The house was built in 1772 by David Deschler, a wealthy West India merchant, the son of an aide-de-camp to the reigning Prince of Baden, and Margaret, a sister of John Wister and Caspar Wistar. After the retreat of the American forces at the conclusion of the Battle of Germantown, Sir William Howe, the British commander, moved his headquarters from Stenton to the Deschler house. While there he is said to have been visited by Prince William Henry, then a midshipman in the Royal Navy, but afterward King William IV of England.
Upon Deschler's death in 1792 the house was bought by Colonel Isaac Franks, a New Yorker who had served his country well in the Continental Army and filled several civil commissions after the conclusion of peace with England. He it was who rented the house to Washington for a short period in the early winter of 1793 and again for six weeks in the following summer because of the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia. Here met the President's cabinet—Jefferson, Hamilton, Knox and Randolph—to discuss the President's message to Congress and the difficulties with England, France and Spain. Aside from Mount Vernon, it is the only dwelling now standing in which Washington lived for any considerable time.
In 1804 the property was purchased by Elliston and John Perot, two Frenchmen who conducted a prosperous mercantile business in Philadelphia. On the death of the former in 1834, the place was purchased by his son-in-law, Samuel B. Morris, of the shipping firm of Waln and Morris, in whose family it has since remained. The interiors remain as in Washington's time, and much of the furniture, silver and china used by him are still preserved, together with his letter thanking Captain Samuel Morris for the valuable services of the First City Troop during the Revolution.
Although not erected until a few years after the treaty of peace following the Revolution, Vernon is so thoroughly Colonial in architecture and of such merit as to warrant mention here. It stands in extensive grounds on the west side of Germantown Avenue, Germantown, above Chelton Avenue. The main house is a hip-roofed structure two and a half stories in height of rubble masonry, the front being plastered and lined off to simulate dressed stone and the other walls being pebble dashed. A wing in the rear connects the main house with a semi-detached gable-roof structure in which were located the kitchen and servants' rooms. The principal features of the symmetrical façade with its ranging twelve-paned windows, shuttered on the lower story, are the central pediment with exquisite fanlight between flanking chimneys and handsomely[80] detailed dormers, and a splendid doorway alluded to later in these pages. A fine-scale denticulated molding in the cornice, repeated elsewhere in the exterior wood trim, lends an air of exceptional richness and refinement.
Vernon was built in 1803 by James Matthews, a whipmaker of the firm of McAllister and Matthews. In 1812 it was purchased by John Wistar, son of Daniel Wistar, and a member of the countinghouse of his uncle, William Wistar. Upon his uncle's death he conducted the business with his brother Charles and became well known in mercantile circles and prominent in the Society of Friends. A bronze statue of him in Quaker garb has been erected in front of the house. Some years after his death in 1862 the place passed under the control of the city for a park and was occupied for a time by the Free Library. Since the erection of a building near by for this latter purpose, it has housed the museum of the Site and Relic Society, and contains much of interest to the student of early Germantown.
Another house in the Colonial spirit erected shortly after the close of the Revolution is Loudoun, at Germantown Avenue and Apsley Street, Germantown, its grounds embracing the summit of Neglee's Hill. The house is two and a half stories high with additions which have somewhat altered its original appearance; it has a gambrel roof, hipped at one end after the Mansard manner with excellent[81] dormers on both the front and end just mentioned. Its plastered rubble masonry walls are clothed with clinging ivy. The architectural interest centers chiefly in the fenestration and the pillared portico reminiscent of plantation mansions farther south. This portico, with its simple pediment and wooden columns surmounted by pleasingly unusual capitals of acanthus-leaf motive, was added some thirty years after the house was erected. The great twenty-four-paned ranging windows have heavy paneled shutters on the first floor and blinds on the second. Tall, slender, engaged columns supporting a nicely detailed entablature frame a typical Philadelphia doorway, the paneled door itself being single with a handsome leaded fanlight above.