Spring house, giant sycamore, at Glen Fern (Livezey House).
The half of the big trees of the Wissahickon Hills are those that stand about the houses, or the sites of the houses, of the millers. All the houses are gone now save two, Glen Fern, the Livezey house; and the Monastery, built by the Gorgases and long lived in by the Kitchens. The Rittenhouse house, the home of the paper-makers, is still standing on Paper Mill Run, a tributary of the Wissahickon, and less than half a mile from the creek. Some of the mils on the creek, and their accompanying homes, were built as early as two hundred years ago. Some few of the trees that still stand are apparently as old as the houses they were left to shadow, or planted to shadow.
-- The Wissahickon Hills, Cornelius Weygandt, 1930
I don't know if this is one of the trees Professor Weygandt mentions in his book from 78 years ago, but isn't it nice to think so?
Spring house, giant sycamore, at Glen Fern (Livezey House).
2 comments:
The spring house photo is nice to see and probably that tree would have been there long before the professor got around to writing his book. Still, it is nice to have such books. All the way down here where I live I met and one of my assistants who I hired to teach the Juniors in high school had married a man named, "Kitchen." A very uncommon name around these parts but one your professor talked about as he talked about Rittenhouse who is the name of a man I used to work with in Research and Development. Another unusual name.
Excellent post. Dan.
Either that's a really giant tree or a really tiny house, I can't tell which! Either way that's a cool shot. (I guess the Rittenhouse house must be the same family that Rittenhouse square is named after.)
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