The Cliffs
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The Cliffs
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The Cliffs as it once stood
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| Location | East Fairmount Park near 33rd St., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania |
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| Coordinates | 39°58′45.8832″N 75°11′38.7276″W / 39.979412000°N 75.194091000°WCoordinates: 39°58′45.8832″N 75°11′38.7276″W / 39.979412000°N 75.194091000°W |
| Built | 1753 |
| Architect | Unknown |
| Architectural style | Georgian |
| NRHP Reference # | 72001147 |
| Added to NRHP | March 16, 1972 |
The Cliffs is a historic country house located near 33rd and Oxford Streets in East Fairmount Park, Philadelphia. It is a Registered Historic Place.
The Cliffs was built in 1753 by Philadelphia merchant Joshua Fisher (1707-1783), the great-grandfather of Joseph Wharton. It overlooks the Schuylkill River from the east, just north of Girard Avenue Bridge and quite close to where Fountain Green Drive meets Kelly Drive along the river. It is a country house in the Georgian style, constructed in stone, with two stories and a basement, originally heated by double fireplaces on both floors and basement. The estate surrounding the house included a farm.
The house was the location where Benjamin Franklin's daughter, Sarah Franklin Bache, and her sewing group made clothing and bandages for the Continental soldiers during the Revolutionary War.
Joshua Fisher (1707-1783) settled in Lewes, Delaware, marrying Sarah Rodman, and as a young man started a hat-making business using the locally plentiful animal skins. He developed a robust transatlantic trade in animal pelts and became wealthy, moving his family to downtown Philadelphia in 1746, and building the Cliffs as a country getaway. He brought his family to the Cliffs house and farm in the summer and they grew up interested in nature, with an appreciation of the Quaker testimony of simplicity. Fisher's son Samuel Rowland Fisher, his wife Hannah Rodman Fisher, and their three children, Sarah, Deborah, and Thomas, spent their summers in the house during the years 1793-1834.
The house remained in the Fisher family for more than 100 years until the Fairmount Park Commission purchased it in 1868. The house was rented and maintained until the 1960s when it became vacant. The house had a substantial amount of woodwork and paneling. It was taken over and repaired in the 1960s by the Shackamaxon Society, a local civic group.
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