DOORWAY AT WARREN, R. I.
CHIMNEY-PIECE.
AMERICAN RENAISSANCE. 1899.
But Philadelphia, with Fairmount Park and Germantown contiguous, is still, historically, very interesting, the most celebrated relics of this vicinity being the Chew house at Germantown, and the Arnold-Shippen house (called “The Dairy”) in Fairmount Park. Presentments of the famous Chew house (still standing) will be found, however, in every illustrated history of the Revolution, including the popular juvenile, “Boys of ’76”; but pictures of Wyck, at Germantown ([see Plate XXXIII]) equally historic, are rare, as are also the pictures of some other places I shall mention, and which I have taken much pains to obtain for this review.
Wyck is the oldest house in Germantown, at least, part of it is said to be, and its extreme length, together with the great passage there is through it to an inner court or garden, make it the most curious as well. Stenton-in-the-Fields has many legends and things to commend it to the antiquarian, but it is not pretty at all, and does not appeal to the architect, who is much more attracted to the Wister house, numbered 5261 Main Street, and to the Morris house (both appearing on [Plate XXXII]), standing a little farther along upon the old turnpike, both of which, like the Strauss waltz I mentioned in a preceding chapter, are awfully nice. Germantown itself is much overrated and disappointing. It is not a picturesque town like Annapolis or Portsmouth or Salem, and lacks character generally.
Journeying into Philadelphia we shall find hidden away in the midst of a cheap, bourgeois neighborhood in South Eighth Street another Morris house ([Plate XXXVI]) belonging to the grand epoch. This stunning relic is rarely photographed, and then the professional photographer sets up his camera directly in front of it, uses his wide angle lens, which is sure to distort, and he cannot avoid cutting off part of its base line, and foreshortening the dormer windows. This Morris house has outlived all the friends and acquaintances of its youth. Down by the Delaware River there may linger a vestige, here and there, of the old-time gentry; but most of the architecture which may be called “old,” in Philadelphia proper, belongs to a later generation.