The Joseph Harrison House (Second)- Holmesburg, PA

The Second Joseph Harrison House, 1856. Holmesburg, PA

Philadelphia SAH

The country house that Joseph Harrison commissioned Sloan to design for him, as he had for his city house (see previous post) was neither less grand nor less eccentric. This is potentially the only surviving photograph of the house, which was poorly documented. This picture was taken before its demolition in 1901 for a water treatment plant. Harrison had had Sloan design him a sophisticated, European, Anglo-Italianate structure for his city living. For his country house, he continued with the elaborate European styling. The house, at least from this angle, follows the pavilion plan. It has two pavilions jutting out from the sides with a porch in between enclosing a polygonal bay (it appears to hold a staircase) connected by glassed in bays. The roofline varies dramatically between the three elements, central bay, pavilion, and connecting wings. The façade is stuccoed with quoins and a thick entablature with closely spaced s curve brackets intersecting a thick architrave molding. The window surrounds are Greek in inspiration, with eared moldings and a small pediment, unclassically supported by small brackets. The whole was topped by a cupola. To one side was a classical greenhouse with an onion dome. But the real eccentricity was the Russian baroque belltower. Harrison spent time in Russia developing the railroads there, and like Samuel Colt, another industrialist who spent time in Russia, when building his house incorporated Russian designs. Colt added an onion dome to his factory in Hartford as well as a series of onion-domed greenhouses to his own Italianate mansion. Harrison's is rather more drastic and a great example of the folly-design found in the picturesque English Romantic tradition in which one's house reflected the souvenirs of their travels, even in the form of structures.