When Joseph Ryerss died in January 1868, at the age of 65, he willed the property to his son Robert, a lawyer. Robert loved to travel and added to the family collection of beautiful and unusual objects gathered from all over the world begun by his grandfather, Robert Waln, a merchant and member of the Pennsylvania Assembly and the U.S. House of Representatives during the Revolutionary War.
Robert Ryerss was married June 1895 at the age of 64 to his housekeeper, Miss Ann Reed, in the library at Burholme. He died eight months later in February 1896. In his will he left Burholme and about 50 acres to his wife for her lifetime; at her death, it was to be left to the City of Philadelphia to be used as a park, library and museum "free to the people forever." Mrs. Ryerss relinquished her title to the property while she was still living and turned it over to the city in 1905. Burholme was opened to the public in 1910 under the administration of the Fairmount Park Commission.
The Park now consists of approximately 70 acres. The cupola atop the original mansion was added in the early 1890s, while the rear portion was added by the City in 1920 to house the museum collection.
The above text is composed of excerpts from the Ryerss Library and Museum brochure.
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Between the mansion and the museum is an interstitial element composed of bay windows on the outside, and today houses a modern 'service corridor' of stairs and an elevator on the inside. Other than that, one would hardly expect that also inside, among several thousand items, are included a piece of the Colosseum of Rome, a piece of the Great Wall of China, and a wonderful Oriental gallery whose centerpiece is the entire contents of a Japanese Buddhist temple that were purchased all at the same time.
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