A Facebook group called RMS Titanic Facts, History and Biography – Encyclopedia Titanica recently posted an ode to Lynnewood Hall’s former owners, George D. Widener, his son, Harry, and his valet Edwin Keeping, each of whom passed away aboard the RMS Titanic 112 years ago on April 15.
From the post:
Lynnewood Hall, a 110 room Beaux Arts mansion in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania (a suburb of Philadelphia) is the largest home of a Titanic passenger on either side of the Atlantic. It was the home of the second richest man on the Titanic, George D. Widener. Goerge, his 27 year old son, Harry, and his valet perished in the disaster. George’s widow, Eleanor Elkins Widener, and her maid survived in lifeboat number 4. Altogether there were five Titanic passengers who lived in this incredible mansion. The Widener and Elkins families were to streetcars what the Vanderbilts, the Harrimans and the Goulds were to railroads. The aerial shot below of Lynnewood Hall shows this Amerian palace in its early 20th century heyday (it is colorized). Only in an aerial shot like this one can you see just how mamouth the Widener mansion actually is. Within its walls were enormous art galleries designed to hold one of the most fabulous private art collections in the world (how on display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington). In that back area was an indoor swimming pool. The house is larger than the long-since demolished New York chateau of the Astors or the grand English manor of the Countess of Rothes. The architect of Lynnewood Hall, Horace Trumbauer, was the architect of the celebarated Philadelphia Museum of Art and much of Duke University, as well as a myriad of great American mansions for families such as the Vanderbilts and the Dukes. Much of the interior was designed by Jules Allard and Sons who did the interiors of the Vanderbilt mansions in Newport. Sadly, some of the mansion’s rooms were sold off to help maintain the seminary which owned the house after the Wideners moved to more modest quarters in the 1940s. After the seminary abandoned Lynnewood Hall in the early 1990s the house fall into great disrepair as it laid in a semi-abandoned state for about 30 years. However, last year a non-profit preservation group puchased the estate and have begun what will hopefully be a multi-million dollar restoration of the mansion as well as the recreation of its Versailes-like gardens. In the less that 12 months that the foundation has owned the estate the work that they have done is amazing. It is their intent that the house and grounds. will eventually be opened to the public.
The Lynnewood Hall Preservation Foundation honored the Wideners in a post on April 15.
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