A while back I wrote about Lynnewood Hall, a mansion outside Philadelphia designed and built for Peter Widener, American

businessman, art collector, and patriarch of the Widener family. Planned after Prior Park in Bath, England, the mansion was said to have cost eight million dollars to build. Widener was the father of George Widener who died in the Titanic disaster. George and his wife Eleanor had been living with George’s father at Lynnewood Hall until they boarded the ill-fated Titanic.

After Peter lost his son, he fell into a depression and died in 1915, three years after Titanic sank. Although members of the Widener family continued to live at Lynnewood Hall, in 1941 they vacated and left the building and grounds in the hands of a caretaker. In 1952, the property was purchased by Faith Theological Seminary as living quarters, classrooms and a chapel until they, too, abandoned it and left the mansion to fall into decay.

The fountains were sold in 1989 and the gardens are now a tangle of weeds. Most of the original 300-acre tract also has been sold, and Lynnewood Hall now stands on an overgrown thirty-six-acre parcel of land.

A Philly friend, poet Lynn Levin, took me to have a look at the deterioration. I was heartbroken to see windows busted out and concrete crumbling. Trees were storm damaged and dying and vines and weeds had overgrown other areas. Lynnewood Hall, once one of the most elaborate and costly homes in the country, sat abandoned and unloved. The tall metal gates were padlocked and there looked to be no one tending the place.

Someone had bent the bars of the tall wrought-iron fence wide enough to slip through. They had broken into the house, stole anything of value, and vandalized what was left. Having published the novel Sheltering Angel based on a true story of the Titanic, I was drawn to this old girl whose grounds took up an entire city block and suggested to Lynn we squeeze through the opening and have a closer look.

Inside the fence, we climbed over a low wall of broken concrete and approached the wide steps leading to the back portico. Lynn heard a loud buzzing and within seconds we were surrounded by angry wasps. Apparently a community of stingers had found a cozy place to raise their families deep within the cracks of the concrete steps. Lynn suggested we backtrack.

“Just a little closer,” I said.

“I’m going back,” she countered.

Reluctantly, I followed her.  

In the last two years, Lynnewood Hall Preservation Foundation has made an attempt to repair and revitalize the former residence. To see photos of the interior and to be involved in this poignant project, follow the link above.