Although not erected until a few years after the treaty of peace
following the Revolution, Vernon is so thoroughly Colonial in
architecture and of such merit as to warrant mention here. It stands in
extensive grounds on the west side of Germantown Avenue, Germantown,
above Chelton Avenue. The main house is a hip-roofed structure two and a
half stories in height of rubble masonry, the front being plastered and
lined off to simulate dressed stone and the other walls being pebble
dashed. A wing in the rear connects the main house with a semi-detached
gable-roof structure in which were located the kitchen and servants'
rooms. The principal features of the symmetrical facade with its ranging
twelve-paned windows, shuttered on the lower story, are the central
pediment with exquisite fanlight between flanking chimneys and
handsomely detailed dormers, and a splendid doorway alluded to later in
these pages. A fine-scale denticulated molding in the cornice, repeated
elsewhere in the exterior wood trim, lends an air of exceptional
richness and refinement.
Vernon was built in 1803 by James Matthews, a whipmaker of the firm of
McAllister and Matthews. In 1812 it was purchased by John Wistar, son of
Daniel Wistar, and a member of the countinghouse of his uncle, William
Wistar. Upon his uncle's death he conducted the business with his
brother Charles and became well known in mercantile circles and
prominent in the Society of Friends. A bronze statue of him in Quaker
garb has been erected in front of the house. Some years after his death
in 1862 the place passed under the control of the city for a park and
was occupied for a time by the Free Library. Since the erection of a
building near by for this latter purpose, it has housed the museum of
the Site and Relic Society, and contains much of interest to the student
of early Germantown.
Another house in the Colonial spirit erected shortly after the close of
the Revolution is Loudoun, at Germantown Avenue and Apsley Street,
Germantown, its grounds embracing the summit of Neglee's Hill. The house
is two and a half stories high with additions which have somewhat
altered its original appearance; it has a gambrel roof, hipped at one
end after the Mansard manner with excellent dormers on both the front
and end just mentioned. Its plastered rubble masonry walls are clothed
with clinging ivy. The architectural interest centers chiefly in the
fenestration and the pillared portico reminiscent of plantation mansions
farther south. This portico, with its simple pediment and wooden columns
surmounted by pleasingly unusual capitals of acanthus-leaf motive, was
added some thirty years after the house was erected. The great
twenty-four-paned ranging windows have heavy paneled shutters on the
first floor and blinds on the second. Tall, slender, engaged columns
supporting a nicely detailed entablature frame a typical Philadelphia
doorway, the paneled door itself being single with a handsome leaded
fanlight above.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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