Historic High Hollow going up for sheriff’s sale

Posted 8/31/16

High Hollow, 101 W. Hampton Rd., was designed by American architect George Howe, who lived in the home for over a decade following its construction in 1917. The home is going on sheriff’s sale on …

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Historic High Hollow going up for sheriff’s sale

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High Hollow, 101 W. Hampton Rd., was designed by American architect George Howe, who lived in the home for over a decade following its construction in 1917. The home is going on sheriff’s sale on Sept. 13. (Photo by Amber Wiley) High Hollow, 101 W. Hampton Rd., was designed by American architect George Howe, who lived in the home for over a decade following its construction in 1917. The home is going on sheriff’s sale on Sept. 13. (Photo by Amber Wiley)[/caption]

by Kevin Dicciani

One of Philadelphia’s most historically significant estates, High Hollow in Chestnut Hill, designed and once owned by George Howe, one of Philadelphia's most important architects, is going up for sheriff’s sale on Sept. 13 for $91,100.

Construction on High Hollow, at 101 W. Hampton Rd., began in 1914 and was completed in 1917. The house would serve as the personal residence of Howe, who in 1932, along with Swiss architect William Lescaze, designed the PSFS Building at 12th and Market streets. Today it is considered to be America’s first international style skyscraper.

The 13,000-square-foot house is located on the edge of Fairmount Park, situated atop a slope that overlooks the Wissahickon Valley. The house, with six beds and six baths, sits on over four acres of land and features a gated entrance, a cobbled driveway, a stone-arched fence, a turret, a marble staircase, a two-story kitchen, a pool and a caretaker’s apartment. The property has an assessed value of over $2 million.

On Sept. 13 the house is scheduled to go up for sheriff’s sale because of a mortgage foreclosure. It will join another historic Chestnut Hill estate going up for sheriff sale, Greylock Mansion, which was originally supposed to go up for sale the same day but has since been postponed until Nov. 1. (Anyone interested in bidding on the Greylock Mansion should contact William M. Alleman, Jr., the attorney for the bank that owns the lead mortgage, at 302-442-7009.)

Lori Salganicoff, executive director of the Chestnut Hill Historical Society, said that High Hollow is currently unprotected – it has no historic registration nor are there any easements on the property. Therefore the CHHS has no standing on the sale of the property, unlike Greylock Mansion, which is protected through easements.

“The fact that this extraordinary building is not protected only highlights the deficits of the historic registry in Chestnut Hill and Philadelphia,” Salganicoff said. “Far too few buildings are protected. We cannot assume that the buildings we love will remain if we don’t act to protect them.”

Although High Hollow displays elements of the Beaux Arts tradition, High Hollow has been described as not conforming to any specific style from that time. Its stone structure, graduated terraces and gardens, though elaborate, are balanced by its symmetry, minimalism and classical design. It is often considered a precursor to modernism, as well as a major influence on the designs of early 20th century Philadelphia country houses.

The house is often lauded for incorporating local materials and reflecting its surrounding landscape. The purple stone that was used to construct the house came from an abandoned quarry that was reopened just for Howe. Samuel Yellin, an American master blacksmith who was often commissioned by Mellor & Meigs, supplied the metal work for the estate.

The design of High Hollow is the culmination of a variety of styles that Howe learned and utilized at the beginning of his career. Born in Worcester, Mass., in 1886, Howe received a B.A. in architecture from Harvard University in 1908 and then spent the following year in Italy studying and sketching Italian architecture. Howe was admitted to the Atelier Laloux in Paris, and in 1912 graduated from the city’s historic art school, the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where, under Victor Laloux, a French Beaux-Arts architect and teacher, Howe began a thesis that would later supply the groundwork used to design High Hollow.

Following graduation, Howe returned to Philadelphia and worked as an apprentice for the architectural firm Furness, Evans & Co from 1913-1916. It was around this time that construction began on High Hollow.

In 1917 Howe joined the firm of Walter Mellor & Arthur Ingersoll Meigs. Mellor & Meigs was a well-known firm around that period known for building traditional country homes in the neighboring suburbs of Philadelphia, such as the Francis I. McIlhenny residence in Wyndmoor. The firm’s residential designs are considered to be in the Neo-Norman style – a tradition which blended Howe’s formalism, structural honesty and his selection of sensitive materials with the theatrical and picturesque qualities of Meig’s works.

Howe and Meigs were absent from the firm from 1917-1919 when they served in the armed forces in World War I. Soon after returning from war, the firm of Mellor, Meigs & Howe began working on an array of projects, some of which would receive national interest and garner prestigious awards. They won the 1922 Gold Medal from the Philadelphia Chapter of the American Institute of Architects for the Robert T. McCracken residence in Germantown, and later the 1925 Gold Medal for Excellence in Design from the Architectural League of New York for the Arthur E. Newbold Jr. estate at Laverock Farm.

Howe left the firm in 1928 following an alleged dispute over who was credited for the design of the Marjorie Walter Goodhart Hall, the auditorium and concert hall of Bryn Mawr College. The same year Howe sold High Hollow to Samuel and Goldie Paley, a cigar mogul and an artist-philanthropist, respectively. Their son, William Paley, would become a key figure in establishing the Columbia Broadcasting System as one of America’s major radio and television networks. The Paley’s lived in the house for 20 years and then donated it to the University of Pennsylvania, which later sold it to a private owner.

In mid-1929, Howe would partner with Swiss architect William Lescaze, who studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Geneva, Switzerland. Their first commissioned work together was the Oak Lane Country Day School in Philadelphia.

Since 1926, Howe had been commissioned to propose a design for the new PSFS Building in Center City. It wasn’t until Howe partnered with Lescaze that his ideas for the project were slowly realized and then made a reality. Designed in the international style, the PSFS Building, completed in 1932, would become a piece of American history and one of those most iconic fixtures in Philadelphia’s skyline.

Lescaze and Howe parted ways in 1932. Howe, working independently, would go on to design Square Shadows in Whitemarsh for Walter Stix Wasserman and the Robert F. Welsh residence in Laverock. Later in his career he would work for the Public Buildings Administration in Washington, D.C, followed by a three-year stint as the supervising architect for the PBA under the Federal Works Agency.

He also served as Fellow at the American Academy in Rome from 1947-1949, and then as chair of the Architecture Department at Yale University. He retired in 1954 and returned to Philadelphia, where he lived for a year before he died in 1955.

Despite his storied life, many architects still consider High Hollow to be the greatest achievement of Howe’s career. It stands today, along with the PSFS Building, as a testament to his vision and his place in the history of American architecture. The marks he left on the city of Philadelphia are indelible, not to mention ubiquitous, and can be seen from Center City all the way to Chestnut Hill, either up in the sky or tucked away in the valley of the Wissahickon.

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