Spatial and Functional Transformations: Fountain Low to Graeme Park Graeme Park - Horsham Plantation, Horsham Township Pennsylvania
In 1739, Dr. Thomas Graeme purchased his father-in-law's abandoned malt house. This site, as well as a copper and iron-ore mine, contributed to Governor Keith's dream of tearing a financial fortune from the wilderness; he desired to rule over this fortune in the same manner as his feudal ancestors had done for hundreds of years at Bodham Castle in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Unfortunately for Keith, his dream failed and this failure was physically embodied in the unfinished and lifeless shell of a large utilitarian building. In addition to this structure, a tenant house and a barn, situated on a few cleared acres on the extreme northern end of what was then Philadelphia County, remained the estate's only other improvements. By 1739, the goals for spatial organization which Keith had constructed, literally and figuratively, became obsolete as aspirations for the estate as an economic and production enterprise were largely crushed. Graeme's purchase of the estate in that year introduced a redefinition of the site, as Keith's production-oriented "Fountain Low" became the leisure-oriented "Graeme Park."
Dr. Graeme purchased the land in 1739, for what ultimate purpose at that time is not known. What is certain is that sometime between 1755 and 1764, probably with the assistance of his daughter and her coterie of friends, Graeme transformed the utilitarian landscape into a gentleman's country estate with a finely-detailed residence as its centerpiece surrounded ornamental gardens and 300 acres of parkland. By 1750, Philadelphia had become the largest, wealthiest, and most populous city in the English colonies and a tradition of the most prominent families keeping country estates had already been established.
This tradition gained speed in the third decade of the eighteenth century as such extant estates as Bel Air and Stenton rose on spacious grounds outside of Penn's city. Ultimately, the largest concentration appeared in the rolling landscape to the northwest along the Schuylkill as far as Germantown. Formulating a country estate may not have been the initial impetus for Graeme's purchase as Horsham lay a bit further from Philadelphia than most of the other estates, but Graeme soon transferred his interest in Fountain Low to its ultimate transformation into Graeme Park-a country retreat for himself and his family. While the Graemes were certainly connected with the most prominent Philadelphia families and probably could have afforded to construct a fabulous, high-style mansion from the ground up, he chose to finish a failed utilitarian structure into his relatively remote country retreat. His decision to do this could very well have stemmed from simple cost, why waste extensive monetary resources on an entirely new house sited on more expensive grounds closer to the city, when the solidly constructed exterior building shell already existed in a pleasant setting?
Regardless of his purchase motivation, Graeme and his family set out to transform the unfinished building shell into a Georgian showpiece. While his alterations to the malt house were probably underway before some of the most ambitious colonial gentry houses were started-for example Mount Pleasant (1761) and Cliveden (1763-1767)-numerous models already existed in the locality as well as in books like James Gibbs's A Book of Architecture (1728). While the exact layout of the malt house's interior divisions and chimney stacks is not known, Graeme's goal would not be so easy to complete. The malt house was a single-room deep structure, long and narrow, and, clearly, a fully articulated central-passage plan, with four or more rooms opening off the central passage, was out of the question. However, within the perimeter restrictions of the one-room deep plan, Graeme finished off a country house with all of the requisite social spaces and formal presentation. Upon entry from the single northern doorway, one encountered a small entry and stairhall, that while modest in size provided vital circulation space and social buffering for the rooms opening off of it. Most importantly, Graeme had two high-style entertainment spaces constructed in his house on the eastern sides of the first and second stories, connected by a comparatively constrictive, yet still graciously appointed stair.
Graeme Park's mansion house staircase ascended across the door from the parlor and terminated on the second floor directly in front of the entrance to the parlor chamber. Given the constrictive building shell and an inability have two grand rooms on the first floor; the size and appointment of these eastern rooms; the spaces' location in regard to the stair; the colonial tradition for having entertainment spaces on more than one floor; and perhaps the most compelling fact-the presence of a number of well-appointed and heated rooms elsewhere on the second and third stories for use as sleeping chambers, Graeme clearly conceived of two fashionable entertaining spaces stacked one over the other and tied together by an elegant stair.
In her 1787 advertisement for the sale of Graeme Park, Elizabeth Fergusson noted that the second story included three "bedchambers," this designation, however, does not negate the argument that the parlor chamber was initially conceived of as public space. The room function may have changed during the period after her father's 1772 death. Furthermore, even if this room was never intended solely for entertaining, Elizabeth Collins Cromley asserts that second-story bedchambers of prosperous colonial households were often used for small entertainment, and occasionally for public events-in which case its expensive appointment would be justified and logical.
Between 1755 and 1764 Thomas Graeme, probably aided in part by his well-read and intelligent daughter Elizabeth, transformed the failed production site of Fountain Low into his own high-style country estate of Graeme Park. This transformation was in keeping with Philadelphia gentry tendencies for having both an opulent townhouse in Philadelphia as well as a rural retreat-generally to the north of Penn's city. When he died in 1772, Graeme willed the estate to his daughter, who had, since her youth, enlivened the status-symbol house and grounds with an intellectual salon.