Eight Historic Properties Protected by Alliance Easements
Last year was a busy one for the Alliance's easement program: eight owners donated protective preservation easements on their historic properties including a cast-iron mercantile building, the estate house of a locally prominent Bucks County Quaker family, and several notable townhouses in the Society Hill and Rittenhouse neighborhoods. The Alliance now protects 182 historic properties in the Philadelphia region with preservation easements.
Preservation easements held by the Alliance require all current and future owners to maintain the historic appearance of the protected exteriors of the properties. In certain cases (see below), historic landscapes, interiors, and the works of notable modernist architects are also protected. The easement donations also entitle the property owners to federal income-tax deductions.
Most of last year's easement donors retained consultant David Brooks who facilitated the easement donation process on their behalf. Brooks has for many years provided similar services for donors of easements to the Alliance's counterpart in Washington D.C., the L'Efant Trust.
The new easement properties are:
Moreland Manor, Cinnamon Drive, Lower Moreland Township, Montgomery County.
Moreland Manor has been continuously occupied since the early 1800s by five generations of the Hallowell family. Israel Hallowell, Jr., and his descendants were very active in local banking, politics, and Quaker social causes including the abolition of slavery. Originally 70 acres, the Hallowell property was eventually reduced to 3-1/2 acres in the 1970s as the surrounding land was developed as a residential subdivision.
The easement protects not only the stone farmhouse, but also the remaining open space and public views, a carriage shed, and the principal historic interior spaces of the house. "Moreland Manor is one of the few remaining 19th-century farm houses in our community," writes the township manager of Lower Moreland. "The well-maintained house and bucolic setting provides a glimpse of life in Lower Moreland 200 years ago. The preservation of this property contribute[s] to the Township-s goals Š to protect the quality of life in our community."
Merchants' Row, 59 N. 3rd Street, Philadelphia.
Merchants' Row is the name now given to three adjacent five-story buildings on 3rd Street in Philadelphia's historic Old City. Originally used by merchants and wholesalers, the property was restored and adapted last year as 19 apartments and ground-level retail spaces by Yaron Properties. (The project won a 2004 Preservation Achievement Award from the Alliance.)
The section at the corner of 3rd and Arch Streets is a 1852 Italianate-style cast-iron façade; two doors down 3rd Street is a circa 1860 brownstone building (photo, right), and sandwiched between the two is a 1926 tapestry-brick storefront. The properties were vacant and deteriorating for many years and required major restoration of the severely eroded brownstone and cast iron.
Townhouses in Society Hill:
261 South 4th Street was built between 1810 and 1813 in a block of Federal-era townhouses once known as "Lawyers' Row", although this property was first occupied by Dr. Charles Caldwell, a prominent physician. It has been restored to a single-family dwelling after suffering from the effects of conversion to multi-family use in the early 1900s. Among the fine Federal-style features are the elliptical fanlight and the carved ornament in the entablature over the front door.
320 South 4th Street is known as the "Bussey-Pouison" House, named after two early owners, a printer and a University of Pennsylvania mathematics professor respectively. It was built circa 1783 and retains such Georgian-style features as Flemish-bond brickwork with glazed headers on the façade. It is also notable because the property now includes a two-lot-wide side yard containing an enclosed garden and a 1960s pool house addition designed by modernist architect Oskar Storonov, who was also responsible for the restoration of the original house.
264 South 3rd Street was built in 1815 and is known as the Francis Borden residence; Francis Borden was a bricklayer. The townhouse features a raised basement faced with marble, and an entryway to the basement under the exterior stairs.
240 South 3rd Street dates to 1829 and was originally the home of merchant Henry White, and later Charles Boker, a banker who restored Girard Bank to solvency after the panic of 1837. The façade is highlighted by a delicate leaded-glass fanlight over the door, and a wrought-iron stair railing with neoclassical details.
Townhouses in the Rittenhouse neighborhood:
1810 Delancey Street is part of a row of four Italianate-style townhouses built in 1856, although this property is distinguished from its neighbors due to a renovation done in 1923 by the architectural firm of Wilson Eyre and Charles McIlvain who added the balcony and French doors on the 2nd floor, and the arched window opening on the 1st floor which contains two carved caryatids.
2304 Delancey Street, like its adjacent neighbors, is a handsome mid-Victorian townhouse that retains its Mansard roof covered with scalloped slate shingles and Eastlake details such as the turned and incised ornament on the door and dormer. It is also notable for the fact that it is faced with marble and has a projecting bay window, two features not commonly seen in this Rittenhouse neighborhood.
