American Versailles: Philadelphia’s Lynnewood Hall

Perhaps no house better personifies the American idea of the great British country house than Lynnewood Hall. Located just outside Philadelphia, this enormous Neoclassical house is considered one of the greatest surviving Gilded Age mansions in the US. Designed by the prominent, American, Gilded Age architect Horace Trumbauer, Lynnewood Hall was built between 1897 and 1899 for P.A.B. Widener, who made an enormous fortune from streetcars and investments in steel, tobacco, and oil. Though it has the longest façade of any residence in the United States and once featured one of the finest French gardens in America, the jewel in Lynnewood’s crown was its art collection, considered the finest private art collection in the world by the 1920s.

All this magnificence only lasted for two generations and after the death of Widener’s son, Joseph, in 1943, the contents were auctioned off, the art collection donated to Washington’s National Gallery of Art and the great house abandoned. But Lynnewood Hall is being reborn with the 2023 purchase by the Lynnewood Hall Preservation Foundation, which is in the process of returning the property to its former glory.