Very neat home!

I'm sure the house has had at least a house keeper for most of its existence.

Yes, that is a cook's kitchen, chairs and all. Not that different than my late in-law's who always had a cook/housekeeper.

It's a wonderful old house and frankly, I don't mind that 3rd floor laundry room at all! I'd just add my rotary iron and keep the ironing board set up and add sinks if there are none (might be some on the other side of the w/d).

Bathrooms and kitchen need updating and it needs cosmetic work, but it's still a gracious home. I adore those windows over the doors in the entrance hall and that staircase is a beauty. Wish I were young and had a lot of money - that would be right up my alley!

Really interesting house. Why is the chandelier hung so high over the DR table? Call me crazy, but I like this wallpaper..... but why is the bed turned with the headboard into the middle of the room?

To be away from the uninsulated walls radiating cold.

Neat antique radio!

We used to sleep with our heads at the foot of the bed in my great-grandmother's house in the summer - to take advantage of the attic fan/open windows.

Also - where is this house? Pardon my ignorance.

What a beautiful house.

Curious that the date of construction is listed as 1868 when Nicholas Biddle died in 1844.

A bit more on Biddle and the house here -- apparently the house was restored in 1972 -- at The Philly History Blog: Nicholas Biddle, Philadelphia Hellenophile

from which:

Born to wealth and blessed with brilliance, Biddle graduated from Princeton University — at the head of his class — at the tender age of 15. This was only after the University of Pennsylvania refused to grant the Philadelphia wunderkind a bachelors degree a few years before.

Like John Quincy Adams, Biddle (1785-1844) was well-traveled from an early age. In 1804, he accompanied the American minister John Armstrong to France as his personal secretary, and sat in the pews of Notre-Dame as Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself Emperor of France. ...

Nicholas Biddle was only the second American to visit Greece, the birthplace of modern democracy. In May 1806, the young Philadelphian sailed from the Italian port of Trieste and landed in Zante, Greece. For three months, he roamed through the land which had been “the first brilliant object that met my infancy.” Like many well-educated men of his time, Biddle supported Greece’s struggle for independence from the Ottoman Empire. ...

As Biddle gazed at the ruins of the Acropolis in Athens, he came to believe that this architectural language was best suited to the ideals of new American Republic, which strangely like Greece was heavily based on chattel slavery. To Biddle, the best Greek buildings had an understated majesty. This was a result of their purity of form, use of the “Golden Ratio” of 1 to 1.618, and richness of materials over mere ornamentation. ...

When Biddle returned to Philadelphia, he must have looked with dismay at the architecture of his own sober Quaker City. Most of its buildings were of plain red brick with white wood trim, various versions of the British-influenced Georgian or the somewhat newer Roman-influenced Federal style. Over the coming years, as Biddle rapidly ascended local and national power structures, Biddle made it his mission to transform the City of Brotherly Love (φιλεω “to love” and αδελφος “brother”) into the Athens of America. He founded and edited Port-Folio, the nation’s first literary magazine. Soon after he married the heiress Jane Craig, Biddle remodeled ... his city home on the 700 block of Spruce Street in the Greek style.

From the obituary of the current owner (whose name comes up when you Google the house address):

He died "at the age of 96 at his home on Spruce Street, across the street from Old Pennsylvania Hospital, founded by Benjamin Franklin and the first hospital in the nation, where Doctor Gill had practiced medicine for 50 years. ...

"Dr G moved both his family and his practice one half of a block down Spruce Street when his office landlord – the hospital – decided to reclaim his office at 801 Spruce Street for building expansion. Dr G bought a large house from the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority just down the block for his office suite and residence. The historic house, known as the Evans-Biddle-Kitchen House, had last been used by the American Catholic Historical Society Library. Originally built in the 1790s by merchant Whitten Evans, who kept both an elephant named Columbus and a huge tortoise in the back garden which local children were permitted to ride, the house is best known as the city house of financier Nicholas Biddle, President of the Second Bank of the United States on Chestnut Street, which today houses the portrait gallery of Independence National Historical Park. As a young physician at the hospital with a baby son, Dr & Mrs G would walk the neighborhood near 8th & Spruce, and Mrs G told her eldest son years later that Dr G would stop and say that he would like to live in that big house someday when his practice took root. Dr G was very interested in history, American history, building histories, and especially the history of his home and office. He was particularly proud that he was the second doctor to live in the residence, the first having been Dr. James Kitchen, a 19th century Doctor of Homeopathy. When working in his lovely garden behind the house, Dr G would often unearth discarded medicine bottles and jars believed to have been left over from Dr Kitchen’s medical preparations.

"Dr G was committed to the Washington Square west neighborhood where he lived and worked. His interest in the neighborhood, history, and books, began when he was a teenager, just graduated from West Philadelphia High School. He spent the more than half year between January graduation and attending Lehigh University in September working for the Curtis Publishing Company on 6th St, across from Independence Hall and Park. He had the opportunity to walk the neighborhood and become acquainted with the library at the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, the other publishing houses surrounding Washington Square, the historic architecture of Pennsylvania Hospital on 8th Street, the antiques shops on Pine Street, and as a runner for editors and writers at the Curtis Company with the bookish denizens who lived and worked in the neighborhood."

The 1868 date may be the last time something was added to the house but real estate listing dates are notoriously inaccurate.

The neighborhood would not have been good when Dr. G moved into the house, but a number of physicians who worked at Pennsylvania Hospital and people like Louis Kahn lived in the neighborhood despite the fact it was not great and was closely surrounded by some very bad neighborhoods. But that's how Philadelphians lived, and some still live, to some extent.

There's actually a wing behind the bedroom so I am not sure it was the cold. Maybe they felt best sleeping facing the other direction for some reason. I know that Mark Twain slept with his head at the "foot" of the bed but I thought that had to do with the ornamentation on his headboard.

From the The Hahnemannian Monthly, Volume 29, which I found on Google Books,

In 1853 Dr. Kitchen moved from 39 Spruce Street, where he had lived for 24 years, to the large double house, 715 Spruce Street, which he at that time purchased, and which was his home for 40 years or until the time of his death. This house, at the time of its erection, in 1828-29, was considered one of the best built and finest houses in Philadelphia. It was built by Whitton Evans, an importing merchant, who had several sailing vessels trading at Canton China, and other East Indian ports. Evans lived in the adjoining house on the east. For two years the lumber was piled on the lot for thorough seasoning, and two years were required for its completion. Evans never occupied the house, however, becoming insane and spending several years in an asylum before his death. The house was, later, owned and occupied by Nicholas Biddle, the renowned financier and president of the United States Bank, and here were held many famous receptions given to the prominent men of the country and attended by the elite of Philadelphia -- its wide halls and spacious parlors specially fitting the house for such purposes.

From the Oct. 1963 issue of The Catholic Historical Review (interesting in light of the above which notes that Evans never occupied the house; you have to wonder about that poor elephant):

In Dec. 1963 "The American Catholic Historical Association will be the guest of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia in the latter's historic house on Spruce Street. The house was built in the first decade of the 19th century by an East Indies importer named Whitton Evans. Among other exotic things Evans imported the first elephant, Columbus, which lived in the gardens attached to the house until its death. Evans sold the house to Nicholas Biddle, who lived there during the controversy with Andrew Jackson over the U.S. Bank. Later a doctor bought the house from the Biddles, and he in turn sold it in 1895 to the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, which had been incorporated 10 years before. Another attraction of the house is what is reputed to be the first bathtub in America (or at least one from the first shipment of such conveniences from Europe); carved of Carrara marble, it now adorns the garden."

The second American to visit Greece? I find this mostly unbelievable and highly preposterous! Perhaps a word is missing from that story? The second known American to visit Greece would make that much more believable. Yes. I understand costs/wealth/transportation issues of that time, so don't even go there. :)

The country was only thirty years old and most Americans at the time didn't travel more than a few miles from home their entire lives, so I am not sure it's preposterous.

My SOs ancestors traveled back to England twice in the 1600s and were jailed each time...but it wasn't America yet, they were still English subjects.

Most people if they did go back to Europe only returned to where they came from

Well, aside from the fact that America was only 30 years old at the time, Biddle beat Lord Byron to Greece by several years (and Byron went there mainly because the Napoleonic Wars made touring around Europe difficult), and this was all still Ottoman Greece then, not particularly safe or welcoming to travellers and well before the Greek War of Independence. And long before Baedeker. Most in the later part of the 19th century who undertook a Grand Tour were quite happy with the Roman antiquities in Italy beyond the usual continental itinerary. I'm assuming the writers at the time meant an actual visit with the intent to visit and study the antiquities and history of ancient Greece, not American sailors and officers putting into a Greek harbor briefly.

And definitely transportation issues lol -- from Biddle's journal, he wrote that from the island of Zante (now Zakynthos), he took a boat to the nearest point in the Peloponnesus, a distance of 18 miles, which took eight hours. Good thing he was young, single, well-connected, and well-to-do!

From "Nicholas Biddle in Greece: The Journals and Letters of 1806", edited by R.A. McNeal (Penn State University Press, 1993):

Though Biddle's cosmopolitan sympathies were Roman in their origin, his passion for ancient architecture was decidedly Greek and not Roman. In this respect he parted company with the founding fathers and even with such a contemporary architect as Benjamin Latrobe, whose designs were essentially Roman with occasional Greek touches. Biddle was in fact one of the major promoters of a real Greek architectural revival in the U.S. This fact is well known and is the most obvious side of his neoclassicism. Apart from his presidency of the US Bank, Biddle is perhaps best remembered today because of his patronage of architecture. ... So strong was his influence that all the branch offices of the [Second US Bank on Chestnut Street] were built in the style he approved, and only in this century have banks ceased to look like Greek temples.

But why Greek and not Roman architecture? The answer is simple: Biddle was one of the few people of his generation who actually saw real ancient Greek buildings, or the remains of them, on their home ground. Until the second half of the 18th century the Aegean was remote and only barely accessible, and knowledge of ancient architecture tended to be restricted to the Roman version of Greek ideas, whether Roman buildings or Roman architectural treatises. But when Napoleon effectively closed most of Europe, including Italy, to travel for a generation, making Greece one of the few remaining options, and when the ferment of revolutionary ideas brought on the Greek War of Independence and a general wave of philhellenism in Europe and America, Greek architecture came at last to be appreciated for its own merits. But it is still a cause for some surprise that Biddle could promote its utility for America, or that, between 1800 and the outbreak of the Civil War, the so-called Greek Revival could gain such wild popular acceptance. Of what relevance, after all, were the ancient Greeks to modern Americans? The founding fathers, having a thoroughly negative view of Greek political institutions, had gone out of their way to avoid fashioning a revived Greek democracy; and their architecture, classical though it was, was decidedly Roman. Biddle became convinced that true Greek architecture, simple and grand and so different from the baroque fussiness of its Roman incarnation, was a suitable dress for modern republican principles. As American political institutions, though inherited in part from antiquity, had a definitely original style of their own, so they should receive physical and symbolic expression in a new national style of architecture, one derived from the Greek, but not merely an archaeological copy o fit. Biddle's trip to Greece saw the genesis of this belief. It is not an accident that he spent almost the whole of his banking career in a building inspired by the Parthenon in Athens or that he was popularly known as "Nick the Greek".

Love that "Nick the Greek" part, especially for early 19th century America : ) .

A good chunk of the introduction seems to be available in Google Books (link above) for anyone else interested in this sort of stuff, including more on the Napoleonic Wars, Ottoman Empire, and the background of Biddle's journey.

I've never heard of this house before, but I'm several states away, so I suppose that isn't unusual. I definitely enjoyed reading about Nicholas Biddle and his house. "Born into wealth and blessed with brilliance" -- he certainly was an outstanding person.

I wonder if the latest owner was running up and down all those stairs at age 99.

I enjoyed the pictures of the house. So many lovely things -- the staircases, the carpets, the windows -- but they're punctuated by cheap items such as the gooseneck lamps above the kitchen cabinets and metal file cabinets. I noted that they still have a corded phone in the kitchen (at least it wasn't a rotary). It's clear that this house was a work-in-progress /was decorated by multiple people over time. In other words, a real family house.

The second American to visit Greece?

I was struck by that statement too ... but then I thought of a couple things that make me say, "Eh, maybe..." :

- America was only 30 years old at this point, so prior to that time people who traveled from "the Colonies" to Greece would've been British. I mean, generations of people lived in what you and I call America ... but they identified themselves as citizens of the British crown until 1776.

- Few people had the means to visit other countries, and the country was rebuilding after a major war -- so the people who had means might not have been as free to travel as they had been in past years.

- Greece wasn't a particularly strong exporter of goods, so people would only have visited for family or intellectual pursuits, and few people were willing to risk a sea voyage just for fun.

- No one had a passport, and records of such travels were not kept ... so this statement really is impossible to verify.

Another attraction of the house is what is reputed to be the first bathtub in America

Okay, I'm not really buying that either. Plenty of people would've had hip baths, which they would've filled with tubs of boiled water. Rather, I wonder if it was the first built-in bathtub serviced by plumbed-in water.

lived in the neighborhood despite the fact it was not great and was closely surrounded by some very bad neighborhoods. But that's how Philadelphians lived, and some still live, to some extent.

I think that's common in all /many big cities. I live in a mid-sized city, and we certainly have the old historic houses (worth millions) one street apart from "the projects". I used to teach high school in that high-low area, and it made for an odd (bad) dynamic amongst the students: They seemed to think that's how the whole world lives -- you're either richy-rich-rich and live in an historic mansion (or an infill in that area) and are able to jet off to the New York or the islands for a long weekend ... or you live in something one step up from a cardboard box and get free lunch at school. Growing up in that juxtaposition, these kids seem to be unaware of the middle class ... but I digress.

Nicholas Biddle's summer home, Andalusia, north of Philadelphia is much more impressive and is what most people probably think of as the Biddle Mansion.

Biddle the second American to visit Greece.

It is likely that Benjamin Latrobe, widely credited as instrumental in creating Greek Revival in the US, visited Greece on his Grand Tour of the Continent in the late 18th C. But at the time he was a British citizen.

beckysharp, thanks for the background.

I wonder if the latest owner was running up and down all those stairs at age 99.

According to the obit, "Though inactive in recent years, he read incessantly and kept his mind sharp until just a few days before he died" at age 96.

I enjoyed the pictures of the house. So many lovely things -- the staircases, the carpets, the windows -- but they're punctuated by cheap items such as the gooseneck lamps above the kitchen cabinets and metal file cabinets. I noted that they still have a corded phone in the kitchen (at least it wasn't a rotary). It's clear that this house was a work-in-progress /was decorated by multiple people over time. In other words, a real family house.

The lights on the kitchen cupboards pointed toward the ceiling are... odd.

The obituary notes that his wife died of cancer in 1983 and he never remarried. Makes you wonder if they had planned more restoration/remodeling later on, and then perhaps he lost heart/interest without his wife. And possibly also decided, like some men of his generation, to just "bach it" thereafter. From the obit, he was quite busy -- with several adult children and their families, active on a number of boards including charities, working as a doctor until he was 80, and travelling extensively.

Between the regular maintenance, hopefully irregular emergencies, and then the 1972 restoration (probably around the time the the last owners bought the place), he and his family probably spent more money than one thinks on the ~200-year-old house.

I wonder if the latest owner was running up and down all those stairs at age 99.

He may not have had to, all that much. He may have had everything he needed on the second floor. My grandmother did not go upstairs in her house for weeks at a time. My mother came downstairs once in the morning after she was dressed and stayed on the first floor until bedtime other than extenuating circumstances. Before she had the chair lift it meant basically crawling up or coming down the stairs seated on the steps. After the chair lift she still did not like to get out at the top if no one else was at home, she was afraid of falling. People accommodate when they want to stay in their house.

The lights on the kitchen cupboards pointed toward the ceiling are... odd.

This bounces light off the white ceiling and gives a more ambient light than pointing them down at the floor. It's indirect lighting and much kinder than cutting holes all over 150-200 year old intact ceilings.

Makes you wonder if they had planned more restoration/remodeling later on, and then perhaps he lost heart/interest without his wife.

I really doubt it. I have been in any number of houses of people from this generation, either tread on lightly, like this one, when they moved in, or 1960s-70s era renovations (which may have been necessary in a shell). And the house looks exactly the same 40-50 years later when it gets put up for sale. I've seen a couple of these in the last year alone.

Andalusia, north of Philadelphia is much more impressive and is what most people probably think of as the Biddle Mansion.

I know someone who lived on the estate until fairly recently, although I am not sure they lived in the main house?

No one had a passport, and records of such travels were not kept ... so this statement really is impossible to verify.

On the other hand I am not sure that someone undertaking such a journey at that time would keep quiet about it, or be be able to do it privately.

Rather, I wonder if it was the first built-in bathtub serviced by plumbed-in water.

Maybe that's it. I looked at a house a half block from mine, perhaps within the last ten years that had a bathroom with a zinc tub, a toilet built into a bench and it was all dark-wood paneled, and the water supply lines ran along the surface and the taps were blacked brass that looked more like outdoor spigots than anything else. (It also had working interior gaslights).

Of course the new owners destroyed it, despite the fact that there were other, modern (not post Civil-War 19th c.) bathrooms in the house.

Count on it, this house will be decimated and look like something suburban and 21st century inside more likely than not.

This bounces light off the white ceiling and gives a more ambient light than pointing them down at the floor. It's indirect lighting and much kinder than cutting holes all over 150-200 year old intact ceilings.

Aha. Thanks, pal, makes sense.

I have been in any number of houses of people from this generation, either tread on lightly, like this one, when they moved in, or 1960s-70s era renovations (which may have been necessary in a shell). And the house looks exactly the same 40-50 years later when it gets put up for sale. I've seen a couple of these in the last year alone.

I appreciate your local insights. Thank you. Such a very different approach to what you find nowadays.

And given what you say is coming (sob...), it seems even more of a crime after previous owners opted for the treading lightly approach.

On the other hand I am not sure that someone undertaking such a journey at that time would keep quiet about it, or be be able to do it privately.

Journals and long letters were a compulsion and expectation then. Much like this era's social media : ) . Very much along the lines of "Pictures or it didn't happen". There's actually a book called "American Travellers Abroad: A Bibliography of Accounts Published Before 1900" by Harold Frederick Smith which runs to several hundred pages covering a little over 100 years.

And there were American passports, from about 1775 onward (with a break for the years under the Articles of Confederation). Some of the earliest ones were designed by Ben Franklin and based on the French passport. And not only did the Dept of State take over the issuing in 1789, but various cities and states, and even notaries public, issued their own. But the main restrictions to free travel to Greece would have been more external -- Greece under the Ottomans and as part of the Empire, then the War of Independence, the Napoleonic Wars etc.

James Biddle, Nick's great-great-grandson, was born at Andalusia and died there too. From his 2005 obit in the NY Times:

James Biddle, a leader in preserving America's homes and landscapes of historic value, including Andalusia, his family's 19th-century estate near Philadelphia, died at home there yesterday. He was 75. He died in his sleep of natural causes, his family said.

As president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Mr. Biddle, known as Jimmy, defended architectural landmarks like Grand Central Terminal and the original exterior of the United States Capitol.

Years earlier, he was instrumental in raising the money to save Olana, the Moorish manor perched above the Hudson River that was built by the artist Frederic Edwin Church.

"We Americans must decide if we want to preserve what we have or if we just want to pave it over, high-rise it and factory it," he wrote in Travel Leisure magazine in 1972.

In his 12 years at the National Trust, the organization reached beyond the East Coast to designate historic sites as far away as California, and it began awarding grants and loans to support neighborhood preservation projects. When he left in 1980, the trust's membership had grown to 150,000, from 13,000.

Mr. Biddle was previously a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. There he expanded the American Wing's collection to include pieces from not only Colonial era but also from the 19th century on, acquiring elaborately carved furniture by John Henry Belter.

There he expanded the American Wing's collection to include pieces from not only Colonial era but also from the 19th century on, acquiring elaborately carved furniture by John Henry Belter.

"He had a great sense for domestic spaces," said Morrison H. Heckscher, chairman of the American Wing. "He had a tremendous sense of design, and he was particularly noted for the way he could put together a room."

Mr. Biddle's expertise in historical furnishings was sought by first ladies Jacqueline Kennedy and Lady Bird Johnson, by President Richard M. Nixon in assembling a team to coordinate the country's bicentennial celebration, and by committees in charge of renovating governors' mansions.

Enamored of the home, he often expressed his hope that some historical landmarks would remain occupied rather than simply becoming museums.

He embraced that ideal by restoring and preserving the 100-acre estate acquired in 1814 by his great-great-grandfather, the financier Nicholas Biddle. Andalusia, which sits along the Delaware River, remains a 19th-century tribute to ancient Greek architecture and a repository of antique French, English and American furniture and draperies. A national historic landmark, it is open to the public by appointment.

Mr. Biddle was born at Andalusia on July 8, 1929. He attended St. Paul's School in Concord, N.H., and graduated from Princeton, where he studied art and archaeology. He served in an intelligence unit of the Army during the Korean War.

In 1955, he joined the Met as a curatorial assistant. He became associate curator of the American Wing in 1961 and curator in 1963.

He left in 1967 to lead the National Trust until 1980, when he became a consultant to Sotheby Parke Bernet and chairman of the National Preservation Institute.

I really doubt it. I have been in any number of houses of people from this generation, either tread on lightly, like this one, when they moved in, or 1960s-70s era renovations (which may have been necessary in a shell). And the house looks exactly the same 40-50 years later when it gets put up for sale.

It might not be just "this generation". It may be a personality quirk that leads one never to change anything.

I'm thinking of my uncle and aunt, who bought a sprawling ranch house in the 80s, while their eight children were still at home. The house wasn't in the best of condition, but it sat on 3-4 acres of land with multiple outbuildings in a good area and had tremendous potential. I helped them move, and I was in the house perhaps a dozen times over the next couple years ...

But then a number of things happened: my parents divorced, and "that side of the family" took against my mom, I went away to college, the older cousins to whom I'd been close graduated and scattered. All in all, it was more than 20 years 'til I was in the house again ... but when I came for my aunt and uncle's funerals (one week apart -- one died, and the other committed suicide), the house was exactly as it had been ... same wallpaper, same pink sinks with aluminum edging, etc. They weren't rich, but my uncle owned his own business, and they were certainly what you'd call "comfortable". They had the means to update /make changes, but they just never did.
a toilet built into a bench and it was all dark-wood paneled, and the water supply lines ran along the surface and the taps were blacked brass that looked more like outdoor spigots than anything else. (It also had working interior gaslights).

That's interesting. I wonder if a toilet-built-into-a-bench isn't a pretty good idea. You'd have all that space underneath for the plumbing to run, and you wouldn't have to clean behind the toilet. I'm picturing a little bench like you'd see in an outhouse.

Journals and long letters were a compulsion and expectation then. Much like this era's social media : ) . Very much along the lines of "Pictures or it didn't happen".

Yes, that's true. Similarly, people used to visit friends for 1-2 months at a time -- certainly not our cultural expectation today.

This is a very interesting topic.

It might not be just "this generation". It may be a personality quirk that leads one never to change anything.

Oh, I agree. But this is only something that can be determined after the fact. There are probably people decorating as we speak that won't change a thing until they move to a nursing home. But we won't know that for another 40 or 50 years.

I wonder if a toilet-built-into-a-bench isn't a pretty good idea. You'd
have all that space underneath for the plumbing to run, and you wouldn't
have to clean behind the toilet. I'm picturing a little bench like
you'd see in an outhouse.

That's what it looked like. The bowl was undermounted like a undermount sink. It was something like this:. This is English, probably 1860 or so?

It's particularly interesting because in the 1960 census, there were still houses in Center City that did not have inside flush toilets, (and many more that had a single flush toilet in the basement)

That's what it looked like. The bowl was undermounted like a
undermount sink. It was something like this:. This is English, probably
1860 or so?

It's particularly interesting because in the 1960 census,
there were still houses in Center City that did not have inside flush
toilets, (and many more that had a single flush toilet in the basement)

That's what I was picturing ... except I was imagining a modern seat on the wooden bench ... and I hadn't imagined a "lid" that could be closed. I still think it looks like a pretty good idea: Loads of space for the plumbing, no messy behind-the-toilet area to clean. I'm personally not a bathroom reader, but plenty of space for magazines.

I was thinking of a cleaner-nicer version of our summer camp outhouse ... but with plumbing: