DeArmond, Ashmead & Bickley was an early-20th-century architecture and landscape architecture firm based in Philadelphia. It specialized in Colonial Revival, Beaux-Arts, and English Arts & Crafts-style buildings, especially suburban houses.
Clarence DeArmond (1880-1953) was a 1903 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. He worked under Frank Miles Day, and formed a 1908 partnership with Duffield Ashmead Jr. (1883-1952). Ashmead was a 1906 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, who had studied under Paul Cret, and worked under Wilson Eyre. In 1911, the duo brought in a third partner, George H. Bickley (1880-1938), a 1903 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and a 1907 graduate of the École des Beaux-Arts, who worked under Horace Trumbauer. [1]
One of the firm's notable commissions was for alterations to "Fairwold," an 1888 Shingle-style summer house in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, designed by Wilson Eyre for T. Craig Heberton. In 1916, second owner Richard M. Cadwalader Jr. hired D, A & B to face the shingled walls with stone, and expand the house into a Tudor-revival mansion. Eyre's understated Arts & Crafts interiors were replaced by literalist period-revival set pieces. [2] Six years later, D, A & B added a massive music-room/solarium addition (with pipe organ and musicians' balcony), that was larger than the original house. [3] The building is now Or Hadash Synagogue.
D, A & B also made major alterations to Cadwalader's Philadelphia residence. They stripped the 1860 townhouse of its brick-and-brownstone facade and stoop, replacing it with a limestone Beaux-Arts facade. In 1964, this became the Delancey Place house of the author Pearl Buck.
The firm disbanded soon after Bickley's death in 1938. DeArmond worked briefly for the Philadelphia Housing Authority in the 1930s, and was one of the architects of the Hill Creek Housing Project.
Frank Heyling Furness was an American architect of the Victorian era. He designed more than 600 buildings, most in the Philadelphia area, and is remembered for his diverse, muscular, often unordinarily scaled buildings, and for his influence on the Chicago architect Louis Sullivan. Furness also received a Medal of Honor for bravery during the Civil War.
John Cadwalader was a commander of Pennsylvania troops during the American Revolutionary War and served under George Washington. He was with Washington at Valley Forge.
John Morton was an American farmer, surveyor, and jurist from the Province of Pennsylvania and a Founding Father of the United States. As a delegate to the Continental Congress during the American Revolution, he was a signatory to the Continental Association and Declaration of Independence. Morton provided the swing vote that allowed Pennsylvania to vote in favor of the Declaration. Morton chaired the committee that wrote the Articles of Confederation.
The Grange Estate, also known as Maen-Coch and Clifton Hall, is a historic mansion built by Henry Lewis Jr. (1671–1730) in Havertown, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Parts of a c. 1700 residence may be incorporated in the carriage house. The main house, built in c. 1750 and expanded several times through the 1850s, was purchased by Haverford Township in 1974. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 as The Grange.
The architecture of Philadelphia is a mix of historic and modern styles that reflect the city's history. The first European settlements appeared within the present day borders of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the 17th century with most structures being built from logs. By the 18th century, brick structures had become common. Georgian and later Federal style buildings dominated much of the cityscape. In the first half of the 19th century, Greek revival appeared and flourished with architects such as William Strickland, John Haviland, and Thomas U. Walter. In the second half of the 19th century, Victorian architecture became popular with the city's most notable Victorian architect being Frank Furness.
Theophilus Parsons Chandler Jr. was an American architect of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He spent his career at Philadelphia, and is best remembered for his churches and country houses. He founded the Department of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania (1890), and served as its first head.
Wilson Eyre, Jr. was an American architect, teacher and writer who practiced in the Philadelphia area. He is known for his deliberately informal and welcoming country houses, and for being an innovator in the Shingle Style.
Owen Jones was an American politician from Pennsylvania who served as a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives for Pennsylvania's 5th congressional district for one term from 1857 to 1859. During the American Civil War he raised a troop of cavalry that would become Company B of the 1st Pennsylvania Cavalry Regiment and served as Colonel.
Jehu Eyre or Ayer was an American businessman, veteran of the French and Indian War and American Revolutionary War, and member of the influential Eyre family, which played a major role in the American Revolution and the early Republic. Jehu's father George had emigrated to the New World in 1727; the family was descended from one of the oldest noble lines in England.
George Howe (1886–1955) was an American architect and educator, and an early convert to the International style. His personal residence, High Hollow (1914-1917), established the standard for house design in the Philadelphia region through the early 20th century. His partnership with William Lescaze yielded the design of Philadelphia's PSFS Building (1930–32), considered the first International style skyscraper built in the United States.
Frank Miles Day was a Philadelphia-based architect who specialized in residences and academic buildings.
Delaware County National Bank is a historic bank building in Chester, Pennsylvania, located at the southwest corner of 3rd Street and Avenue of the States adjacent to the Old St. Paul's Church burial ground. It was built between 1882 and 1884, and is a 2+1⁄2-story masonry building in the Renaissance Revival style. It is built of brick and brownstone and has a low hipped slate-covered roof. The roof features metal cresting, five projecting decorated chimneys, and four Corinthian order pilasters supporting the front pediment dormer. It was headquarters for the Delaware County National Bank from 1884 to 1930.
Furness & Evans was a Philadelphia architectural partnership, established in 1881, between architect Frank Furness and his former chief draftsman, Allen Evans. In 1886, other employees were made partners, and the firm became Furness, Evans & Company. George Howe worked in the firm and later became a partner at Mellor & Meigs, another Philadelphia firm.
Gibraltar, located at 2505 Pennsylvania Avenue in Wilmington, Delaware, is a country estate home dating from c. 1844 that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It takes its name from the Rock of Gibraltar, alluding to the high rocky outcrop on which the house was built. It is located just inside Wilmington's city limits and originally stood at the center of a much larger estate which has over time been reduced to the present area of about a city block in size. The house was originally built by John Rodney Brincklé and inherited by his brother's wife and children, before being bought in 1909 by Hugh Rodney Sharp, who was linked to the Du Pont family through marriage and work. Sharp expanded and remodeled the house, as well as commissioning the pioneering female landscape designer Marian Cruger Coffin to lay out the gardens.
Camp Hill is a small unincorporated community that straddles Whitemarsh Township, Upper Dublin Township, and Springfield Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. Located about 3 miles outside Philadelphia, the area played a role in the Revolutionary War.
John Odenheimer Deshong was an American businessman and banker in Chester, Pennsylvania. He came from a wealthy family including his father Peter Deshong and son Alfred O. Deshong.
John Larkin Jr. was an American businessman, banker and politician from Pennsylvania who served as the first mayor of Chester, Pennsylvania.
Emily Margaretta Roebling Cadwalader was an American socialite and philanthropist, based in Philadelphia. She is best known as the owner of two historic yachts, the USS Sequoia and the MV Savarona.