Lemon Hill is a Federal-style mansion in

Fairmount Park Fairmount Park is the largest municipal park in Philadelphia and the historic name for a group of parks located throughout the city. Fairmount Park consists of two park sections named East Park and West Park, divided by the Schuylkill River, w ...

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

, built from 1799 to 1800 by Philadelphia merchant Henry Pratt. The house is named after the citrus fruits that Pratt cultivated on the property in the early 19th century.

History and architecture

The mansion is situated on a parcel of land formerly part of Robert Morris's estate, "The Hills." In 1799 Pratt purchased of "The Hills" and accompanying structures at a sheriff's sale for $14,654 after occupant Morris suffered financial misfortunes and was taken to

debtors' prison A debtors' prison is a prison for people who are unable to pay debt. Until the mid-19th century, debtors' prisons (usually similar in form to locked workhouses) were a common way to deal with unpaid debt in Western Europe.Cory, Lucinda"A Histor ...

. Pratt designed the house and supervised its construction,"Henry Pratt's Account for Lemon Hill"
by Martha Halpern. ''antiquesandfineart.com''. Antiques and Fine Art Magazine. June 2005. Retrieved November 7, 2017. though he did not live year-round at Lemon Hill: his primary residence was in a

townhouse A townhouse, townhome, town house, or town home, is a type of Terraced house, terraced housing. A modern townhouse is often one with a small footprint on multiple floors. In a different British usage, the term originally referred to any type o ...

on Front Street. Lemon Hill is located on a bluff overlooking the

Schuylkill River The Schuylkill River ( , ) is a river in eastern Pennsylvania. It flows for U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map(). accessed April 1, 2011. from Pottsville, Pennsylvania, Pottsville ...

and

Boathouse Row Boathouse Row is a historic site which is located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the east bank of the Schuylkill River just north of the Fairmount Water Works and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It consists of a row of fifteen boathouses housi ...

. Exceptional architectural features include its three oval parlors, stacked one on top of the other, with curved fireplace mantles and doors. Pratt also landscaped the property in the

English landscape garden The English landscape garden, also called English landscape park or simply the English garden (, , , , ), is a style of "landscape" garden which emerged in England in the early 18th century, and spread across Europe, replacing the more formal ...

style, extended a greenhouse structure Morris had built, and opened the grounds to the public for an entry fee. To protect its water supply, the City of Philadelphia began purchasing properties along the

, beginning with Lemon Hill in 1844. The Lemon Hill estate was the first to be incorporated into the new

in 1855. During the second half of the 19th century, the mansion was used as a restaurant and received substantial modifications to its exterior, including a Victorian cast-iron porch. From 1926 to 1955, the house was used as a residence by the first director of the

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) is an List of art museums#North America, art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at ...

Fiske Kimball Sidney Fiske Kimball (1888 – 1955) was an American architect, architectural historian and museum director. A pioneer in the field of architectural preservation in the United States, he played a leading part in the restoration of Montice ...

, and his wife Marie Goebel Kimball. Both architectural historians, the couple restored Lemon Hill to its 1800 appearance. Kimball conjectured that Robert Morris had built the mansion; however, in 2005, Pratt's letterbooks were found at the William L. Clements Library of the

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

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by an assistant

curator A curator (from , meaning 'to take care') is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the particular ins ...

of the Art Museum. Tax records indicated that the mansion did not exist at the time Pratt had purchased the land. The records also revealed that Pratt was both the designer and

general contractor A contractor (North American English) or builder (British English), is responsible for the day-to-day oversight of a construction site, management of vendors and trades, and the communication of information to all involved parties throughout the c ...

for his mansion. The house was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

on February 7, 1972, as an inventoried contributing structure within Fairmount Park. Since 1957, Lemon Hill Mansion has been operated as a house museum by the Colonial Dames of America and the Friends of Lemon Hill. Long hidden by dense trees on the sides of the hill, a restoration of the historic views was undertaken in 2007, recreating the original vistas of, and from, the mansion. The Fairmount Park Conservancy has managed the house since 2016.

References

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External links

*
Lemon Hill Mansion history (archive)
*

Historic American Buildings Survey The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , , "little star", is a Typography, typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star (heraldry), heraldic star. Computer scientists and Mathematici ...

(HABS) documentation: ** ** of historical context
Images of Lemon Hill in the David J. Kennedy Collection
at the

Historical Society of Pennsylvania The Historical Society of Pennsylvania is a historic research facility headquartered on Locust Street in Center City Philadelphia. It is a repository for millions of historic items ranging across rare books, scholarly monographs, family chron ...

Search historic photographs
at ''Philly''History.org {{Philadelphia, state=collapsed Historic house museums in Philadelphia Philadelphia Register of Historic Places Houses completed in 1801 Federal architecture in Pennsylvania North Philadelphia Houses in Fairmount Park Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Philadelphia Historic American Buildings Survey in Philadelphia East Fairmount Park

History and architecture

See also

References

External links