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From: lauf-s
To: design-l
Subject: Re: Philadelphia's Fairmount Park
Date: 2001.07.26 11:13
Well Howard, you'll just have to come back to Philadelphia, because there are even more 'treasures' to seek and find. There are about a dozen 'mansions' in Fairmount Park. Most of them are indigenous to their site, and they were indeed country estates two centuries ago. Now, they are for the most part house museums, full of valuable artifacts, and still barely visited--perhaps it should stay that way though.
Lemon Hill, close to the Art Museum, is easily one of the finest Regency houses north of the Mason-Dixon line. It's three oval rooms stacked on three floors atop each other are the precedent for the oval rooms at the White House. I believe the main oval parlor of Lemon Hill is one of the best rooms in the United States.
Mount Pleasant is a true Georgian mansion, complete with symmetrical out buildings flanking the main facade. What's great about this place is that while it is so 'English' it is at the same time so 'American'. It's like the two natures were at one time so connected, which they actually were, and this house captured that (brief) co-existence.
When I was in architecture school in Philadelphia in the late '70s, historic homes weren't really the thing, so it's more in my adulthood that I've gone out to look at these places. I'm not exactly sure why, but I walk away more impressed after each visit or tour. Maybe I'm gradually getting better at recognizing what really good architecture is.
S[teve]
ps
There are many historic 'mansions' in Germantown as well, which is now an old established neighborhood of Philadelphia, but originated as a separate town, settled by Germans just a few years after William Penn. Stenton is a very old house/mansion in lower Germantown, and it is the estate of James Logan, William Penn's secretary. Robert Venturi, in a 1985 Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday magazine piece, said Stenton was his favorite building in Philadelphia. I can still remember the next day at work (in an architect's office) everyone (including myself) asking, "Where's Stenton?!?" It's because of Venturi that I now visit Stenton whenever the occasion arises--since it's only seven minutes by car from where I live, whenever someone visits me during the day during the week, and they have a couple hours to spare, I call up Stenton and tell them to expect some visitors in about 15 minutes. I've learned it's fun to get there in seven minutes though because then as you tour the house you get to see each room of the house emerge from darkness--if we had given the tour guide fifteen minutes, all the inside window shutters would have been opened up just before we got there.
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