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Re: Versailles, sigh
Date: 2005.03.07 08:13
There is a 'surreality' to the whole Whitemarsh Hall story, and yes it is "hard to know where to begin." It appears that Summer 1977 was the last time I saw Whitemarsh Hall. This past Christmas I visited with a former architecture classmate who now lives in Canada. D. saw Whitemarsh Hall at Quondam and told me that I took him there. Oddly, I have no recollection of our going there, and I even told D. that it was probably S.D. (another architecture classmate who also knew of Stotesbury, as he then lived in the neighboring suburb of Lafayette Hill, indeed named for Gen. Lafayette who was very active in the local hills during the Revolutionary War) who took him there. D. wasn't convinced, and a month later it dawned on me that D. and I had worked together the Summer of 1977 for C. William Fox Architect in Chestnut Hill, and that was most likely when D. and I went to see Whitemarsh Hall.
Exactly 20 years later, sometime in 1997, was the next time I again saw Whitemarsh Hall, but this time it was on the internet at the Serianni website, and that's how most others now also see the place, very much in the virtual realm. It was probably in 2000 that I first returned to the quondam palace site. Initially, it was thrilling to find the columns again, but the thrill quickly changed to something like disorientation because everything else I was also seeing (i.e., the new housing development) had no place at all in my memories. Essentially, the whole place was now something completely, completely different. It's even hard for me to explain, and perhaps that's why I more than ever want to see my old movies of Whitemarsh Hall--I haven't had a working projector in almost 20 years.
Maybe Whitemarsh Hall now manifests a somewhat new type of archaeology, where it's not just layers of earth that must be sifted through, rather layers of memory. All the same, it's still treasure hunting (which is most likely the progenitor of all archaeology).
If "Versailles, sigh" can claim any success (as a virtual conference paper) it is because of the new aerial images of the former Stotesbury Estate--thanks John! The aerial images available just a few years ago were not close enough and more blurs than anything. The detail of the present set of aerials is what really brought the "Stotesbury" story literally into focus.
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