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.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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