Woodmont (Gladwyne, Pennsylvania)
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Woodmont
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Woodmont in 1902.
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| Location | 1622 Spring Mill Rd., Gladwyne, Pennsylvania |
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| Coordinates | 40°4′3″N 75°17′39″W / 40.06750°N 75.29417°WCoordinates: 40°4′3″N 75°17′39″W / 40.06750°N 75.29417°W |
| Area | 72 acres (290,000 m2) |
| Built | 1891-94 |
| Architect | Will Price |
| Architectural style | Châteauesque |
| NRHP Reference # | 98001192 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | August 5, 1998 |
| Designated NHL | August 6, 1998 |
 An American Castle - Woodmont the Alan Wood Jr. estate, by Wanda Kaluza |
Woodmont is a mansion and hilltop estate of 72 acres (290,000 m2) in Gladwyne, a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. In 1953, it became the home of evangelist Father Divine, and the center of his International Peace Mission movement. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1998.
Woodmont was designed in 1891 by Quaker architect William Lightfoot Price in the French Gothic style for Alan Wood, Jr., a steel magnate and former U.S. Congressman. Overlooking the Schuylkill River, the industrial town of Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, and the Alan Wood Iron & Steel Company Plant, the chateauesque mansion was completed in 1894 at a cost of one-million dollars.
The site is the highest elevation in Montgomery County, and features views of 15 to 20 miles. The Schuylkill Expressway passes by the estate, hundreds of feet below.
The model for Woodmont was the George W. Vanderbilt mansion, Biltmore, in Asheville, North Carolina. Price had designed a nearby hotel for Vanderbilt, the Kenilworth Inn (1890–91), and was intimately familiar with the then-under-construction chateau.
Woodmont includes tennis courts, a swimming pool, stables, several outbuildings, greenhouses, a stream, and walking paths. The original property spanned more than 400 acres (1,600,000 m2), including a working farm with two dairy barns (one survives).
Alan Wood, Jr. occupied the estate for less than a decade. A year before his 1902 death, he sold it to his nephew, Richard G. Wood, who lived there for 28 years. Richard began subdividing the land in 1929, including the sale of 200 acres (810,000 m2) to the Philadelphia Country Club.
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