Pennsbury Manor was the colonial estate of William Penn, founder and proprietor of the Colony of Pennsylvania, who lived there from 1683 to 1701. Since 1939 it has been the name of a reconstructed manor on this property.
Penn had his manor built on 8,000-acre (3,200 ha), part of his much larger grant of land from the Crown. This section was located about 25 miles north of Philadelphia along the Delaware River in present-day Falls Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. After he returned to England, by the mid-18th century, the house and other buildings were deteriorating from neglect. From the early nineteenth century, the property changed hands numerous times.
In 1929 the Pennsylvania legislature authorized acquisition of the property by gift. In 1932 the Warner Company donated nearly ten acres of the property to the state of Pennsylvania as a site for a permanent memorial to Penn. The Pennsylvania Historical Commission was given responsibility for it. The legislature appropriated money to reconstruct the buildings of this estate in a historically accurate manner, to create a house museum in 1939. Over the decades, more land was acquired, and the property now has a total of 43-acre (17 ha). The property was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 28, 1969. The manor house and grounds are administered by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission in association with The Pennsbury Society, and are open to the public.
Video Pennsbury Manor
History
William Penn (1644-1718) of England, the new Proprietor of the King's Grant for the Province of Pennsylvania, traveled to the New World of "The Americas" in 1682 to start his dream of a "Holy Experiment" free from religious persecution for his "Religious Society of Friends" ("Quakers"). He was granted a 8,000-acre (3,200 ha) tract granted by the English King, Charles II (1630-1685). Penn met with the local Native American tribes to negotiate fairly and sue for peace, seeking their blessing (and even cooperation) to settle the land. He achieved amicable relations with the Lenape. Penn plotted the village of Philadelphia north of the confluence of the Delaware (flowing from the north and northeast) and the Schuylkill rivers (a smaller tributary that entered from the northwest). He platted and built a manor house outside the village as a country estate for him and his family.
The original manor was located along the banks of the Delaware River, north of Philadelphia, between the river proper and what was later named Van Sciver Lake. Construction at what he called "Pennsbury" was begun soon after Penn's arrival in the Colony in 1682 and completed in about 1686. In addition to the central manor house, there were separate outbuildings for baking and brewing, a large stable, a boathouse, and numerous farm buildings. Penn's plan was to establish the sort of gentleman's country estate similar to his home in England.
Penn spent most of his time in the central and soon-to-be capital city of Philadelphia governing his settlement, leaving the manor house empty for long periods of time. From 1699 to 1701, he rented "The Slate Roof House" in Philadelphia as his second residence and city townhouse. He left the colony in 1701. By 1736, one of Penn's sons remarked that the Pennsbury house "was very near falling, the roof open as well as the windows and the woodwork almost rotten." However, the old manor house remained held by the Penn proprietary family until 1792.
The Warner Company of Philadelphia, established in 1794, operated as a firm dealing in sand, gravel and other construction materials. At some time, they acquired much of the deserted land where William Penn's "Pennsbury Manor" once stood. Before 1820 "a farmhouse (known as the Crozier House) was built over part of the original Pennsbury foundations." It still stands on the larger property but was moved.
More than a century later, on Sunday, October 23, 1932, the 250th anniversary of Penn's arrival, the company donated some of the land to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Charles Warner, President of the Warner Company, presented the deed for nine and eight-tenths acres of Pennsbury, the portion on which the buildings had stood, to the Commonwealth as a permanent memorial site to Penn. The Pennsylvania Historical Commission was given responsibility for what was then known as The Pennsbury Memorial.
Maps Pennsbury Manor
Site discovery and reconstruction
In the 1920s and 1930s, there was considerable interest in preserving buildings and history of colonial America, due in part to the stresses of waves of immigration, a world war, and the Great Depression. Other homes of "founders" were reconstructed in this era: notably, Abraham Lincoln's former home in New Salem, Illinois, in the 1920s and the reconstruction of the long-destroyed Wakefield in northern Virginia, the birthplace of George Washington, in 1930." In Virginia, the Rockefeller family supported the restoration and reconstruction of Colonial Williamsburg.
At that time, the Commission, Commonwealth, and other sources collaborated to construct a colonial revival manor house and outbuildings, in order to create a house museum dedicated to Penn. Completed in 1940, it is operated as Pennsbury Manor by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission in association with The Pennsbury Society, a non-profit organization, and is open to the public. Additional acreage has been acquired so that the total property is 43-acre (17 ha). The manor and grounds were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969.
Reconstruction
Penn wrote to his overseer James Harrison frequently from England during the construction of the estate, providing evidence of his intentions and the progress of the project. During its early years of ownership, the Pennsylvania Historical Commission conducted site mapping, archaeology, and documentary research. In 1934, historian Albert Cook Myers found the buried foundations of the house and a crude drawing on an eighteenth-century survey map. These served as the basis for recreating a typical red-brick manor house on the property, in the early years of historic preservation.
Pennsbury Manor was designed by local architect R. Brognard Okie, (1875-1945), who was known for his sensitive colonial revival constructions in this area. He also restored the Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia. It appears that he designed a larger and more elaborate house than the original Pennsbury, which analysts think was based on a T-shape. Pennsbury Manor was built 1938-1940. Okie also drew from other properties of that period in nearby Pennsylvania in making his design decisions, suggesting a reverse of influence - saying that Pennsbury probably influenced the design of later houses, so he drew from them.
The house stands two stories tall with dormer windows piercing the hipped roof on the third level for an attic. It was designed in the Colonial Revival style, in a "Georgian" style of architecture, and stands five bays wide and two piles deep. The white wooden window with the door and frame trim contrast against the red brick, which is laid in Flemish bond pattern. The manor house is surrounded by the support buildings, built in either matching red brick or whitewashed wood frames.
Early anachronisms that were part of the 1930s project, such as a white picket fence and brick walkways, have been replaced by more appropriate styles of paling fences and graveled walks. Bricks were too expensive at the time to be used for walkways, and not even the original house was fully constructed in brick. Since the late 20th century, the museum staff has concentrated on the interior of the manor: by creating "an increasingly accurate depiction of domestic life in William Penn's time through interpretive programs and such decorative elements as wall colors, textiles, and furniture arrangements."
Similarly, the landscape design "owed more to colonial revival than the colonial original." Okie did not get the final contract for the landscape, but had made a proposal. The final work was done by Thomas Sears (1880-1960), who introduced a number of plants first brought from Asia in the 19th century, such as Weigela, Kerria Japonica, Forsythia, and Chinese Wisteria. Historic horticulture was little developed at this time. The "colonial" herb garden, bordered by brick, was also a 19th-century introduction.
References
External links
- Official website
Further reading
- Cavicchi, Clare Lise., "The Recreated Pennsbury Manor" (research report, unpublished, for Pennsbury Society, Oct. 1989), copy at Pennsbury Archives
- Cavicchi, Clare Lise, and Paula B. Young. Pennsbury Manor: Furnishing Plan. Morrisville, Pa.: Pennsbury Manor, 1988.
- Girouard, Mark. A Country House Companion. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987.
- Seitz, Ruth Hoover & Blair, Pennsylvania's Historic Places; Good Books; Intercourse, Pennsylvania; ISBN 1-56148-242-0
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