Lynnewood Hall [SEP] architect
Lynnewood Hall
Lynnewood Hall is a 110-room Neoclassical Revival vacant mansion in Elkins Park, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. It was designed by architect Horace Trumbauer for industrialist Peter A. B. Widener and built between 1897 and 1900. Considered the largest surviving Gilded Age mansion in the Philadelphia area, it housed one of the most important Gilded Age private art collections of European masterpieces and decorative arts, which had been assembled by Widener and his younger son, Joseph.
Peter A. B. Widener died at Lynnewood Hall at the age of 80 on
1943.
Lynnewood Hall suffered a general decline under the ownership of the Faith Theological Seminary, a religious group headed by Carl McIntire, which purchased it in 1952 for $192,000. During that ownership much interior detailing, such as mantels, walnut paneling, and landscape ornamentation was sold off in order to raise funds. This is evidenced by the 2006 auction of a French bronze figural fountain—one of only two major surviving Henri-Leon Greber commissions in America—originally installed at Lynnewood Hall.
Lynnewood Hall was added