 224 South Eighth Street; Doorway,
Stenton.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXXV.--Doorway and Ironwork, Southeast Corner of
Eighth and Spruce Streets]
In 1804 the property was purchased by Elliston and John Perot, two
Frenchmen who conducted a prosperous mercantile business in
Philadelphia. On the death of the former in 1834, the place was
purchased by his son-in-law, Samuel B. Morris, of the shipping firm of
Waln and Morris, in whose family it has since remained. The interiors
remain as in Washington's time, and much of the furniture, silver and
china used by him are still preserved, together with his letter thanking
Captain Samuel Morris for the valuable services of the First City Troop
during the Revolution.
Although not erected until a few years after the treaty of peace
following the Revolution, Vernon is so thoroughly Colonial in
architecture and of such merit as to warrant mention here. It stands in
extensive grounds on the west side of Germantown Avenue, Germantown,
above Chelton Avenue. The main house is a hip-roofed structure two and a
half stories in height of rubble masonry, the front being plastered and
lined off to simulate dressed stone and the other walls being pebble
dashed. A wing in the rear connects the main house with a semi-detached
gable-roof structure in which were located the kitchen and servants'
rooms. The principal features of the symmetrical facade with its ranging
twelve-paned windows, shuttered on the lower story, are the central
pediment with exquisite fanlight between flanking chimneys and
handsomely detailed dormers, and a splendid doorway alluded to later in
these pages. A fine-scale denticulated molding in the cornice, repeated
elsewhere in the exterior wood trim, lends an air of exceptional
richness and refinement.
Vernon was built in 1803 by James Matthews, a whipmaker of the firm of
McAllister and Matthews. In 1812 it was purchased by John Wistar, son of
Daniel Wistar, and a member of the countinghouse of his uncle, William
Wistar. Upon his uncle's death he conducted the business with his
brother Charles and became well known in mercantile circles and
prominent in the Society of Friends. A bronze statue of him in Quaker
garb has been erected in front of the house. Some years after his death
in 1862 the place passed under the control of the city for a park and
was occupied for a time by the Free Library. Since the erection of a
building near by for this latter purpose, it has housed the museum of
the Site and Relic Society, and contains much of interest to the student
of early Germantown.
Another house in the Colonial spirit erected shortly after the close of
the Revolution is Loudoun, at Germantown Avenue and Apsley Street,
Germantown, its grounds embracing the summit of Neglee's Hill. The house
is two and a half stories high with additions which have somewhat
altered its original appearance; it has a gambrel roof, hipped at one
end after the Mansard manner with excellent dormers on both the front
and end just mentioned. Its plastered rubble masonry walls are clothed
with clinging ivy. The architectural interest centers chiefly in the
fenestration and the pillared portico reminiscent of plantation mansions
farther south. This portico, with its simple pediment and wooden columns
surmounted by pleasingly unusual capitals of acanthus-leaf motive, was
added some thirty years after the house was erected. The great
twenty-four-paned ranging windows have heavy paneled shutters on the
first floor and blinds on the second. Tall, slender, engaged columns
supporting a nicely detailed entablature frame a typical Philadelphia
doorway, the paneled door itself being single with a handsome leaded
fanlight above.
Loudoun was built in 1801 by Thomas Armat as a countryseat for his son,
Thomas Wright Armat. The elder Armat originally settled in Loudoun
County, Virginia, and hence the name of the estate. Coming to
Philadelphia about the time of the Revolution, his family moved to
Germantown during the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 and found it such a
pleasing place of residence that the building of Loudoun some years
later came as a natural consequence. It stands at the very outskirts of
Germantown, now the twenty-second ward of Philadelphia, where Germantown
Avenue starts its winding course toward Chestnut Hill. At the original
lottery distribution of the land of the Frankford Company in the cave
of Francis Daniel Pastorius, there being no permanent houses at that
time, the site fell to Thomas Kunders, in whose house at Number 5109
Germantown Avenue the first meeting of Friends was held in Germantown.
After the Battle of Germantown the hill was used as a hospital, and many
dead were buried there. From 1820 to 1835 Loudoun was rented to Madam
Greland as a summer school for young women, and it was during this
period, probably about 1830, that the pillared portico was added.
A successful Philadelphia merchant and well-known philanthropist, Thomas
Armat, gave the site for St. Luke's Church in Germantown and assisted in
its erection, also setting aside a chamber at Loudoun which was known as
the minister's room. He was among the first to suggest the use of coal
for heating, and one of the early patentees of a hay scales. Armat's
daughter married Gustavus Logan, great-great-grandson of James Logan and
grandson of John Dickinson, whose "Farmer's Letters", addressed to the
people of England, are said to have brought about the repeal of the
Stamp Act. Loudoun still remains in the Logan family.
No stranger house can be found in all Philadelphia than Solitude on the
west bank of the Schuylkill in Blockley Township, Fairmount Park. It is
a boxlike structure of plastered rubble masonry twenty-six feet square
and two and a half stories high, with a hip roof having simple
pedimental dormers and two oppositely disposed chimneys. The wood trim
is severely simple throughout, from the heavy molded cornice under the
eaves to the pedimental recessed doorway with its Ionic columns and
entablature. Two slightly projecting courses of brick, one some ten
inches or so above the other, form an unusual belt at the second-floor
level, while a distinctive feature of the fenestration is seen in the
fact that most of the windows have nine-paned upper and six-paned lower
sashes.
Within, the entrance doorway leads into a hall some nine feet wide and
extending entirely across the house from side to side. The remainder of
the first floor consists of a large parlor with windows opening on a
portico overlooking the river. A beautiful stucco cornice and ceiling
and a carved wood surbase are its best features. In one corner a
staircase with wrought-iron railing rises to the second floor, where
there is a library about fifteen feet square with built-in bookcases,
two connecting bedrooms, one with an alcove and secret door where the
owner might shut himself away from intrusive visitors, and a staircase
leading to more bedrooms on the third floor. The cellar is deep and
roomy, with provision for wine storage, and an underground passage
communicates with the kitchen located in a separate building about
twenty-five feet distant.
Solitude was built in 1785 by John Penn, a grandson of William Penn,
the founder of Philadelphia, and a son of Thomas Penn, whose wife was a
daughter of the Earl of Pomfret. A much traveled, scholarly man, poet,
idealist and art patron, he came to Philadelphia in 1783 to look after
proprietary interests in Pennsylvania and intending to become an
American. But his claims were made under hereditary rights, and as the
State was not disposed to honor them he concluded to remain an
Englishman. Vexed with the perversity of human nature, he built Solitude
and named it for a lodge belonging to the Duke of Wuerttemburg. There he
lived somewhat the life of a recluse with his books and trees for three
years. He was on friendly terms with his neighbors, however, who
included his cousin, Governor John Penn, and Judge Richard Peters. Gay
week-end parties also came in boats to enjoy his hospitality, and
Washington once spent a day with him during the sitting of the
Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.
In 1788 Penn suddenly returned to England, built a handsome residence at
Stoke and embarked on a notable career in public life, becoming sheriff
of Bucks in 1798, a member of Parliament in 1802, and royal governor of
the island of Portland in Dorset for many years after 1805. The
University of Cambridge made him an LL.D. in 1811, and he won promotion
to a lieutenant-colonelcy in the Royal Bucks Yeomanry. Later in his
declining years he formed the Outinian Society to encourage young men
and women to marry, although he inconsistently died a bachelor in 1834.
[Illustration: PLATE XXXVI.--Doorway and Ironwork, Northeast Corner of
Third and Pine Streets; Stoop with Curved Stairs and Iron Handrail, 316
South Third Street.]
[Illustration: PLATE XXXVII.--Stoop and Balustrade, Wistar House; Stoop
and Balustrade, 130 Race Street.]
Solitude then passed by inheritance to Penn's youngest brother,
Granville, and on his death ten years later to a nephew, Granville John
Penn, great-grandson of William Penn, and the last Penn at Solitude.
Coming to Philadelphia in middle life about 1851 he was lionized by
society and in acknowledgment gave a grand "Fete Champetre" and
collation. Following his death in 1867, Solitude and its grounds were
made part of Fairmount Park, and after several years without tenancy the
house in its original condition was made the administration building of
the Zoological Society.
The fine old plastered stone houses of Philadelphia comprise one of the
distinctive and most admired types of its Colonial architecture. Those
with pebble-dashed walls which seek to simulate no other building
material or form of construction possess the added charm of frank
sincerity. Fire-proof in character, pleasing in appearance, and readily
adaptable to varied home requirements, they point the way wherever
rubble stone incapable of forming an attractive wall is cheaply
available. Many modern dwellings in the Colonial spirit are being built
in this manner.