A few weeks ago I began to explore the history of Whitemarsh Village, as to its land, and former citizens. Mrs. Henry Jarret of MacArthur Road proved to be a fund of information, and one of the former citizens back in the days when part of this property was part of the Harrison estate. Now moving some years forward, we began to question more about the history of the property in the early years of the Stotesbury era. This is what we have learned from David Steele of Cheltenham Avenue who was born and raised in the white--frame home in which he resides. Mr. Steele’s home is easily identified as the white-frame structure on the left-hand side of Cheltenham Avenue between Widener and Patton Roads going towards Paper Mill Road.

Describes Mr. Steele, his father was one of the first teamsters to be hired to clear the land for the Stotesbury home and was one of the last men in the employee of the estate before it was broken up and became Whitemarsh Village.

Mr. Steele’s father, Mr. David Steele, Sr., was hired in 1917 and worked as a teamster until 1925 when the “big house” was completed. Then he was transferred to the Stotesbury truck farm which is where the United States Eastern Regional Agricultural Laboratory is now. On the truck farm, Mr. Steele worked with about five other men raising all the vegetables for the estate. Says Mr. Steele, Sr., reminiscing ……it hurt a bit to watch the construction of the village because he had himself helped to clear the way for the Stotesbury construction only to see it torn down and then all built up again.

The area in which the Steele home is located was used for farming and was known at the time as the yellow barns. Although recites Mr. Steele, Jr., he knows that the barn had not been painted yellow for at least 25 years but was green!

The shanty located near the barn which at one time served as a pig-sty was used by Stotesbury as a carpentry shop. Four mechanics were about the property at all times, also about 70 gardeners. Twenty lawnmowers, seven or eight tractors, and about a dozen power mowers, kept the lawn in their magnificent state. Near the Steele’s home also were three large greenhouses which were used primarily for bay and oleander trees. There was a fern house too in which it seems ferns were “put and take.” Put when they were young or needed “freshening,” and “taken” once they were sturdy again.

The main gate entrance and Southampton Avenue section were known as the “gardens” at the time because the gardener had his home in that area. Also, all the cut flowers for the mansion were grown in this location.

Carolyn and Roger Turner’s brown bungalow on Paper Mill Road was used by the Stotesburys as a home for their chauffeurs, and nearby was an annex that housed the cooks who cooked especially for the chauffeurs. This portion of the estate was referred to as the “bungalow.”
 

The ring barn was also in this area. Cromwell’s former home was referred to as the Dale Place simply because the former owners had been so named. This was situated near the “big house.” Cromwell’s home was known for its underground wine cellar.

At the foot of Hull Drive where it joins Patton Road, there used to be an eighteen foot deep pond which was fed by the nearby streams and springs. This water was used for watering the lawns.

One of Mr. Steele’s (junior) favorite spots used to be the woods that ran the length of Hull Drive. At the foot of Hull Drive and back in the woods, Mr. Steele recalls, there used to be a shanty that was used by the guard who was posted there. There were several guards posted around the estate and many who clocked in at the mansion.

The woods began at the orchard on Southampton Avenue and had a beautiful dirt road running through it plus scenic rustic benches, a stream and all types of growing floral life. To keep the trees and the woods and elsewhere on the estate in “good health,” there were two tree men about the property at all times.

Along the Willow Grove Avenue section there were many boxwood trees planted that came from Mount Vernon. The Claridge Circle section was referred to as the “fried egg” simply because it was round but more formal terminology dubbed it “the plaza.” The statuary about the “fried egg” all was imported from Europe.

The plaza could be seen easily from the mansion, but not from the main gate. It was about one mile from the main gate to the house. People who struggled up Hull Drive might be especially interested in this fact.

Mr. Steele, Jr., recalls when the large double-decker chartered P. R. T. buses would come through the main gate around the plaza and onto the house to deposit their loads of guests who were invited to the Stotesbury’s parties.

And in culling over the historical facts, here is one…….oh, so heart-breaking fact, there used to be a swimming pool on the property which was located in the area of Paper Mill Road and Cheltenham Avenue. The pool was used for the Stotesbury’s help, and no, it wasn’t too large or glamorous, it definitely would have been the start for the villagers. The pool was fed with spring water.

About the many services gates that used to be in the great iron fence that surrounded the property (fence was eight feet high and ten thousand two hundred feet – a little under two miles in length) – they were given to the Springfield Township Police for their pistol range. Mrs. Stotesbury gave the fence itself to the scrap drive during the war. The fence was said to be capable of producing 18,000 machine guns and contained 395 tons of iron.

And so once again we have attempted to give you a bit more of the picture of this property on which we live…….many other interesting historical facts will be forthcoming in the next few weeks.

Whitemarsh Hall, the largest and most costly residence ever built in the Philadelphia area will be sold at auction on October 8. Alfred Traiman president of Louis Traiman Auction Co., will conduct the auction of the showplace mansion and the 46 acres that remain of the estate overlooking Whitemarsh Valley in the Wyndmoor section of Springfield Township, Montgomery County.

Completed in 1921 at a cost of $3 million, Whitemarsh Hall was designated by Horace Trumbauer considered America's foremost classical architect. It is patterned, after the Versailles Palace of Louis XIV, complete with park and formal gardens, fountains and sculptures.

The 147-room mansion has 100,000 square feet and was used for laboratories and offices by Pennsalt Chemical., (now Pennwalt Corp.) until 1964 when it moved these facilities to King of Prussia Park. Since then, the property has been owned by Willow Associates an investment partnership.

Stotesbury, who died In 1938 at 89, was senior partner of Drexel & Co. In a 70-year career in finance, he built up a 100 million fortune. The housewarming of Whitemarsh Hall was attended by celebrities from around the world, including royalty and Marshal Joseph Jooffre, hero of the Battle of the Marne in World War I. Due to the security system and rigidly enforced "no trespassing signs the signs on the property, inspection of the property prior to the sale will be allowed by special arrangement only, Traiman said.

Its facilities include 145 bathrooms, nine elevators, a movie theater and pipe organ, barber and tailor shops, and billiard room. A staff of 70 was required to maintain the property when used as a residence. It included its own water and power plants.

Once, a rural area surrounded by, estates, Whitemarsh Hall is only a mile away from the Cedarbrook apartment and shopping complex. 'The Paper Mill exit of the 309 Expressway is within several hundred yards and the Fort Washington Interchange of the Pennsylvania Turnpike is minutes away.

Whitemarsh Hall financier Edward T. Stotesbury’s now decrepit palatial mansion in Wyndmoor, was sold at auction Wednesday for $700, 000. The 145-room mansion and 46 surrounding acres – all that remains of the late Mr. Stotesbury’s 160-acre estate – were bought by a syndicate comprised of Kenneth Kaiserman, son of Philadelphia lawyer-developer Kevy K. Kasiserman, and George Neff, a Germantown architect. It was purchased from Willow Associates, an investment partnership headed by Norristown investor Sydney T. Dvorak. 

Kasiserman and Neff, interviewed after a 20-minute bidding session in front of the mansion attended by 250 people, contended they have not yet made a decision on how to develop the property. They said their decisions on how to use the property, as well as whether to demolish or renovate the water and vandal-damaged mansion, will have to await outcome of a study. Both expressed a desire to retain and rehabilitate the mansion, however. “We would like to maintain it if it is at all possible, if it is economically feasible,” Neff explained. It’s a lovely building and I would like it see it stay that way,” he added. The huge mansion, styled after French King Louis XIV’s Versailles Palace, was completed in 1921 at a cost of $3 million. Hailed by auctioneer Alfred Traiman as “the most expensive residence ever built in the state of Pennsylvania,” it took five years to construct and contained 145 rooms, 45 baths, nine elevators, a movie theatre, pipe organ, barber shop and billiard room. It even had it’s own power plant and water source.

Extraordinarily ornate the U-shaped mansion had six floors, three of them underground, and surrounds a once-grand, now debris-strewn rear courtyard on three sides. According to Traiman, it would take $12 million to duplicate the building today. Stotesbury, financier, horseman, philanthropist, and patron of the arts, rose from the job of a $16.60 a week clerk to be head of the Philadelphia banking house of Drexel and Co. and to membership in the firm of J. P. Morgan and Co., of New York, in little more than half a century. He left a fortune of $25 million or more. In the middle of the 1907 financial panic, Morgan is said to have slipped quietly into Philadelphia, and, at the Stotesbury dinner table, to have conferred with him on plans for relief of the situation.

For many years, Stotesbury’s principal diversion was rearing thoroughbred horses and driving trotters on the grounds. The mansion grounds are bounded by Willow Grove and Cheltenham aves. and Paper Mill and Southampton rds., adjacent to the Chestnut Hill area. Following Stotesbury’s death in 1938, the estate was purchased by Pennwalt Chemical Co., which utilized it as a research and administration center until 1964, when it moved to King of Prussia and sold the estate to Willow Associates. The syndicate was apparently unable to come up with a use for it acceptable to Springfield Township officials, and the building stood empty since then, a prey to water damage and vandalism.

During World War II, the Metropolitan Museum of New York used it as a hiding place for millions of dollars worth of art treasures. Following the war, much of it’s acreage was sold off for construction of homes, which now surround the mansion and it’s remaining 46 acres.

Prior to bidding, which started at $345,000, most of the 250 onlookers strolled through the rooms of this battered vestige of a legendary era. Mostly curious neighborhood housewives and real estate men, they milled around in cavernous rooms where filth, peeled paint and cracked plaster obscured – but couldn’t hide – a fantastic splendor that once was. The marble fireplaces, the rampant gilt, the ornate plaster columns, the intricate oak parquet flooring and the 25-foot ceilings still spoke of an age when great fortunes were being made. 

“Imagine heating this place” an elderly woman said to her husband, as the two examined a decrepit bedroom.

“It’s maddening,” said a well-dressed middle-aged woman, in reference to widespread vandalism which ranged from broken windows to smashed five-by-ten-foot mirrors at the head of the staircase. Weeds grew up around the once-grand main entrance and ivy spiraled up one of its four 50-foot stone columns.

In view of the deterioration and devastation, Traiman quipped at the start of the auction that “all it needs is a little sweeping and dusting and you can move right in.”

At a distance, Whitemarsh Hall, the old, abandoned Stotesbury Mansion in Wyndmoor, seems to race along the horizon. It is, of course, an optical illusion; but it is quite real for anybody passing the house in a car. Like a huge stone ship, the mansion dips among the low, green hills, to appear and reappear against the Montgomery County skyline. From a mile away, there is no hint of the vandalized interior, reeking of mold, sodden plaster and rotting wooden paneling.

The fire gutted parlors and drawing rooms, the once highly polished parquet floors peeling away in charred triangles, oblongs and squares it's all invisible. The smashed stone balustrades and headless statues are masked by weeds and seedling oak and sycamore; and the jagged outlines of broken urns and columns are softened by vines and a tangle of wild blackberry bushes.

Again, from a mile away, it's as if none 'of the vandalizing, the sick savaging of perhaps the costliest mansion ever built in the Philadelphia area, had ever happened.

It's as if the wintry, thin lipped financier, E. T. Stotesbury, and the bride on whom he lavished millions of dollars, were about to step from the red damask draped French doors to the formal gardens so many guests remember.

It might be the early Twenties again, this late spring afternoon a lawn party.

In the warm wind, the damask curtains stream inwards, affording the assembled guests a glimpse of the shimmering parquet floors within. The floor reflects the pastel blues; grays of the priceless Gainsboroughs, Romneys and Reynoldses Stotesbury bought and hung for his bride, in the $5 million house he built for her in 1921.

There is a gleam of white and sea green marble in the sudden gloom, the underpinnings of the huge, carved mantelpieces; and above Reynolds' The Honorable Miss Barwell" and Romney's The Vernon Children,'; there is the glow of gilded shields and scrollwork.

Turn in from the main highway towards the seemingly unmarked granite facade, hidden now by the Whitemarsh Village housing development and the illusion of moneyed splendor still persists; there is the feeling that the house will finally reappear, around the last turn in the driveway, to the sound of orchestras, tinkling punchbowls and windborne snatches of conversation.

But the only sound, as the car pulls up, is the steady "drip ... drip" of water down a beslimed wall, from a puddle of rainwater on the rotting roof, and crows cawing across the dry, trash filled fountains. And the house is what the Springfield Township (Montgomery County) police say it is an occasional haven for drunks, derelicts, pot smoking and teenage sex.

But before the lawn party, the punchbowls, the music and liveried footmen all fade away beyond the smashed windows, and the book is finally closed on Whitemarsh Hall, there is a last chapter to be written.

Not so much about the house, but about Stotesbury, the J. P. Morgan associate, who made over $100 million to become the wealthiest Philadelphian of his gilded time, and Lucretia (Eva) Stotesbury, a widow and his second wife.

This chapter doesn't come at the end of the Whitemarsh Hall chronicle; it isn't any bloodless epitaph; the chapter comes at the beginning. And, pieced together for the first time from the recollections of those in whom the Stotesburys confided, it bares a new Stotesbury to public view. Not the remote, self contained banker of disciplined manner and financial legend, described as one of the "small group of international bankers who ordered the finances of entire nations," but the ardent suitor, "stumbling" over his words, begging Lucretia, then a Washington beauty married to another man, to accompany him on a tour Europe.

The cast of characters in this little known chapter is quite small. And the actors, in order of appearance in 1909, against the opulence of pre World War I Europe are, first, Lucretia, wife of Lawyer Oliver Cromwell; at 47. 15 years younger than Stotesbury, she comes on stage as one of the reigning beauties of Washington society; her husband, the father of her two children, has been invalided by a stroke. She is described as "pale, fatigued" from nursing him, as she embarks alone, at New York, for a trip to Europe, to rest and visit her teen age daughter, Louise, at a French finishing school

A longtime family friend, one of her husband's close associates, comes to see her off; he is worried, dismayed by her listlessness; he goes off hurriedly to see the purser and examine the passenger manifest; perhaps he has a friend aboard who can assist her, look after her on the voyage."

It isn't until he reaches the esses on the manifest that he finds one "Ned" Stotesbury, sailing for a tour of France, England, perhaps Italy. He doesn't have time to talk to Stotesbury, but he writes him a note: "the wife of an old friend, worn out from nursing her ill husband . . . could I impose on you. . ."etcetera.

Enter Edward Townsend Stotesbury. At 62, despite his millions, he is frugal, careful"; he keeps a ledger in which he notes what he pays for shoes, a shirt the stiff collars he affects; he is a small, spare man, with an intuitive grasp of world finance, the ebb and flow of gold and currency; and if, to strangers, he seems reserved, cold, he is, among his friends, regarded as a good raconteur and an occasionally urbane, even convivial companion. Paced by the workings of a precise and ordered mind, his rise in the investment banking house of Drexel & Co. has been rapid and rewarding. At 17, he was a $16.66 a month clerk (a fact duly noted in the black leather ledger); at 32 he was a partner; and, at 55, he was "a major factor in world finance," his advice solicited by governments and the great corporations railroads, steel complexes he helped to found and run. In the financial panic of 1907, J. P. Morgan "slipped" into Philadelphia to dine with Stotesbury and discuss ways of "disciplining the panic” and restoring investor confidence in the market.

Now, sailing for Europe, he has been a widower for 31 years; he is avowedly "disinterested" in marrying again; he views the schemings and plottings of Philadelphia dowagers, in behalf of their daughters, with an amused and occasionally sardonic eye.

And yet behind all the indifference, there is loneliness, a certain restlessness he travels, constantly; he buys up paintings, particularly the works of Gainsborough, Romney, Lawrence, Lely; their patrician elegance and cool color seem to fascinate him.

The thin face with the world weary eye is seen in London, Paris, Zurich, Amsterdam, wherever the Drexel and Morgan interests have established joint branches.

Now, in 1909, he is sailing on what his friends number as his 11th or 12th trip to Europe (recollections differ) he is accompanied by one of the two daughters by his first marriage to Fannie Bergman Butcher, of Philadelphia. His outlook is precisely as historian Horace Mather Lippincott described it: "He had achieved success through ability, hard work and thrift... He did not believe in people getting something for nothing. . (he) hated beggars and demanded that those who asked his friendship and support should prove worthy of it.. ~ to an assembly of university students, he once said, 'Don't be afraid to work.. “A not altogether engaging personality. He isn't enthralled by the prospect of shepherding a perhaps ill woman across the Atlantic; but he is a gentleman, of old line Quaker stock; and so, two days out from New York, note in hand, he seeks out Mrs. Cromwell to pay his respects.

He finds her on deck, her color considerably improved. She was, as a friend since describes her, "entirely charming.” “Whether she was beautiful or not, truly I don't know. If beauty lies in regularity of feature, she was not beautiful. If it lies in coloring, expression and figure ... she was. Her hair and eyes were good, and her color delightful and as nearly as I could make out, entirely natural. If it wasn't, it was mighty well done. "

By dinnertime that second day out from New York, Stotesbury had moved her from the "obscure" company she kept, in the corner of the dining room, to the magnificence of the captain's table. By morning, he was sending her flowers. And by the time the ship reached Le Havre, he had won the breathless Mrs. Cromwell over to what she later described to a friend as a "bold" and perhaps even "scandalous" plan: with his chauffeur and car at the dock, why didn't they take the Grand Tour together; they would stay at separate hotels; with their daughters accompanying them as chaperones, there could be no breath of scandal. And, since she was so insistent on it, she could pay her own hotel bills.

There is a certain minuet like quality to the courtship that followed; and, in this day of explicit sex, an apparent innocence.

In the stories that Mrs. Stotesbury later confided to friends, there are glimpses of the huge touring car, with its polished brass headlamps, silver hood ornament and nickel rimmed windscreen trundling down the roads, to Paris, Nice, the Riviera. Sometimes the car is stopped by the road, for picnic lunches.

For two, three weeks (again, recollections differ), Stotesbury dropped from sight no telegrams signed "ETS" to Drexel & Co., no advisories as to his whereabouts, no instructions from the richest and probably the most powerful man in Philadelphia, to buy or sell.

If Stotesbury asked Mrs. Cromwell to leave her invalid husband, none of her subsequent confidantes recalls it - or will say.

Stotesbury, the man who could buy virtually anything, would have to wait until her husband died.

And he did, installing a direct line from Philadelphia to the Cromwell home in Washington, according to one account, and, from all accounts, sending her flowers every day.

Summing up a friend said: "She was not a woman to be lured from her husband ... nor, for that matter, was she a woman to take a man from his wife ... she was a lady without guile."

And when, after Cromwell died, they announced their engagement, Stotesbury faced reporters with a terse comment which reduces itself to a single line of type: "We have known each other for some time."

They were married in 1912, some three years after meeting on the voyage to Europe.

All who rode in the touring car that summer in 1909, Stotesbury, his wife, and their daughters by their first marriages, are dead. World War I was to demolish much, of the society in which they moved, and the Depression was to reduce or destroy the fortunes that had sustained it.

Only the shelf of the house survives. And, from a distance, serene and seemingly unscarred, it still bears mute testimony to the 1909 adventure rather than to the witless vandals who have destroyed it.

Stotesbury Mansion in Springfield Township stands as what some residents regard as an “eyesore” in the Wyndmoor community. And it will stand awhile longer. Its future, although under serious discussion for a year and a half, won’t be decided until the fall. Projected land use for the 46 acres site off Paper Mill Rd. near Cromwell Ave. is residential. But the type of dwelling to be built, their height and density are in doubt. They are delaying factors. Site owners, planners and residents agree that the tract will someday be developed. They are divided on specifics. The owners, builders Kevy L. Kaiserman and George Neff Associates, who purchased the property at auction for $700,000 nearly two years ago. Want to build high-rise apartments coupled with terrace units. Planners, including the Montgomery County Planning Commission, have recommended high-rise units. But many residents of the suburban community are against high-rises. They made their views known last fall when four land use plans were made public. Suggested were:
* Construction of 119 single houses costing $40,000 each which would yield a total tax yield of $18,000.00 annually.
* Building of 100 single houses and 100 townhouses to produce $37,000 in new taxes.
* Construction of 204 terrace apartments costing $20,000 per unit and 407 garden apartments at $12,000 each to yield a total of $57,000 annually in new taxes.
* Three or four high-rise apartments with 750 units plus 250 terrace townhouses, producing $454,000 in new taxes and accommodating a population of 2200.

The plans were presented last November John A. McNichol, chairman of the township’s planning commission and Arthur F. Loeben, director of the county planning commission. Co-owner George Neff indicated his associates’ preference is for high-rise apartments but they can’t go ahead with plans because zoning laws in the township don’t permit such units. “Our plans are not too different from those recommended by the county,” he said. “We’re waiting to see if the proposed ordinance permitting construction of high-rises is adopted,” Neff said. Existence of a measure to permit construction of high-rise apartments seems in doubt. Although reports are widespread in the community that commissioners are studying such a proposal, Commissioner Beatrice Garber denied it. She said the commissioners aren’t studying such a proposal and would not until one is drawn up by the township’s planning commission. She said she was unaware of any such proposal. She did note that such a proposal was made in 1968 before the Stotesbury mansion impasse.

Mrs. Garber said she was unsure whether the measure was defeated or tabled. At the time, she was not on the board of commissioners. Township manager, Jim Fulginiti, had a different view on the proposed ordinance. The planning commission has been working on one for a long time, he said, but it apparently fell by the wayside. They have been working on something but it has not reached the stage of enactment, he added. And with summer vacations, it doesn’t appear that anything will be done at present.

While the case of the ordinance remains in doubt in the township, mansion owners are frustrated. It has been a year one half since we bought the property and we are frustrated to see what the township has in mind, Neff said. While the Stotesbury estates remain in doubt its neighbors are frustrated by its deteriorating conditions. “It’s terrible,” remarked Mrs. Miriam Goldstein, whose property on Delphine Road adjoins the rear of the estate. It’s an eyesore; it’s been hit by vandals, windows are broken and it is a definite hazard, the Certified Public Accountant said. Most neighbors around here are violently opposed to high-rise apartments, but anything is better than what is there now, she sighed.

Mrs. Coleen Alexander, a democratic candidate for Montgomery county recorder of deeds who lives a block away from the property recalled when the estate was beautiful and said she and her family used to picnic and swim there. Asked why she thought the mansion’s future has remained unsettled, she said, I really don’t like to point a finger – but I think it’s because of a lack of initiative of township commissioners.

Like Mrs. Goldstein, she called the property an eyesore and suggested the possibility that it be made an historical site but she held little hope for her suggestion.

Construction took five years and cost $3 million when it was completed in 1921. Marble for the fireplaces was imported. Doors and arches inside were gilded with gold leaf. In order to make it look like the palace of Versailles in France, three of it’s six stories were built under ground, accessible by three elevators.

It had 147 rooms, 45 baths, and a huge ballroom. A fleet of 20 gasoline-powered lawn mowers was needed to keep its lawn manicured. Three coal-fed boilers were needed to heat the mansion.

Edward T. Stotesbury, financial wizard of Drexel and Company, Investment Banking firm, built the house as a wedding present for his second wife. The couple spent six months of the year there. They wintered in Palm Beach until the stock market crash took its toll and forced them to close it.

After his death in 1938, the mansion was sold to the Penn Salt Chemical Corp (now Penwalt) which used it as a research and development facility until 1964.

For a short time during World War II, the mansion was used as a hideaway for the priceless art treasures of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to protect them from the threat of Nazi bombs.

All but 25 of the estates 290 acres were sold in 1946 for the single homes of Whitemarsh Village. The building was the largest and most costly residence ever built in the Philadelphia area.

One of the most fabulous mansions in America is quietly rotting away on a hidden plateau in Wyndmoor. Marked by graffiti, damaged by rains and scarred by fires and vandalism, the still breath-taking mansion built by the financial wizard Edward T. Stotesbury, is now in ruins.

Once known as the "Versailles of America," the palatial estate now whittled down to 47.5 acres, is facing an uncertain future. If developers have their way, the mansion would be demolished to make way for a 249-townhouse cluster development. Others, including the State Historic and Museum Commission's Office of Historic Preservation, would like to see the neo-classical six story mansion preserved and restored. But no one knows where the money would come from. Still others argue that the site would be perfect for corporate headquarters for a large company.

The Pennsylvania Salt Manufacturing Company (known today as Pennwalt Corp.) purchased Whitemarsh Hall in 1943 and converted it into a research and development center, rib-boning rooms with laboratory pipes. After Pennwalt moved it's labs to King of Prussia in 1961, the building was never occupied again, although it was rented for filming a low-budget rock horror film in the 1960s.

The company sold the mansion in 1964 to a syndicate of land speculators and in 1970, the estate was bought for $700,000 by developers Kevy Kaiserman and George Neff, the present owners. In 1973, Kaiserman and Neff asked the Springfield board of Commissioners to approve a 570-unit condominium high rise development. The board refused the necessary zoning change and the developers unsuccessfully appealed the decision to Montgomery County Court and later, to Commonwealth Court.

Last Month, the developers presented a plan for a 249-townhouse cluster development, which would require adoption of a zoning ordinance by the board. After application is made to the board, the plans will be aired at public hearings. Cortland Guthrie, president of the Whitemarsh Village Civic Association, which opposed the high-density plan in 1973, thinks the mansion "could be used as a headquarters for some big multi-national corporation." While the interior would have to be completely gutted and restored, "you could redo those walls." Guthrie says. "It’s built like a bloody fort." "A lot of people have suggested it," Neff says of the corporate headquarters idea. "We suggested it. I thought originally five or six years ago – an insurance company, a McGraw Hill, a mail-order company – it would have make a super regional headquarters or something like that. But Neff feels today that the property is "so far gutted inside" that cost would be prohibitive.

"You’d have to be somebody extremely philanthropic (to restore the mansion)," Neff feels. When Neff and Kaiserman were soliciting ideas for uses of the land, they consulted Richard B. Herman Co., real estate consultants. Herman, who saw the mansion during its short-lived years of opulence, speaks glowingly of the estates former beauty. "This was Versailles. This was magnificent – the crystal chandeliers, the unbelievable decorated plaster ceilings, the topiary garden. The fixtures in the bathrooms were bronze dolphins. You have no idea what it was like."

But Herman says a complete restoration for a corporate headquarters would be impractical. He thinks it might be feasible however, to convert the mansion into the sort of corporate retreat that is now becoming popular. "Today a lot of industry rents from time to time a place to send executives for a week – it would make sense (to convert it to that use)." However, Arthur Loeben, director of the Montgomery County Planning Commission, feels hopes of a restoration effort are a pipe dream. It’s nice to dream along about some godfather putting something up there," he said. But he feels the best that can be done is some salvaging of the "outdoor furniture" – statues, stone arches, pools – which he thinks would make a "a nice common grounds" for a residential development.

Whatever the final use of the land, police Chief Louis Macahalette considers the empty mansion a hazard area. Vandals and burglars have stripped the building to the point where "there isn’t even a spigot", he says.

After burglars stole the copper exterior roofing – for which they were arrested – rains flooded in, destroying inner walls and floors. "We would like this preserved" says William K. Watson of the state Historic and Museum Commission’s Office of Historic Preservation. He says his office will probably urge the township to preserve the mansion, which is listed in the Pennsylvania Inventory of Historical Places. But the commission has no funds for restoration of Whitemarsh Hall nor the authority to order its preservation. Adds Watson, "it’s supposed to be the last of the great estates."

"Hundreds of guests in motor cars bound for the Stotesbury housewarming at Whitemarsh Hall Saturday pass the great high iron portals that lead to the miniature kingdom of splendor."  Thus did the society pages of a Philadelphia newspaper describe the housewarming given by Mr. And Mrs. Edward T. Stotesbury on October 10, 1921 to show off their new home in Wyndmoor.

"The line of automobiles, seemingly endless, flowed to and from the Chestnut Hill (railroad) station a mile back.  Given the once over by two policemen at the gate, they were allowed to pass on.

"They rode on and on.  Indeed, as chauffeurs pointed out, the ride from the gate to the tree-hidden villa for which the guests were bound was longer than from the station to the gate."

"Before the great stone plaza that fronts the massive villa which, with the estate, cost $2,000,000, one of the several men in livery gave to each guest a tag bearing a number, and a duplicate tag was given to the chauffeur.  When it came time to depart the numbers were telephoned to the garage, before which 500 cars were parked, and the correct machine arrived promptly."

William J. Winning Sr., who will be 81 in September and still lives in Wyndmoor, remembers the occasion well.  He was an employee on the Stotesbury estate.  In fact, Winning is a fund of information on the Stotesbury family and their famous estate, Whitemarsh Hall.  He has been collecting pictures and stories about the Stotesburys and the Wyndmoor mansion for the last 60 years.  This account of the housewarming is from a newspaper clipping he treasures.

"The guests descended, trying to keep straight in their minds all they had read about the 146 rooms, the three underground stories, the more than 40 baths and the 12 elevators in the mansion," continued the account.  (Winning disagrees with the newspaper story - he says there were only three elevators, two for the guests and family and one freight elevator.)

"Immediately they found themselves in the ballroom foyer.  To the right a white marble staircase, which led to a balcony of white marble with a white balustrade.  Through a wide door, opposite the entrance, the receiving line, including Philadelphia's social register almost en masse, slowly lost itself in another room similar to the foyer and of equal grandeur and size.  This room opened onto the gardens in the rear.

"At the door stood Mrs. Stotesbury, lovely in black lace, silver slippers and stockings and wearing great pearl ear drops.  Mrs. James H.R. Cromwell, her daughter-in-law, who was Miss Delphine Dodge, in whose honor this housewarming was given, wore an iridescent silk dress.  With her was her young husband and his stepfather, the 'lord of the manor', Edward T. Stotesbury. "One thousand invitations were sent out.  Eight hundred, at least, accepted, among them Cardinal Dougherty.

"The line dissolved itself into little groups of 'tourists' who attempted without success, to make the journey through the great circles of the loggias, rose rooms, libraries and plum gardens at either end of the main floor, in one trip.

"The ladies for the most part, were costumed in simplest good taste.  Dark blue was the prevailing color and serge and tricolette the favorite materials.  There were few jewels.  True, here and there flashed a scarlet velvet frock or one of the new sapphire hue, but these were the exception.

"By the absence of hats were distinguished those who assisted Mrs. Stotesbury to receive.

"The guests ascended to the second floor, using the elevators, which rose silently behind cream colored doors to the central corridor where there is a veritable labyrinth of wardrobes, where costumes and even colors seem to have been classified by rote and card.

"There are chambers whose beds are done in taffetas of pastel hue and lounging rooms where little groups paused, declaring they could not go on until they had rested.

"Of course, Mrs. Stotesbury's suite was the center of interest.  This boasts not only a boudoir that is a joy to the eye, a marble bath at the head of a flight of marble steps, but a breakfast room and a pantry and also a 'workroom'.

"Mrs. Stotesbury spends many hours in her workroom.  To reign over a palace of this magnitude is almost as much work as to oversee an industrial plant.  Her telephone - and there's a first-class exchange - is always ringing and her desk is piled high with correspondence.

"Characteristic of her workroom and for that matter, of most of the rooms on this floor, are statuettes of birds, for which Mrs. Stotesbury has a penchant.  Likewise fond of fans, she has displayed splendid examples in glass cases. "A room loaded with trophies of the hunt, is only one of several wonderful rooms that belong to Mr. Stotesbury.

Apart from, and contrasting with the impressive elegance of the quarters of the grown-ups, is the dainty little boudoir set aside for Miss Louise Brooks, daughter of Mrs. Cromwell Brooks, Mrs. Stotesbury's daughter, when she comes from Washington.

 "In this room the mantel is so built that its mirror is within the vision of a youngster of Louise's stature.  A tiny dressing table sits in one corner of the room and a bed of diminutive proportions seems to have ushered one into the land of Lilliputians.  It is said that Miss Louis romps and jumps and acts just like any other kid when she comes to grandma's"

The mansion, according to contemporary reports, was furnished with only the finest furniture, chandeliers, Oriental rugs, paintings of the masters and decorative pieces from all over Europe.

Called "a financial wizard", Edward T. Stotesbury was an associate of banker J.P. Morgan who made over $100 million, to become the wealthiest Philadelphian of his time.  At the age of 17 he was a $16.66-a-month clerk for Drexel & Co., the investment-banking house, and at 32 he was a partner in the firm.  By the age of 55 he was considered "a major factor in world finance".

A widower for 31 years, at the age of 62 Stotesbury sailed for a tour of Europe, accompanied by one of his two daughters by his first wife.  On board the ship was Lucretia (Eva) Cromwell, wife of attorney Oliver Cromwell.  She was taking the trip to rest from nursing her husband, who had had a stroke, and to visit her daughter, who was at a French finishing school.  A friend of the Cromwells asked Stotesbury to look after Mrs. Cromwell on the voyage.

He was charmed by Mrs. Cromwell and after the death of her husband, they were married.

Before his second marriage, Stotesbury had a reputation for frugality but he lavished millions on his new wife.  It was to please her that Whitemarsh Hall was built.

The guests at the housewarming Edward T. Stotesbury and his wife held in 1921 saw only the elegance, the evidence of luxury and gracious living.  But the services of many people, with many skills, were required to maintain the grounds and Whitemarsh Hall.

William J. Winning Sr. went to work for Stotesbury in 1919, before Whitemarsh Hall was built.  "I used a pick and a shovel and helped dig the first roads on the estate," the Wyndmoor resident remembers.  "My starting wages were $18.90 a week and I worked six days from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m."

Later, he was promoted to driver of one of the seven trucks used on the estate and worked with the three "tree men", whose job it was to maintain the trees on the Wyndmoor property.

Winning remembers there were 60 to 65 "outside" men employed by Stotesbury.  "The grass was like a rug," he recalls.  "There were five or six men whose only job was to take care of the grounds immediately surrounding the mansion.

"Sometimes Mr. Stotesbury would make a tour of the estate in a car," says Winning, "but he wouldn't leave the car.  Mrs. Stotesbury and her son by a previous marriage, Jimmy Cromwell, did walk the grounds."  Cromwell later married Doris Duke, the Woolworth heiress.

The estate, in many ways was a self-contained little kingdom.  There was an emergency electric generator and ice was manufactured on the premises.  There was a service entrance from Cheltenham Avenue and all deliveries went to a receiving room.

The mansion, of Indiana limestone and Italian marble, was designed by the famous architect Horace Trumbauer, in the French neo-classical style similar to Versailles.  It contained 147 rooms, 45 baths, a movie theatre, wine cellar, indoor tennis and squash courts, a gymnasium, a 64-foot ballroom with a marble fireplace imported from Italy at a reported cost of $60,000 and two kitchens, one for the preparation of food for the family and their guests and one for the employees.

Nowhere was the elegance of the mansion more apparent than in the rotundas.  In those two rooms Stotesbury displayed the superb plaster sculpture by Claude-Michel Clodion.

The mansion's formal gardens were designed by Jacques Greber and statues, designed by Jacques' father, Henri-Leon Greber, graced the garden and added to the feeling of grandeur.

Whitemarsh Hall is six stories high, with three of the levels below ground.  The deepest basement was used for coal storage and it was a familiar sight in the days of Edward Stotesbury to see rows of coal trucks lined up on the estate, making a delivery.  The top cellar contained the kitchens.  The first "above ground floor" was given over to the ballroom, an indoor fountain, an organ with three story pipes, and other rooms for entertaining.  On the second floor were the master bedroom, Mrs. Stotesbury's rooms, a breakfast room, two offices and many guest suites.

The top floor contained the servants' quarters.  The head butler, Henry Busey, winning says, lived in the "tower house" on Cheltenham Avenue, which had been part of the estate when Stotesbury purchased it.  Winning earned additional wages by serving as watchman at the tower house on Sundays.

The entrance to the estate was off Willow Grove Avenue (the stone posts still remain, as does the gatekeeper's house, but the gates and fencing were donated by Mrs. Stotesbury to the scrap drive in World War II).

Winning remembers that each day as Stotesbury turned into his estate and was driven up what is now Douglas Road but which then extended all the way to the mansion, the gatekeeper would inform the servants and as the sire of the little kingdom entered his domain, someone would be playing is favorite melody, "The End of a Perfect Day", on the organ.

Every bush was wrapped in burlap in the fall for protection against the cold.  Winning remembers the temperature went down to 25° below 0 in February 1934.  Sheep manure and grass seed by the trainload were taken by truck from the Wyndmoor railroad station for use on the grounds.

"Mickey O'Toole and a gang of men took care of the driveways," recalls Winning.  Small white stones were used for the driveways and walks.

Each morning two men from Stotesbury's greenhouse went to the mansion to inspect and water the indoor plants.  They brought cut flowers from the greenhouse "and the housekeeper would inspect the bouquets and discard any she didn't think worthy of gracing Whitemarsh Hall," says Winning.

Winning tells of the time one of these workers knocked the head off a valuable statue in the rotunda.  The area was closed off and an artisan in white apron and goatee was imported to repair the damage.  All the pieces were carefully gathered from the floor and by a miracle the statue was restored to its original beauty.

Stotesbury owned extensive property in Wyndmoor, including a dairy farm, where the Agricultural Center now stands on Mermaid Lane, with a horse training track for the show horses he raised, and a railroad siding.

"Dave Steele worked on the farm," says Winning, "and his son still lives in the family home on Cheltenham Avenue, which was originally owned by Stotesbury."

There were several houses on the estate, which Stotesbury rented to employees.  Most of the homes were along a dirt road then called Plymouth Road and now known as Gladstone Road.  Winning says he had originally lived at Queen Street and Mermaid Lane, the area known as "foundry row" and moved to one of the Stotesbury houses on Plymouth Road in 1921.  The rental was $14 a month.  Now he lives in a house on Willow Grove Avenue, which he later purchased from Stotesbury.

Stotesbury bought up some houses along Cheltenham and Willow Grove Avenues and razed them.  Materials from the razed Dillenback house on the corner of Willow Grove and Southampton Avenues was donated by the estate owner to be used to build the Seven Dolors School.

Jimmy Cromwell, the Stotesbury stepson, lived in a house on the grounds, complete with swimming pool and life-size figures sitting around in his basement bar.

A large barn was located at what is now Tyson Road where furniture was stored.  The paint shop was also in the building.

"It was an easy place to work," says Winning, "because there were so many employees."  In addition to maids, footmen, the butler, cooks, laundresses and other "inside" employees, Stotesbury employed four Russian night watchmen at the mansion, three cabinetmakers to repair the furniture, three carpenters, three electricians, a plumber, a man to wash the windows, ten people who worked at the garages and two women to cook for them, two telephone operators, five painters, three firemen for the furnaces, two social secretaries, and two "edgers" who trimmed the grass also the driveways and walks.

Winning says most of the outside employees and maintenance people did not live in Wyndmoor or Chestnut Hill and he earned extra money by providing transportation for them from the Mermaid trolley loop in Chestnut Hill.  The "inside" help lived in the mansion.

Winning remembers the estate provided its own water and sewage disposal and there were filtering beds for the sewage on Patton Road near Hull Drive.  There was also a lake on Patton Road.  Hull Drive was a crooked road through the woods.

Six artesian wells, 500 feet deep, provided water, two each at Gladstone Road, Patton Road and Paper Mill Road.

Many large parties were held at Whitemarsh Hall, with many famous guests, including General Douglas MacArthur (two of the streets of Whitemarsh Village, part of the original Stotesbury estate are named for that famous soldier - Douglas and MacArthur Roads), and the King and Queen of Sweden.  "I remember we had to paint the old barn when the king and queen were coming because it could be seen from the drive," says Winning.  He also remembers President Warren Harding visited the Stotesburys and a small plaque was installed under the seat of the chair President Harding sat in.

Winning remembers the mansion was lighted with floodlights when there was to be a party, and when Mr. And Mrs. Stotesbury went out in the evening there were two chauffeurs, both in livery, seated in the front of the limousine.

On one occasion, when the Stotesburys entertained guests, the hostess had colored lights placed in the fountain.  She overheard a guest remark that it looked like Coney Island and the colored lights were never used again.

Early each winter, the family left to spend the cold months in their $450,000 "bungalow" in Palm Beach, Florida.  The move to Florida meant more work for the employees.  Every plant in the mansion was moved to the greenhouse and the house was closed for the winter.  The inside servants accompanied the Stotesburys south but the outside workers were faced with a financial problem.  The married men worked and were paid for two weeks in the month and the single men for one week.

Before the family left for Florida each winter, the servants would attend parties held by the servants at the other estates in the area and would give parties of their own.  "We were given no presents at Christmas," says Winning, "and we were never given vacations but there was so much help on the estate that the job was a vacation."

Stotesbury took an interest in Wyndmoor, recalls Winning, and it was he who dedicated Wyndmoor's memorial plaque in memory of those killed during World War I.  It was then outside the old Wyndmoor School on Willow Grove Avenue and was moved later to its present location further along Willow Grove Avenue.  The children of Wyndmoor frequently waved to Stotesbury as he passed in his care and he returned their waves.

Earlier, in 1918, Stotesbury directed the steam shovels being used in the construction of Whitemarsh Hall to be sent to Holy Sepulcher Cemetery to help with the burial of flu victims.

When the depression hit this country, even a millionaire like Edward Stotesbury felt the impact to some extent.  Recalls Winning, "Most of the outside men were laid off.  Only eight were retained.  The grass grew high and was only cut around the mansion and along the edges of the drive."

Stotesbury lived only 18 years in Whitemarsh Hall and died in 1938.  Winning remembers the financier's body was laid out in the ballroom.  A special train with mourners came from New York City and there were truckloads of flowers sent to the house.  Following the daylong funeral observances, Winning and the other men laid out the flowers on the upper terrace.  Later they were sent to various hospitals.  Stotesbury was buried in Woodlands Cemetery in West Philadelphia.

The death of Edward Stotesbury marked the end of a fabulous era for society and for Wyndmoor.  Mrs. Stotesbury closed the mansion and moved to Florida.

This was the end too, of Winnings association with the Stotesbury estate, although his memories of the Stotesburys and Whitemarsh Hall remain fresh through his large collection of pictures and stories about the family and the mansion.

On The Grounds Between the Main Gate and the Mansion

It's the end of an era as life at the Stotesbury mansion undergoes change.  Developers make plans for estate.  Meanwhile, township residents are getting final glimpses of the estate.

The funeral procession moved slowly along the mile long drive from Whitemarsh Hall and turned onto Willow Grove Avenue, on its way to Woodlands Cemetery in West Philadelphia that day in May 1938.

Edward T. Stotesbury was leaving his Wyndmoor estate for the last time, and the closing of the huge iron gates in the eight-foot high fence, which surrounded the estate marked the end of a fabulous era.

Stotesbury's funeral was held in the famed mirrored ballroom by candlelight, and was attended by the famous and socially elite.

Stotesbury had enjoyed playing a small drum during his lifetime and it was hung, draped in black, at the foot of the coffin.  The funeral was the last event of significance to take place in the 146-room mansion.

The former banker had died at Whitemarsh Hall on May 21, 1938 at the age of 89 and within a very short time his widow, Eva, learned the devastating financial facts which would drastically affect her future.  If Stotesbury had lived only a few short years more, spending money as he had been doing for years, he would have been broke, with three unmarketable mansions on his hands.

Worth an estimated $100 million when he married widowed Eva Cromwell in 1912, a probate inventory after his death estimated the net value of his estate at $4 million.  His wife was willed the lifetime use of Whitemarsh Hall, but the income from the trust fund he provided for her, was only a quarter of what it would cost to maintain the estate.  At one time he told a reporter he spent $1 million a year for the upkeep of the Wyndmoor property, then considered to be the best-maintained estate in Europe and in this country.  He had also owned two other magnificent estates, El Mirasal in Palm Beach, which was opened for the "season" of 1919-20 and another estate, Wingwood House in Bar Harbor, Maine, which was designed by Louis Magaziner, father of Richard Magaziner, Fort Washington, and Upper Dublin Township commissioner.

The state of Stotesbury's finances at the time of his death can be attributed to several causes.  He had a reputation for being a careful and frugal man in his spending and was considered a financial wizard at the time of his marriage to Eva.  But with his marriage, he began lavishing gifts on his new wife.  Whitemarsh Hall, which took five years to build, with many costly alterations in the plans along the way, was his wedding present to her.

He was hard hit at the onset of the Depression, as were many other estate owners in the area.  He and his wife closed Whitemarsh Hall and traveled in Europe for a year.  But in 1933 they returned to Wyndmoor and he began spending large amounts of money to make modifications to Whitemarsh Hall and Wingwood House.  The records revealed, after his death, that he continued to withdraw large sums from his holdings each year until his death.

Faced with a very uncertain future after years of lavish spending and a position as a social leader, Eva Stotesbury tried to salvage what she could from the estate.  She began to sell the collection of English portraits and magnificent furniture but it was during the Depression years and she was only able to realize little more than ten cents on the dollar.  She was forced to sell the beautiful jewels her husband had given her.  And sadly she dismissed the servants, many who had been with her since Whitemarsh Hall had been opened, and closed the mansion for the last time.

Unable to find a buyer who would give her a reasonable price for the statues in Whitemarsh Hall, Mrs. Stotesbury donated the plaster Clodions, the stone Pajon of the Four Season, the plaster nymphs (possibly by Pajon and Lecomte) and the magnificent marble by Tassert, which had belonged to Frederick the Great, to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in memory of "Ned," as she called her husband.

With the proceeds from the sale of the portraits, furniture and jewels, she was able to rent a small residence in Washington from a friend for a nominal sum.  The house had also been designed by architect Trumbauer, who had designed Whitemarsh Hall.  Eva began to entertain again, but on a modest scale.  She died in Palm Beach May 31, 1946, at the age of 81.

Mrs. Stotesbury returned to the Philadelphia area only once before her death.  She came up to view the statues in the museum, not in a private railroad car but riding as an ordinary citizen.  Her arrival in town was no longer a social event and she was ignored.  On leaving, she is reported to have said she would never return to the area again.  There is no record that she came back to see Whitemarsh Hall on that trip.

After Pearl Harbor, the cellars of Whitemarsh Hall were used to store millions of dollars worth of priceless paintings belonging to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art because it was feared New York would be bombed.  The treasures were guarded day and night by armed men.

The two-mile-long, eight foot high steel fence surrounding the estate, together with the gates, were donated by Mrs. Stotesbury to the War Department in 1942 to be turned into scrap metal for 18,000 guns.

Although Whitemarsh hall and the entire estate was put up for sale shortly after Stotesbury's death in 1938, it was not until 1943 that the property was sold.  Pennwalt Corp. (then called Pennsalt Chemical Corp.) purchased the mansion and 45.6 acres for a reported $160,000 and turned it into a research laboratory.

Pennwalt immediately set about converting the interior of Whitemarsh Hall to meet its needs as a research center.  The salons and solariums were changed into offices and laboratories.  Chemists worked where elaborate dinners were once served.  The gold fixtures and equipment were removed from the 45 bathrooms and they, too, became offices.  The champagne cellar was converted by Pennwalt into an area for testing insecticides.

In the great hall or ballroom, the imported Italian marble fireplace remained but the ornate chairs and tables had been replaced by filing cabinets, work desk and book stacks - it had become a research library.

The former butler's pantry (complete with a safe to protect the Stotesbury silver) was turned into a company cafeteria.  An elaborate chandelier above the grand staircase where guests were once welcomed to musicales and receptions given by the Stotesburys was one of the few reminders of Whitemarsh Hall's vanished grandeur.

Outside the mansion the statuary remained but protruding here and there from the walls of the building were small-encased motors used by Pennwalt scientists.

The remainder of the acreage was sold to Matthew McCloskey who constructed the development known as Whitemarsh Village.  (McCloskey also constructed the Schuylkill Expressway.)  Many of the three and four bedroom (with one or two baths) homes were purchased after World War II by returning G.I.s.

In 1963, as part of its expansion program, Pennwalt built a research center in King of Prussia and moved out of Whitemarsh Hall.  Whitemarsh Village residents (the mansion and 45.6 acres is an interior property surround by homes) began to be concerned about the future of the property.

Their concern turned to alarm early in 1964 when they learned Pennwalt had an agreement of sale (for a reported $500,000) for the property, contingent on getting approval from the Springfield Township Commissioners for rezoning to high-rise apartments.  A group of investors were proposing to build two high-rise luxury apartment buildings for the elderly next to Whitemarsh Hall.  The two buildings would have approximately 345 units and would extend 15 feet above the mansion.

The developers also proposed to remodel the mansion into approximately 45 additional units with the balance of the mansion to be used for recreational facilities for the residents, several stores including a pharmacy, a hair dresser and a commissary, which would sell groceries.  There would also be a restaurant, which would be open to the public.  Only the existing roads were planned for egress.

The property is zoned AA, the township's highest zoning and there was no-high rise district on the books.  The proposal for the high rise complex was neither accepted nor rejected by the commissioners because, they said in a statement to the public, the township had not yet adopted a Comprehensive Plan for the township.

Pennwalt had received a zoning variance to permit the firm to use the property as a research center and the variance was scheduled to die when Pennwalt completely vacated the property.  The firm continued to occupy one small outbuilding on the property and the variance remained in force.

Meantime, the company tried in vain to find a corporation which would use the property for research or a similar purpose or to find a prospective purchaser who would use the mansion as a nursing home or some type of non-profit institution which might be acceptable to the nearby residents and the commissioners.

Whitemarsh Hall was never occupied again after Pennwalt moved out but in the 1960s, the building was rented as the location for a low-budge rock horror film.

Pennwalt sold its holding in 1964 to Sidney t. Dvorak, who still lives at 8799 Cheltenham Avenue, Wyndmoor, across from Whitemarsh Village.  Dvorak, acting as the principal for Willow Associates, Norristown, purchased Whitemarsh hall and the surrounding 45.6 acres for $350,000.

Dvorak would never divulge the names of his associates in the enterprise or why they purchased the property except to say it was intended as "a long-term investment."

The new owner refused to hire a caretaker to guard the empty mansion and the vandals moved in.  The nearby property owners continually complained to the township but the situation and the mansion deteriorated.

Dvorak and his associates were not able to find a buyer and on October 8, 1969, Whitemarsh Hall was put on the auction block and, after less than spirited bidding, was sold to Kevy Kaiserman and George Neff for $700,000.

Whitemarsh Village residents united in 1973 to protest when Kaiserman and Neff submitted a curative amendment and plans for a 570-unit condominium complex to the commissioners.  The township did not have a condominium district in the zoning code.  In addition to objecting to the density which the complex would bring to Wyndmoor, residents were alarmed about the developer's plans to provide 1,140 parking spaces with the only entrance to the complex to be off Cheltenham Avenue, just below Patton road, and were concerned about the drainage problems the development would cause.

Six, long zoning hearing sessions were held before a packed auditorium in the Springfield High School , and the commissioners rejected the curative amendment and the proposed plan.  The developers took their appeal to the county court and up to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.  The courts upheld the commissioners' decision and the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

Then early last year, developer Jay Gross, who had lived on Gladstone road (at one time a dirt road called Plymouth road in Stotesbury's time) in Whitemarsh Village from 1949-1959, was approached with an offer to sell him Whitemarsh Hall.  Gross is purchasing the property and will develop it with 183 30-foot wide townhouses.  He says he had never considered the possibility that someday he would be developing the property when he lived on part of the old Stotesbury estate.

Gross is taking advantage of Springfield's new cluster zoning provision by providing for 17 two-bedroom units.  The ordinance permits a 20 percent increase (to 183) units in density.  The units are expected to sell in the $50,000 price range, subject to inflation.

A single access road is planned into the development from Cheltenham Avenue and although no traffic light is planned there, Gross will be required to place funds in escrow for a traffic study and possible signalization one year after the project is completed or when the units are 80 percent occupied, whichever comes last.

The Springfield commissioners are also requiring that the mansion be demolished and the three below-the-ground levels filled in with approved materials simultaneously with the beginning of construction.  Gross expects to begin construction of a sample house and demolition of the mansion during the summer.

What of the grandeur, the magnificence, the splendor that was Whitemarsh Hall and all it stood for?  None of it remains.  Some time ago thieves stole the building's copper roof and the rain pours through the rotting wood.  All the doors are gone and the windows are smashed.  The mirrors in the ballroom are destroyed and there are holes in the floors.  There is graffiti on the famous columns, which flank the entrance, on the walls, on the ceiling of the ballroom and in every other room in the building.  The statues in the gardens are toppled and broken, the grass is high, the roads are rutted and all but one are overgrown with weeds and impassable.

When the mansion is demolished, probably this year, what will remain to remind residents of that by-gone day?  Gross plans to recreate the formal gardens where Eva Stotesbury once strolled and make them an amenity of the development.

And there will be names.  The names of Horace Trumbauer architect of Whitemarsh Hall.  Lord Duveen, his advisor and Michel Clodion, the sculptor of the statues Mrs. Stotesbury donated to the Philadelphia Art Museum, will be remembered in years to come.  Trumbauer will lend his name to both a Drive and a Court and Duveen and Clodion will be the designation of a Drive and Court respectively.

And Stotesbury will be remembered because the development will be known as "Stotesbury Townhomes."

Sometime soon Whitemarsh Hall, the fabulous Stotesbury mansion in Wyndmoor, will be demolished.  But one reminder of that by-gone day will remain.  Jay Gross, developer of Stotesbury Townhomes on the tract, plans to recreate the French classical gardens, which Eva Stotesbury engaged Jacques-Henri-Auguste Greber, the French landscape architect, to design for her.

Greber had first come to this country in 1910 to design the gardens for Clarence H. Mackay's Harbor Hill estate on Long Island.

He returned to the United States again in 1913 to design French classical gardens for Lynnewood Hall, built by P.A.B. Widener and then owned by his son, Joseph.  His landscape design for Lynnewood Hall included a fountain with figures cast from molds carved by his father, Henri-Leon Greber, the sculptor.

Greber's work at Lynnewood Hall came to the attention of architect Horace Trumbauer, who had been commissioned to design Whitemarsh Hall.  Collaborating, the two men made their earliest sketches in 1915.  Ground was broken on October 20, 1916 by the George A. Fuller Co., the firm which constructed the mansion.  Work on Whitemarsh Hall and its gardens were not completed until 1920.

Commented James T. Maher in the Twilight of Splendor, "Greber's formal gardens at Whitemarsh Hall, lucid as geometry and eloquent of the ancient theatrical visions of architectural fantasy, may have been the finest example of French classical landscape art in America."

Greber was forced to modify the classical design because the grounds of the estate were not level.

His gardens embraced and were an extension of the mansion.  To the west of Whitemarsh Hall was an expanse of smooth turf, reported to be 200 feet long and 90 feet wide, with a pool at the end.  An open-air, enclosed "room" was at the opposite end of the axis, which could be reached from the mansion by descending an exterior stair patterned after one at Fontainebleau.  This garden was demolished several years later, possibly to open up the view.

In an area 200 feet by 100 feet, in the open end up the "U" of the ground floor plan of the hall, Greber designed a garden with fountains, gravel paths, beds of flowers and dwarf boxwood which had been secured from the gardens planted by Jerome Bonaparte at Woodbury, Maryland, when he was in this country.

The ground sloped and on the next level, 20 feet below, Greber planned a carpet of green turf, with parallel walks at either end to an intermediate level.  A curved stair with a fountain set in the retaining wall, led down to the level of the green turf.

Greber included a grove of maple trees in his plan and made use of balustrades, fountains, statues, topiary and stairs to enhance his gardens.  Included among the statues was one by his father, sculptor Henri-Leon Greber, in the center of four radial walks. Beyond the gardens were the auxiliary buildings of the estate, including a greenhouse, but much of the 300-acre property remained a wooded area.

Although Greber devoted some years of his life to designing gardens to complement the mansions of the wealthy, in later life he became a respected pioneer in urban planning, lending his talent to commissions throughout France, in Ottawa and in Philadelphia.  Philadelphia's Parkway is his design.