May 5-11, 2005

cityspace

Frills on Lemon Hill

lemon aid: When windows and shutters fell into disrepair at a Fairmount Park landmark, preservationists scraped $70,000 together for a restoration project. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

The result of a two-year mansion restoration will debut today.

by Nicole Sarrubbo

Today at 4:30 p.m., the Friends of Lemon Hill will host a celebration to showcase the fruits of a two-year restoration effort that helped protect windows and shutters at their architectural gem, the Lemon Hill Mansion.

Ellie Penniman, who established the Friends of Lemon Hill in 1987 to help protect the site, says the project cost about $70,000 but didn't force the landmark to close to visitors.

"The windows were in dreadful condition," Penniman said, "and the Palladian windows were ready to fall into the parking lot."

The organization secured funding from the William Penn Foundation, the Arcadia Foundation, the Fairmount Park Conservancy Historic Properties Fund and individual donors. Lemon Hill is owned by the City of Philadelphia, managed by the Fairmount Park Commission and operated as a historic house museum by the Colonial Dames of America, Chapter II. They needed to find those outside funding sources, considering the city's fiscal woes.

"Every year the budget is an issue," Penniman says, "and we feel kind of angry that the city will fund ballparks, but not culture and the arts."

Located at Sedgley and Lemon Hill drives in the heart of East Fairmount Park, the mansion is one of the nation's finest examples of Federal architecture. The house was considered a new style when it was built in 1800 because of its large, south-facing windows. It features three stacked oval rooms complete with curving doors, fireplaces on each floor and floor-to-ceiling Palladian windows.

Upon entering the spacious foyer, complete with 14-foot ceilings, visitors are greeted by the portraits of Robert Morris, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, and Philadelphia merchant Henry Pratt, who built the summer villa on property formerly owned by Morris. Lemon Hill is named after the lemon trees Morris grew in his greenhouse.

The foyer, which features a newly restored over-door fanlight window, leads into the second of the three oval rooms (the first is closed to the public since it's part of the caretakers' living space), an airy space featuring neoclassical carpeting and a large, glass chandelier. Also known as the drawing room, the only reproductions in the room are the rug and the floor-to-ceiling green curtains.

"This room is especially unique because unlike the White House's oval room, it even has curving doors," explains house director Joyce Jones.

Off one side of the oval room is the ladies tea parlor, featuring paintings of some of the uses Lemon Hill was put to after Pratt sold it in 1836. (These include a German beer garden, a restaurant, a candy shop and an ice cream parlor.) The dining room includes a 1799 mahogany sideboard, a fireplace made of Italian Carrera marble and dinnerware from a 250-piece Chinese porcelain collection. The room is topped off with a brass convex mirror. The final room on the second floor is the office that has Pratt's original woven-horsehair office chair.

The Lemon Hill Mansion, which hosts 8,000 visitors annually, provides a replica of the horsehair chair for the guests to touch in order to preserve Pratt's original.

Leading up to the third floor is a curving 26-step staircase that has large windows to provide cross-ventilation on hot summer days. At the top of the stairs is the much-acclaimed and recently restored Palladian window. The Palladian room also has a set of Thomas Birch prints on the wall featuring the Fairmount Water Works and the Schuylkill Bridge. Penniman says the prints were used in the 19th century to advertise the young United States to England and to showcase America's success.

The third floor also houses the master bedroom with a large canopy bed and a dressing room, complete with a Chinese commode and a tin tub. The room has large double doors leading out to a balcony that runs the entire length of the house. Penniman says the porches located on both sides of the house are "a wonderful place for entertaining and can be rented out for small affairs," as long as guests don't bring food and beverages into the more historic areas, that is. (Historians think Pratt used the house mostly for entertaining, considering there wasn't enough room to house his 15 children.)

The third-floor oval room, with windows facing the Art Museum, includes a rare set of rosewood chairs. Fiske Kimball, the first director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, moved into Lemon Hill in 1926. From that vantage point, he watched the progress of the museum's construction.

The house is open to visitors Wednesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

For information about Lemon Hill Mansion tours, call 215-232-4337.