The Monastery is a historic stone house in 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:...

, Kitchen's Lane at Wissahickon Creek

Wissahickon Creek

Wissahickon Creek is a stream in southeastern Pennsylvania. Rising in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, it runs about 23 miles passing through and dividing Northwest Philadelphia before emptying into the Schuylkill River at Philadelphia...

 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...

.

It was built in 1747 and added to the National Register of Historic Places

National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

 in 1972. The house's connection to monastic life is uncertain or simply legendary, but German mystic and hermit Johannes Kelpius

Johannes Kelpius

Johannes Kelpius , a German Pietist, mystic, musician, and writer, interested in the occult, botany, and astronomy, came to believe with his followers in the "Society of the Woman in the Wilderness" that the end of the world would occur in 1694...

 lived nearby in the Wissahickon Valley from 1694 until his death in 1708, and connections with monks from Ephrata

Ephrata, Pennsylvania

Ephrata is a borough in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, United States, south east of Harrisburg and about west by north of Philadelphia. It is named after Ephrath, a biblical town in what is now Israel. Ephrata's sister city is Eberbach, Germany, the city where its founders originated. In its...

 have been reported. According to the History of Philadelphia (1884):

...there is a recital in the deed that Joseph [Gorgas] had since (1747) erected at his own cost and charges "a three-story stone house or messuage on a certain piece or spot of land." Joseph Gorgas was a member of the society of Seventh Day Baptists. It is conjectured that he erected this house for purposes of seclusion and meditation

Meditation

Meditation is any form of a family of practices in which practitioners train their minds or self-induce a mode of consciousness to realize some benefit....

. It is said, "Hither were gathered congenial spirits like himself, and there they held sweet communion

Mysticism

Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...

." A small strip of land below the county bridge is pointed out as the place where the monks were accustomed to administer the rite of baptism

Baptism

In Christianity, baptism is for the majority the rite of admission , almost invariably with the use of water, into the Christian Church generally and also membership of a particular church tradition...

in the Wissahickon, and on the early township map the spot is designated as the Baptisterion. Joseph Gorgas sold the lot with the house, now called the "Monastery," to Edward Milner in 1761, and it has since gone through various hands. The house in which the unknown author of the "Chronicon" lived for seventeen months could not have been the stone mansion to which tradition affixes the title. There is no proof that Gorgas allowed his house to be used for monastic purposes, but novelists have made much of the legends and tales of hermits and monks that cluster thickly about the vicinity.