Sedgeley was a mansion, designed by architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe, and built on the east banks of the Schuylkill River

Schuylkill River

The Schuylkill River is a river in Pennsylvania. It is a designated Pennsylvania Scenic River.The river is about long. Its watershed of about lies entirely within the state of Pennsylvania. The source of its eastern branch is in the Appalachian Mountains at Tuscarora Springs, near Tamaqua in...

 in Philadelphia in 1799-1802.

Design and construction

The land where the house was located was originally owned by Robert Morris, but was seized and auctioned off in 1799. William Cramond, a wealthy merchant, purchased the house. Immediately upon acquiring the land, Cramond hired Latrobe to improve the property and build the mansion, which was to serve as Cramond's country house. The mansion was situated on a hill overlooking the river, 80 feet below.

The two-story house, the first built in America in a Gothic Revival

Gothic Revival architecture

The Gothic Revival is an architectural movement that began in the 1740s in England...

 style, had a hip roof

Hip roof

A hip roof, or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope. Thus it is a house with no gables or other vertical sides to the roof. A square hip roof is shaped like a pyramid. Hip roofs on the houses could have two triangular side...

 and dormer

Dormer

A dormer is a structural element of a building that protrudes from the plane of a sloping roof surface. Dormers are used, either in original construction or as later additions, to create usable space in the roof of a building by adding headroom and usually also by enabling addition of windows.Often...

s with steep roofs, and was approximately 75 ft in width and depth. Other Gothic elements included scalloped bargeboard

Bargeboard

Bargeboard is a board fastened to the projecting gables of a roof to give them strength and to mask, hide and protect the otherwise exposed end of the horizontal timbers or purlins of the roof to which they were attached...

s on the eaves, and windows with label moulding

Molding (decorative)

Molding or moulding is a strip of material with various profiles used to cover transitions between surfaces or for decoration. It is traditionally made from solid milled wood or plaster but may be made from plastic or reformed wood...

s and other Gothic characteristics. The interior plan of the house was similar to the one that Latrobe used in John Harvie

John Harvie

John Harvie was an American lawyer and builder from Virginia. He was a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1777 and 1778, where he signed the Articles of Confederation....

's home in Richmond, Virginia

Richmond, Virginia

Richmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. It is an independent city and not part of any county. Richmond is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Greater Richmond area...

, and later, the John Markoe House in Philadelphia and the Pope Villa

Pope Villa

The Pope Villa in Lexington, Kentucky, USA, was designed by Benjamin Henry Latrobe in 1811 for Senator John Pope. It is one of only three extant Latrobe residences in the United States. The Pope Villa in Lexington, Kentucky, USA, was designed by Benjamin Henry Latrobe in 1811 for Senator John Pope....

 in Kentucky

Kentucky

The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...

. The front of the house featured a portico, and a two-story entrance hall. Latrobe's design called for ashlar

Ashlar

Ashlar is prepared stone work of any type of stone. Masonry using such stones laid in parallel courses is known as ashlar masonry, whereas masonry using irregularly shaped stones is known as rubble masonry. Ashlar blocks are rectangular cuboid blocks that are masonry sculpted to have square edges...

 stone exterior walls, stone or brick window trim, and wooden construction for the piazza

Piazza

A piazza is a city square in Italy, Malta, along the Dalmatian coast and in surrounding regions. The term is roughly equivalent to the Spanish plaza...

. Cramond did not retain Latrobe to provide on-site supervision of construction, and did not entirely follow Latrobe's plan.

Ownership

Cramond owned the mansion for a short period, as he was forced to sell it in 1806 due to bankruptcy. Another merchant, Samuel Mifflin, bought the Sedgeley mansion, but he then sold the house in 1812 to James Cowles Fisher, a shipping merchant, who used it as a summer residence. For some period of time, Fisher left the house vacant or leased it to a tenant. Fisher sold it in 1836 to Isaac S. Loyd, a real estate speculator, who decided to subdivide the house and did not take good care of it, letting it fall into disrepair.
The city of Philadelphia purchased the adjacent Lemon Hill

Lemon Hill

Lemon Hill is a Federal-style mansion in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, built by the merchant Henry Pratt. Originally part of Robert Morris's estate, The Hills, Pratt purchased at a sheriff's sale for $14,654 in 1799. According to Pratt's letterbooks, recently discovered by Philadelphia Museum of...

 property in 1844, which was turned into a public park. By setting aside open space along the river, Philadelphia hoped to better protect the city's water supply. A group of wealthy residents sought to expand the park to include the Sedgeley property, and they organized a fund to help achieve that. Though, the fund was short of the $70,000 needed, so through use of eminent domain

Eminent domain

Eminent domain , compulsory purchase , resumption/compulsory acquisition , or expropriation is an action of the state to seize a citizen's private property, expropriate property, or seize a citizen's rights in property with due monetary compensation, but without the owner's consent...

, the city of Philadelphia paid the $45,000 balance and acquired the Sedgeley property in 1857. The house was demolished a short time later, and the land is now part of Fairmount Park

Fairmount Park

Fairmount Park is the municipal park system of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It consists of 63 parks, with , all overseen by the Philadelphia Department of Parks and Recreation, successor to the Fairmount Park Commission in 2010.-Fairmount Park proper:...

.

Porter House

The Sedgeley property also included a tenant's cottage (Porter House), designed by Latrobe, which still exists. Though Latrobe spent nearly a decade in Philadelphia, designing numerous buildings, the Sedgeley cottage is the only building of his that remains in Philadelphia. For a while, the Porter House was used by the Parks Guard and served as a jail. It was rescued from demolition and converted to office space in the 1990s by the Fairmount Park Historic Preservation Trust and is currently occupied by Outward Bound

Outward Bound

Outward Bound is an international, non-profit, independent, outdoor educationorganization with approximately 40 schools around the world and 200,000 participants per year...

.