Georgian Architecture

Cliveden was built from 1763 to 1767 as a summer home for prominent lawyer Benjamin Chew and his household. No named architect is known, but nine original design drawings are attributed to lawyer and draftsman William Peters. Its high-style Georgian design drew on architectural pattern books imported from England and was influenced by the Classical styles of Greece and Rome. Cliveden was constructed by master mason John Hesser and master carpenter Jacob Knorr, among others, and these Germantown builders used regional materials including local Wissahickon schist fieldstone and locally sourced lime for mortar and stucco. Its scale and massing were new to Germantown in the 1760s and larger than most colonial homes of Philadelphia. The house has two stories, a full-story cellar below ground, and a half-story garret. Its façade is arranged in five bays with a projecting center bay, and the house is double pile, or two rooms deep, with later additions. The front door is framed by a Doric frontispiece with a full entablature and pediment, and the pediment is repeated at the cornice line. Cliveden has a gable roof, unusual for a Georgian house and reflective of the Germantown context, with two gabled dormers on the front elevation of the garret, two broad brick chimneys at the roof ridgeline, and five massive urns raised on brick plinths decorating the roof. The main house is flanked by two dependencies: a Kitchen and Wash House, later the Estate Office and Smokehouse.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania · United States