Hatfield is a transplant house. In 1930 Major Henry Reed rescued his house from the encroaching factories of Nicetown and moved it here from Hunting Park Avenue near Nineteenth Street.
This new setting for Hatfield House is still within the "Northern Liberties" of William Penn's original plan. Plots of plans in the Liberties were part of Penn's plan to settle the countryside with property owners who also held land in town. Penn presented a 100-acre lot in the Liberties and two lots in town to each purchaser of 5,000 acres in the country. In this way he hoped to give early Philadelphians a sound political base as well as a sound economic base, since voting power was based on land tenure.
Built in 1760, the original house was a small, simple frame farmhouse until William J. Hay bought it in 1831. Although Hay took up permanent residence there, he furnished the house as though it were a country summer home.
The house became noteworthy in 1835 when Hay added rooms and a Greek Revival portico to one end of the house. He then built a new front door and sheathed the house in flush board siding to hide the joints.
Hatfield is one of the finest examples of Greek Revival architecture in Fairmount Park. Greek temple motifs for public building have been popular through the ages, but in the 1830s American homeowners began dressing up their houses with columns and pediments copied from architects' design books.
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