Cedarcroft
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Cedarcroft
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,_Kennett_Square_vicinity_(Chester_County,_Pennsylvania).jpg)
Cedarcroft in 1960
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| Nearest city | Kennett Square, Pennsylvania |
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| Coordinates | 39°51′34.98″N 75°43′9.03″W / 39.8597167°N 75.7191750°WCoordinates: 39°51′34.98″N 75°43′9.03″W / 39.8597167°N 75.7191750°W |
| Built | 1859 |
| Architect | Bayard Taylor |
| NRHP Reference # | 71000693 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | November 11, 1971 |
| Designated NHL | November 11, 1971 |
Cedarcroft, also known as Bayard Taylor House, is a historic house on Gatehouse Drive in Chester County, Pennsylvania near Kennett Square. It was built in 1859 for writer Bayard Taylor (1825–1878), and is a good local example of Italianate architecture. It remained Taylor's home until 1874, and is where he wrote some of his well-known works. It has been a private residence for most of its existence, spending a few years in the early 20th century as a private boys' school. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1971 for its association with Taylor.
Taylor built the mansion he named Cedarcroft near Kennett Square, Pennsylvania in 1859–1860. He personally supervised its construction, including its two-foot walls and tall tower, and later wrote a series of articles about it. He also owned the surrounding 200 acres of land which he had spent several years acquiring. He described the building's design as "large and stately, simple in its forms, without much ornament... expressive of strength and ornament." He lived here with his wife Marie Hansen, the daughter of the Danish/German astronomer Peter Andreas Hansen, whom he married in 1857. Several of Taylor's writings were either written at Cedarcroft or reference it, including his 1863 book The Poet's Journal, which he dedicated to his wife as "the Mistress of Cedarcroft".
Taylor pushed to complete the new home shortly after the birth of his daughter Lilian in 1858 and increased his writings for periodicals and offered several lectures to acquire the necessary revenue. Taylor laid the cornerstone for the house's tower on June 9, 1859, with a hidden time capsule. That zinc box, he wrote, contains coins, a newspaper, a copy of his book Views Afoot, as well as "an original poem by me, to be read five hundred years hence by somebody who has never heard of me."
Upon moving into the home in 1860, Taylor's family performed a farcical play co-written with Richard Henry Stoddard. In addition to Stoddard, Cedarcroft hosted several other literary figures, including George Henry Boker, Edmund Clarence Stedman, James Russell Lowell, James Thomas Fields, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Outside the house, Taylor planted a number of fruits and vegetables, including Latakia tobacco and melons. Plants included a giant sequoia from California, ivy, Dutchman's pipe, Virginia creeper, wisteria, and trumpet flower. After visiting the house, Sidney Lanier wrote a poem called "Under the Cedarcroft Chestnut" about a tree there that was alleged to be 800 years old. The first work which Taylor himself wrote while living in Cedarcroft was his semi-autobiographical poetic series The Poet's Journal, written within a month after moving in, though not published until 1862.
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