Idlewild (Media, Pennsylvania)
|
Idlewild
|
|
Frank Furness's summer cottage from the front
|
|
 
|
|
| Location | 110 Idlewild Circle, Media, Pennsylvania |
|---|---|
| Area | less than one acre |
| Built | c. 1890 |
| Architectural style | Queen Anne, Shingle Style |
| NRHP Reference # | 13000255 |
| Added to NRHP | May 8, 2013 |
Coordinates: 39°54′44″N 75°23′20″W / 39.9122°N 75.3889°W
Idlewild is a historic building near Media, Pennsylvania, designed by the Victorian-era Philadelphia architect Frank Furness as a summer cottage for himself and his family. He spent summers there until his death in 1912.
The house was built about 1890 on the grounds of the Idlewild Hotel, which Furness had designed in 1886. This was a mile west of "Lindenshade," the Wallingford summer house of his brother, Shakespearean scholar Horace Howard Furness. It was also a short walk to the Moylan-Rose Valley train station, which enabled him to commute to his architectural office in Philadelphia.
University of Pennsylvania Library (1888–91), circa 1910.
Idlewild, south facade, 2013.
"Idlewild" is constructed with a stone basement and brick first floor. The upper floors are framed in wood and clad with cedar shingles. It has a wrap-around covered porch, high-ceilinged rooms, and an irregular roofline with variously shaped windows and eyebrow dormers. Furness placed the service rooms and front and back stairs (with a shared landing, as at the Emlen Physick House) at the front. This increases the privacy of the rooms behind, and the visual interplay between the differing scales of the "service tower" and main house gives vibrancy to the façade. The "chronic eccentricity" of his ornament in other buildings is "rather restrained" here. But the complex façade both expresses function and presents the viewer with a puzzle to decipher.
...
Wikipedia