I’ve been doing a whole lot of real estate browsing lately.  I’m in the process of looking for a home, and as such, I’ve been going to every opening in what I believe to be in my price range, and getting packet after packet of information from helpful realtors in the process.  I’m in full-fledged home overload right now.  However, as I tour and investigate, I’ve noticed that nothing quite makes me sadder than to see a beautiful old home in a state of disrepair.  Philadelphia’s decaying Lynnewood Hall is an especially sad case.

Built by famed mansion architect Horace Trumbauer for industrialist Peter A.B. Widener in 1900, Lynnewood Hall is an incredible building.  When it was built, it cost $8 million dollars in 1900 money, which is the equivalent of $212 million in today’s greenback.  Originally it was a 70,000 square-foot, 110-room mansion sitting on 480 acres (220 of which were working farmland to feed the family).  Sold by the Widener family in 1956, Lynnewood Hall is now a shell of its former self, picked clean by various purchasing religious groups to raise funds.  What was once the lap of luxury is now as empty and sad as Detroit.

If I ever win some kind of super-epic lottery, I’m going to buy up and restore beautiful old homes like Lynnewood Hall.  Something like Lynnewood Hall, the last of the great Gilded Age mansions, deserves protection and preservation.  It’s a shame what’s been done to that place.

Tags: Lynnewood Hall, Peter A.B. Widener, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, crumbling mansion, real estate, historic home, Horace Trumbauer, abandoned homes, unusual buildings

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