The Woodlands (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)
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The Woodlands
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Woodlands Mansion
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| Location | 4000 Woodland Avenue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US |
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| Coordinates | 39°56′49″N 75°12′11″W / 39.94694°N 75.20306°WCoordinates: 39°56′49″N 75°12′11″W / 39.94694°N 75.20306°W |
| Area | 53 acres (21 ha) |
| Built | 1770; rebuilt 1786–92 |
| Architect | William Hamilton |
| Architectural style | Neoclassical; Robert Adam Style |
| NRHP Reference # | 67000022 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | December 24, 1967 |
| Designated NHLD | December 24, 1967 |
| Designated PHMC | December 28, 1996 |
The Woodlands is a National Historic Landmark District on the west bank of the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia. It includes a Federal-style mansion, a matching carriage house and stable, and a garden landscape that in 1840 was transformed into a Victorian rural cemetery with an arboretum of over 1,000 trees. More than 30,000 people are buried at the cemetery.
The land that would become The Woodlands was originally a 250-acre (1.0 km2) tract in Blockley Township on the west bank of the Schuylkill River. It was purchased in 1735 by the famous Philadelphia lawyer Andrew Hamilton.
When Hamilton died in 1741, he willed his lands to his son, also named Andrew. The son survived his father by only six years, but in that time built up his landholdings enough to leave a 300-acre (1.2 km2) estate to his own son, William Hamilton (1745–1813), who acquired it at the age of twenty-one. William built a Georgian-style mansion with a grand, two-storied portico overlooking the river above Gray's Ferry. Following a trip to England after the American Revolution, Hamilton doubled the size of the dwelling, creating a 16-room manor with kitchens and service rooms in a windowed ground floor. The rebuilt Woodlands mansion became one of the greatest domestic American architectural achievements of the 18th century, recognized as a leading example of English taste and presaging architectural trends in the following century.
Hamilton was an active botanist, and his estate and greenhouses grew to contain more than 10,000 species of plants, including the first specimens introduced into America of the Ginkgo biloba, Paper Mulberry, Sycamore Maple, Ailanthus, Caucasian Zelkova, and Lombardy Poplar as well as plants grown from seeds harvested during Lewis and Clark’s expeditions, especially the Osage Orange (Maclura pomifera). Hamilton also collected and exchanged numerous native plants with his friends and neighbors, the Bartram family of botanists from nearby Bartram's Garden.
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