Solitude then passed by inheritance to Penn's youngest brother, Granville, and on his death ten years later to a nephew, Granville John Penn, great-grandson of William Penn, and the last Penn at Solitude. Coming to Philadelphia in middle life about 1851 he was lionized by society and in acknowledgment gave a grand "Fete Champetre" and collation. Following his death in 1867, Solitude and its grounds were made part of Fairmount Park, and after several years without tenancy the house in its original condition was made the administration building of the Zoological Society. The fine old plastered stone houses of Philadelphia comprise one of the distinctive and most admired types of its Colonial architecture. Those with pebble-dashed walls which seek to simulate no other building material or form of construction possess the added charm of frank sincerity. Fire-proof in character, pleasing in appearance, and readily adaptable to varied home requirements, they point the way wherever rubble stone incapable of forming an attractive wall is cheaply available. Many modern dwellings in the Colonial spirit are being built in this manner. CHAPTER VI HEWN STONE COUNTRY HOUSES Cost was not an object in building many of the larger old countryseats about Philadelphia, for their owners were men of wealth and station, prominent in the affairs of the province and sharing its prosperity. Influenced by the builders of the Georgian period in England, and often under their personal supervision, the buildings on numerous great estates about the early metropolis of the American colonies were constructed of quarried stone, whether sawed in the form of "brick" stone or hammered to a relatively smooth surface. Surfaced stone, however, especially when cut into rectangular blocks, is to be recommended only for public work or for very large and pretentious residences of formal character and arrangement. In small buildings, and unless handled with skill and discretion in larger work, its psychological effect upon the mind is that of uncompromising and somewhat repellent austerity; it suggests the prison-like palace rather than the domestic atmosphere of a true home,--an atmosphere to be had in stone only by preserving the greater spontaneity of irregular shapes and rock faces characteristic of Germantown ledge stone.