| Whitemarsh Hall | |
|---|---|
 Exterior view of the mansion | |
 | |
| General information | |
| Type | Gilded Age Mansion |
| Architectural style | Neoclassical Revival |
| Town or city | Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania |
| Country | United States |
| Coordinates | 40°05′37″N75°11′54″W / 40.0936°N 75.1982°W /40.0936; -75.1982 |
| Construction started | 1916 |
| Completed | 1921 |
| Demolished | 1980 |
| Cost | about $10 million (equivalent to $311 million in 2024)[1] |
| Client | Edward T. Stotesbury |
| Technical details | |
| Floor count | 6 |
| Floor area | 100,000 square feet (9,300 m2) |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect(s) | Horace Trumbauer |
Whitemarsh Hall was anestate owned bybanking executiveEdward T. Stotesbury and his wife, Eva, on 300 acres (1.2 km2) of land inWyndmoor, Pennsylvania, United States.[2] Designed by theGilded Age architectHorace Trumbauer, it was built in 1921 and demolished in 1980. Before its destruction, the mansion was thethird-largest private residence in the United States.
Despite the name, Whitemarsh Hall was located inSpringfield Township, not inWhitemarsh Township which borders Springfield to the west.
Designed by the Beaux-Arts architectHorace Trumbauer between 1916 and 1921, Whitemarsh Hall included six stories (three of which were partly or fully underground). There were 147 rooms across 100,000 square feet (9,300 m2), which included 45 bathrooms, in addition to specialty rooms such as aballroom,gymnasium,movie theatre, and a refrigerating plant. Theneo-Georgianmansion had been awedding present from Stotesbury to his second wife, Eva (the former Lucretia Cromwell, née Roberts). Completion was delayed byWorld War I; while the exterior was mostly completed by the end of the war, the interior decorations and furnishings, many of which had to come from war-ravaged Europe, took much longer to arrive.
The mansion was lavishly decorated withstatues, paintings, andtapestry that Stotesbury had collected over the years, a collection later bequeathed to thePhiladelphia Museum of Art. The French 18th-centuryfurniture was purchased throughLord Duveen, who had guided Stotesbury in assembling the second of America's great collections of English portraits,[3] and the floor was lined with exquisiteOriental rugs, also purchased under the guidance of Duveen. Stotesbury was also advised by Duveen in the purchasing of French sculpture to decorate the huge mansion.
The gardens and landscaping were designed by the urbanist and architectJacques Gréber, whose designs in the grand manner ofAndré Le Nôtre for the PhiladelphianP.A.B. Widener atLynnewood Hall had recommended him to Trumbauer and to Eva Stotesbury, who moved into a house next to the estate to follow the progress of construction at close hand.[4]
The estate also included several lesser houses and utility buildings spread over the 300 acres (1.2 km2), as well as four large greenhouses for growing trees and ferns. Smaller greenhouses were used for growing the many flowers needed to decorate the house for the lavish parties the Stotesburys liked to host. More than 70 gardeners worked at maintaining the grounds. The inside staff usually numbered 40, but many of them would follow the Stotesburys as they made their yearly pilgrimages to their Florida mansion,El Mirasol, for the winter and toWingwood House, their mansion inBar Harbor, Maine, for the summer.
In addition to E. T., Eva and their servants, Whitemarsh Hall was also designed with Eva's two children in mind (adults by the time it opened), who were given their own rooms in the house. Her sonJimmy frequently resided within, as did (to a lesser extent) her daughterLouise.
For about nine years the mansion was the site of lavish balls and receptions. The intensity of the party life dropped a bit after theGreat Depression in 1929, and fell even more after 1933 when the Stotesburys were openly criticized for enjoying a life of splendor while most of the country suffered the hardships of the depression. The death of one of E. T. Stotesbury's own daughters in 1935 continued to dampen the Stotesburys' enthusiasm for festivities.
Whitemarsh Hall had often been called the "AmericanVersailles", because of the level of attention to detail in the gardens and in the main building.
Eva Stotesbury discovered, after the death of her husband in 1938, that she was relativelybroke. Stotesbury had once declared that it cost him over a million dollars a year to maintain the house and the extensive property surrounding it. As a result of the Great Depression, the value of Whitemarsh Hall and its opulent furnishings was significantly lowered. Eva closed the mansion and moved to one of her other mansions, El Mirasol inPalm Beach, Florida. She donated the 2-mile-long (3 km), 8-foot-tall (2.4 m) steel fence to the War Department to be turned into metal for 18,000 guns.
During much ofWorld War II, the property was used for warehousing the bulk ofNew York'sMetropolitan Museum of Art art treasures as it was feared that theGermans would bombard Manhattan fromU-boats orwarships. Eva Stotesbury had already put the property on the market after her husband's death, but there were no buyers. The property did not sell until 1943.
Whitemarsh Hall was finally sold for $167,000 to the Pennsalt Chemical Corporation (today part ofTotal Petrochemicals USA), which transformed the building into a research laboratory. Much of the grounds surrounding the mansion were sold for real estate development, which was quickly realized after the war ended. Pennsalt kept the mansion and its remaining grounds maintained and modernized, and constructed some new facilities on the property as well.
In 1963, Pennsalt (later renamed Pennwalt) built a new research center in theKing of Prussia area, and moved out of Whitemarsh Hall, which was sold to a property investment group. Efforts to preserve or sell the mansion intact by this and successive owners were unsuccessful, and as the property became neglected andvandalized over the following years, demolition was decided upon. Disputes over the form of residential redevelopment to be undertaken (especially plans which envisioned luxury apartment towers) delayed demolition for a number of years.
The mansion, which was larger than theWhite House in Washington, D.C.[5] was demolished in 1980, and a development of modern townhouses called Stotesbury Estates was built on the property. The massive limestone pillars which were part of the mansion's frontportico were left in situ as a tribute, along with the largebelvedere at the back of the home. No homes occupy the footprint of the mansion itself, whose basements and foundations were simply backfilled. Small remnants of the huge gardens still exist today, including a fountain, several statues, stairs, and pieces of low stone fence and walls. The twin pillars of the estate's main gate, which was one mile (1.6 km) from the back of Whitemarsh Hall, are still standing on Douglas Road off Willow Grove Avenue, minus the steel gates. The gatehouse on Douglas Road, behind the main entrance pillars, also remains, converted to a private residence.
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