Wissahickon Style VII, or Hidden Kingdoms and Jill McConkey

Lehman's Lane

Post 54

Price St.

 There are unexpected golden pockets, hidden kingdoms tucked along the Wissahickon. One of them is in Germantown within view of Alden Park and within view of Lincoln Drive.

Jill McConkey, an ex-librarian, grew up in this neighborhood. Because she  loves it so much, she communicates its beauties and history well,

 So please welcome the guest author of this blog --Germantown Friends, Grinnell College and the late lamented Columbia University Libary School alum, library advocate, and all around good Josephine,--Jill McConkey.

 "West Price was a special street. Stunning in spring, with an archway of huge Norway maples, and steep front banks reefed in old azaleas.   It was an especially close community because the twin houses meant  we were packed tightly together and because we all had a generous front porch."

{House at right is where Jill grew up.}

 We had an annual Victorian Christmas party (jointly with residents of brick-paved neighboring Stafford Streett,) a tree planting party(to replace some of the dying old maples with fast growing  red oaks) and even (for a brief time) our own little newsletter. Crime was infrequent since we were in an isolated niche of  Germantown.










We were also able to take full advantage of the nearby park (walking Forbidden Drive) and  running (and rolling) around the grounds of Alden park and swimming in its unique indoor tiled  pool.  My father used to tell us that the red blazes on the stone bridges over Papermill  Run (near Rittenhouse Town)was the blood of Lene Lenape braves.



 It was an ideal neighborhood for trick-or-treating although it took forever as all of the adults had to chat with each other.

This is a documented William Eyre House

Lehman's Lane

We hopscotched,roller skated and jumped roped (even double Dutch) on the smooth asphalt of Price Street, jumping in leaf piles in the fall and discovering that Sycamores drop the best, crunchiest leaves. --

 We also spent a lot of time playing, with neighbor kids, on "Private" yellow brick Lehman's Lane...



Sledding down its steep curves in Winter, playing Hide and Seek and Baby in the Air in summer.  We thought we were the only ones who knew about a hidden special mansion called Oaks Cloister.

Front of Oak Cloisters

An elderly white-haired man and his even older mother used to sit under the dark, arched, Studio porch staring at us.  The Studio was a spooky stone structure behind the Tudor style main house. When they were inside we couldn't resist trespassing.

The Cloisters

 The sprawling, neglected side yard included overgrown fountains and other curiosities. Something of an enchanted secret garden for us.  We gathered acorns from around the grounds for ammunition  in acorn fights.

One  day we found the courage to peek in the windows.  We saw an astonishing cloistered art gallery with marble statues and antique paintings in gilded frames.  We darted away fast because we fancied that this mysterious old man was something of an ogre.

Historical Marker

Turned out that this old man, according to my father, was the son of Joseph Huston who had designed the PA state capitol.  Joseph had gone to  jail for a few years because he'd been convicted of graft  in 1910 for cost overruns on the construction and furnishings. This aura of scandal only added to his mysteriousness in our eyes.

Side view Oak Cloisters

Side Door

 Then one Halloween my father, who had always had a strong interest in architecture, took us to his Studio while trick or treating.

More Side View

We trembled with fear as we approached but were also very curious. He turned out to be the nicest man you could ever wish to meet and generously donated money to our little orange UNICEF containers and gave us each an enormous chocolate bar."

Jill, ever the librarian, has also been kind enough to furnish these links

http://www2.etown.edu/docs/InstitutionalAdvancement/OaksCloisterBrochureWeb.pdf

http://mtairy.patch.com/articles/private-historic-home-in-germantown-to-host-malts-march-fundraiser

 Happy All Saints, All Souls.

The local guard cat, who saw fit to accompany me as I wandered.


Happy Halloween

The River, or The Thing Itself: Wissahickon Style VI

 "The world-hidden, wood embowered Wissahickon" George Lippard

Post 37

Around sunset earlier this spring I went walking down an uncrowded Forbidden Drive. The lively peace of it was moly to my soul. Somewhere in the complex interlacing of all the elements of this ecosystem was a simplicity that ordered my own interlacings and complexities. A river valley feels like a decent analogy for wholeness.

The valley is not pristine, but layered, graceful and vital. You never know what old, odd feature you will come across. Was some bit of stonework built by colonists to grind corn, 19th-century business people to power mechanical processes or the WPA during the Great Depression? 

Yet, nature seems almost too fresh and abundant to admit ingress of human handiwork. Perhaps these rocks just grew here, like the plants, roots and vines that cover them?  

                                                                                                    

 In places, it is almost as difficult to tell the difference between organic and inorganic as between natural and man-made.

But instead of this blurring breeding confusion and anxiety, it seems to produce peace and contentment.

So many people use this Watershed for so many pleasures, yet it still retains a whiff of something like unmediated nature. It is as if you can catch a feel of an undefinable something, something like a peaceful wilderness or a blessed fairyland, something inchoate and ineffable but nevertheless, apprehendable. 

                                                                                                                                                                       

                                                                           

Our area's style has much in common with that of other contemporary early railroad suburbs on the East Coast. Some of the areas around N.Y., such as Bronxville or Weschester Co., even have a similar schist underlay. Still, the best of Wissahickon Style carries with it a strong hint of that only partially recoverable wholeness that our unusual gorge, tunneled out of its channel of rock, is capable of conveying.

 

Roses in February

Post 25

It may be warm,  but it is bleak and the garden, well... see what I mean.

I need a rose.

Yes, that helps. It is not easy to write a gardening blog in these months, especially if you want to avoid the usual winter cliches. Looking at the local architecture that holds up our gardens, cradles and rocks them, is a partial solution, but not an entirely gratifying one. The light is hard, the buildings unsoftened. I need more roses.

Yes, better.  One of the drawbacks of bleakness, which feels like nature's boredom, can be a lack of solid inspiration. And without real inspiration I may start to extravagate (no, not a word but should be (OED--pay attention! (Like Auden, one of my dream aspirations is to coin a new word and get it credited there; unlike Auden, it's a dream aspiration.))) To clarify, to extravagate means to unthinkingly exaggerate to a point almost past truth (though a kernel remains.) It lacks malice but remains an easy temptation for those of us who are of imagination a bit too compact. Itself an example of extravagation, it is a word that I made up in High School without realizing I'd made it up. I extravagantly extravagated exaggeration into extravagate. 

In short, in my last post I extravagated. I dissed mansions and castles. I do not really dislike them, just the more money than taste ones. 

And now, keeping on theme,(yes, there is a theme,) I am going to slip back towards an earlier post, "Roses in January," and fill in some information I did not include in the earlier post on The Red Rose Girls.

Below is a picture of Cogslea that shows more of the house and less of the caryatids.

And here's one of Cogshill from the back

The pergola at Cogshill.

And here is a relevant illustration from Elizabeth Shippen Green's scrapbooks at the Free Library of Philadelphia.

Last of all. I want to credit the source of most of my information on The Red Rose girls. It is the book,  The Red Rose Girls: An Uncommon Story of Art and Love by Alice A. Carter, ISBN 978-0810944374.

And I also want to add a caveat, that this is an informal blog. Like informal correspondence and other forms of informal writing, such a blog is not meant to be read as a solid reference source. I try to be accurate but I do not fact check everything. For instance, I made a mistake about Edith Emerson in my earlier RRG post. I have gone back and corrected it as I value accuracy.  At times however, I can find even myself a bit too transported by the act of writing, and end up extravagating reality's rose into a slightly stranger flower. So please, take this with a grain, though not a bucket, of salt. I know I do.