Noble Brigham ‘20
In the grainy, silent color video shot by Bill Knowlton ‘73, the camera pans around an eerily empty and ivy-covered mansion.
John Garrison ‘73, describes this video as “What galvanized the whole [fight to save it] …The stark differences between the art, the form, the experience of the old, and the lack of all that with the new.”
It then cuts to its demolition. Construction equipment from Geppert Brothers rips at the gothic stone work, smashes through walls and floors, and snatches 19th century EA memorabilia, including team photos and memorial chairs from the Locust Street campus that were deemed worthless and left behind.
This was the destruction of “Yorklynne,” an estate on the Merion campus of EA that served as the Upper School from 1921 to 1973.
After World War I, Episcopal had a problem. They had outgrown the Locust Street campus and needed athletic field space. In addition, the neighborhood was transitioning from old money townhouses to commercial buildings.
The move to Merion was part of the general trend of the era. Friends Central and Agnes Irwin also left cramped downtown quarters for Victorian Main Line estates. At the time, the school was cash strapped, especially after it spent $225,000 on the property, and never really got around to demolishing “Yorklynne,” which at one point had several mortgages on it. It served as the Upper School, but also housed offices, the library, and the school store.
“Greville Haslam had a vision when he moved there in 1921. The school was in a very precarious financial condition, and he bet the whole ranch that if they moved out to the country with more space, they could attract more kids,” says John Garrison.
Architecturally, it was the most significant house at the Merion campus. Home of John Odgers Gilmore, it was designed in 1899 by William L. Price, whose own home was just across Berwick Road. He had chosen Price after holding a competition.
“The 1890s were when Price became one of the few sought after architects for the wealthiest Philadelphians,” remarks Greg Prichard, Preservation Planner for Lower Merion Township, “Price’s commissions throughout the decade built upon an increased sense of architectural freedom (having broken off from a partnership with his brother), his clients’ unlimited budgets, and a new appreciation for a wider range of architectural styles inspired by historical European influences.”
Jim Garrison ‘75, John’s brother and a local architectural historian and preservation architect, says, “It made a statement on its site and for its owner, but I think its true significance is more in how as a complete composition, the full Arts and Crafts movement was woven through it because what Price developed more than a showplace house was a full environment.”
Gilmore, who had attended Princeton and befriended Woodrow Wilson, owned a successful liquor business, was the President of Colonial Trust Company, and was known as “The Snuff King” because of his leadership of W.E. Garrett, a snuff manufacturer. Garrett’s had its mills in Yorklyn, Delaware, hence the name of the house. One of his three sons, Garrett, was named for the company and became a champion rower, winning medals at the 1924 and 1932 Olympic games.
Students loved the house. John Garrison says, “What really made it interesting going to school in ‘Yorklynne’ was there were so many rooms of different sizes with different art and you could picture the history.”
Because Episcopal was perennially cash poor, they could never afford to adequately maintain it. Henry Albrycht, a retired woodworking teacher who began at EA in 1973, states, “when the building was purchased, the philosophy in terms of the way to preserve a school was to make sure that they could get from one year to the next in terms of the budget …there probably wasn’t a routine maintenance plan.”
Episcopal decided to demolish the Upper School around 1967 when a report prepared by an educational consultant recommended constructing new buildings. “Yorklynne” was seen as a fire trap and there was a need for new parking and more modern classrooms.
“We did have a few small fires with cleaning materials, so it was not just a whim,” says Jay Crawford, Head of School from 1974-2002.
Albrycht remarks, “as the song goes, they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”
This decision was met with an outcry. Some faculty, parents, alumni, and students, including Robert Venturi ‘44, formed the Committee to Save the Upper School, which hired Day and Zimmerman to produce a feasibility study that recommended turning it into a new arts building and faculty apartments or at least mothballing it for future use; before art classes had been held in the estate’s carriage house. They even went to court in Montgomery County, paying $5000 in legal fees, and sued EA successfully to get an injunction on November 14th, 1973.
In an October 8, 1973 Scholium editorial, John Garrison wrote, “The fact that in the face of a well-researched study by known architects, the Board still refused to halt demolition, does not speak well at all for the Trustees-or for Episcopal.”
James Quinn, President of EA (a title that ranked above Headmaster and was essentially a fundraising position) demanded, “Who says Price was such a good architect?”
Before the injunction, to prevent any preservation, John Garrison claims, “Jim Quinn gave the order to the maintenance folks and on a weekend they basically went in and gutted the place. The whole promise was ‘Oh, we’re saving all the artifacts so that when the house is torn down they won’t be lost.’ That was the excuse for doing this… They went in with crowbars, took the windows out, took out artifacts, and basically it was a huge amount of destruction.”
The “salvage” was done without any permits and caused about $100,000 worth of damage, according to a December 20 editorial by Elizabeth Knowlton. Quinn was chastised by the Lower Merion Board of Commissioners for illegal demolition work.
The committee was too late. “By the time we actually got together and had a meeting, it was already decided pretty much that it would have been, at that point, prohibitive, in terms of cost, to do anything in terms of renovation or preservation of the building,” remembers Albrycht. Demolition began December 5th, 1973 after the injunction was dissolved and was over within a few days.
There was also no money in the precarious Episcopal coffers. In a time of national economic crisis, John Garrison notes, “We were teetering on financial collapse… They just had no money. $100,000 was a good year for annual giving.”
The Board feared preservation would distract financial support from their new plans. Subpoenaed meeting minutes claimed that, “those in favor of preservation do not represent a sizeable faction of the Academy family,” even though several board members supported it, many more were amenable to considering it, and 95% of students signed a petition against demolition.
Jane Gilmore, great-granddaughter of John Gilmore says her father, who had been familiar with the house as a child, “felt rather helpless because he had not lived there for so long and all he could do was write a letter. He just couldn’t believe it. He thought it was a waste.”
Not everyone had strong feelings about the demolition, however. Carl Denlinger, a retired Language Department Chair and French teacher, says, “The classrooms were small and not terribly well designed…I was not upset by it.”
At the same time as the Upper School demolition, the lower school and middle school buildings, both architecturally significant, as well as the old chapel, were also torn down.
Nationally, preservationists were beginning to increase their activism as urban renewal projects and overzealous city planners cleared Victorian buildings, including many in Philadelphia. “Yorklynne” fit into the trend and contributed to future preservation victories.
“The Historic Preservation Act had only come in 1966, and the National Register wasn’t until 1976. So it was a time when preservation was evolving from looking at very special things out of context to understanding that you’re trying to preserve some context and the built pieces are part of that,” states Jim Garrison.
The demolition was denounced in several news articles and a TV documentary.
“If the dream of Episcopal’s board is only for the new,” wrote The Philadelphia Bulletin’s architectural critic, Nessa Forman, “it is a mindless dream, without vision, without respect for America’s roots.” In a satirical piece, Forman later awarded Quinn and the Board the “Attila the Hun Destruction Trophy” with the prize being “a front row seat in the next staged book burning.”
The Gilmores attended the auction of salvaged contents, held in the auditorium by Samuel T. Freeman’s after the demolition, and bought mantles, windows, and the newel post from the grand staircase. Much of the furniture was designed by Price. Recently, one of the Will Price tables from the house, made at Rose Valley, where Price led an arts and crafts community, sold for $237,500 at Rago Auctions. The January, 1974 auction only netted $11,500.
Some teachers took it upon themselves to rescue things. At the time, spokeswoman Elinor Bonner said, “We had a terrible theft problem once we closed the Upper School.”
Denlinger states, “Weathervanes were a prized possession and certain teachers succeeded in getting a weathervane, but the furniture was not very desirable.” Many things were thrown away or simply abandoned.
John Garrison despised James Quinn and refused to serve as class agent until he was removed from office. He soon got his wish. Quinn, according to several sources, was pushed out in 1975 because he refused to adapt and could not meet his fundraising quotas.
The community was still able to come together after the decision. Crawford equates the demolition with coeducation and the campus move, and states, “Most of the people understood in their mind that those rooms and facilities were not appropriate for schools anymore… I started out on the side of wanting to see if we could preserve it but then when the due diligence started to mount in terms of what it would cost to pay for this, I really felt it would be difficult to do.”
Today, on the old EA campus in Merion, the “Yorklynne” carriage house is still standing, the billiard room “hunting scene” is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the weathervane from the carriage house as well as a knight stained glass window from the mansion are in the campus center lobby. Originally, Jane Gilmore says there were four knight windows. However, three disappeared during the move from Merion.