Loudoun was built in 1801 by Thomas Armat as a countryseat for his son, Thomas Wright Armat. The elder Armat originally settled in Loudoun County, Virginia, and hence the name of the estate. Coming to Philadelphia about the time of the Revolution, his family moved to Germantown during the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 and found it such a pleasing place of residence that the building of Loudoun some years later came as a natural consequence. It stands at the very outskirts of Germantown, now the twenty-second ward of Philadelphia, where Germantown Avenue starts its winding course toward Chestnut Hill. At the original lottery distribution of the land of the Frankford Company in the cave of Francis Daniel Pastorius, there being no permanent houses at that time, the site fell to Thomas Kunders, in whose house at Number 5109 Germantown Avenue the first meeting of Friends was held in Germantown. After the Battle of Germantown the hill was used as a hospital, and many dead were buried there. From 1820 to 1835 Loudoun was rented to Madam Greland as a summer school for young women, and it was during this period, probably about 1830, that the pillared portico was added. A successful Philadelphia merchant and well-known philanthropist, Thomas Armat, gave the site for St. Luke's Church in Germantown and assisted in its erection, also setting aside a chamber at Loudoun which was known as the minister's room. He was among the first to suggest the use of coal for heating, and one of the early patentees of a hay scales. Armat's daughter married Gustavus Logan, great-great-grandson of James Logan and grandson of John Dickinson, whose "Farmer's Letters", addressed to the people of England, are said to have brought about the repeal of the Stamp Act. Loudoun still remains in the Logan family. No stranger house can be found in all Philadelphia than Solitude on the west bank of the Schuylkill in Blockley Township, Fairmount Park. It is a boxlike structure of plastered rubble masonry twenty-six feet square and two and a half stories high, with a hip roof having simple pedimental dormers and two oppositely disposed chimneys. The wood trim is severely simple throughout, from the heavy molded cornice under the eaves to the pedimental recessed doorway with its Ionic columns and entablature. Two slightly projecting courses of brick, one some ten inches or so above the other, form an unusual belt at the second-floor level, while a distinctive feature of the fenestration is seen in the fact that most of the windows have nine-paned upper and six-paned lower sashes.