





Ardrossan: The Last Great Estate on the Philadelphia Main Line
David Nelson Wren
New photography by Steve Gunther and Tom Crane
Foreword by Michael C. Kathrens
Preface by Joan Tyler Montgomery Wheeler Mackie
This intimate and fascinating portrait captures the elegant lifestyle of the Montgomerys and the majesty of their beloved home and estate, Ardrossan. Built in 1911, the house was designed by the renown American architect Horace Trumbauer. The book not only explores the interior and exterior architecture of the house, but also the family who lived in it, their art collection, and the massive 780-acre estate on which the Montgomerys ran a successful dairy farm. Beautifully illustrated throughout with new and archival photographs, this book has elicited praise from readers familiar with the Main Line and Philadelphia society, and far beyond.
November 2017
Hardcover with dust jacket
368 pages
2 gate-folds, with floor plans
450 illustrations (200 in color)
8.75 x 11.5 inches
ISBN: 978-0983863250
$95.00
Description
A richly detailed history of the baronial splendor of the Philadelphia Main Line estate Ardrossan and of the Montgomery family who built it. Real-life American counterparts of the Granthams of Downton Abbey, the Montgomerys are best known as the family on which Philip Barry based his 1939 play, The Philadelphia Story, featuring Katharine Hepburn who also starred in the later Hollywood film. The Montgomerys entertained in the grand manner, hosting fox hunts and dinner dances. Guests included diplomat W. Averell Harriman; First Lady Edith Roosevelt; and famed vaudevillians the Duncan sisters.
The magnificent estate, still owned by the family, encompassed roughly 760 acres at its height. Located at its center is a magnificent 50-room Georgian style manor house. Essentially unaltered since 1913, the family home designed in 1911 by Horace Trumbauer, one of America’s foremost classical architects, stands as a glorious reminder of the halcyon days of the Gilded Age. The first-floor rooms, decorated by the London-based firm of White, Allom, & Company, feature the family’s art collection, including works by Gilbert Stuart and Charles Morris Young. The book also chronicles the history of the family’s commercial dairy and prized herd of Ayrshires.
Features never-before-published architectural drawings from Horace Trumbauer’s office and interior photographs shot by Mattie E. Hewitt in the 1930s; as well as family snapshots and images by celebrated photographers Cecil Beaton and Toni Frissell commissioned by Vogue and Country Life.
Advance Praise
“A brilliant profile of a family on Philadelphia’s Main Line and their splendid historic estate that to this day defines a bygone era. Highly readable with glorious photographs. Thoroughly enjoyable!”
–Liz Smith, author and columnist
“Ardrossan is one of the great houses of America, English in inspiration but American in its way of life. Epitome of the Philadelphia Main Line, the house stands almost unchanged from the moment it was finished in 1913. David Nelson Wren has quarried the riches of the family archive to produce an irresistible, erudite portrait of the Montgomery family at home—the doors of Ardrossan have been thrown open to reveal how these and other preoccupations helped shape a true Philadelphia story.”
–Clive Aslet, author of The American Country House
“A masterwork of patrician American ambition, Ardrossan was built in the very grandest anglophile style, but with all the up-to-the-minute comforts and innovations of modern living and none of the privations of the drafty, poorly plumbed manses across the Atlantic that inspired it. To this day, the distinguished rooms that the architect Horace Trumbauer conceived and the blue-chip decorators White, Allom & Company filled with elegant eighteenth-century recreations are an evocative testament to a long-vanished age. Wren’s fastidiously researched book provides a rich document of fascinating lives led in a fabled setting on Philadelphia’s Main Line.”
–Hamish Bowles, International Editor-at-Large, American Vogue
“An unparalleled look at an American country estate in the first half of the twentieth century. In a most engaging way, Wren weaves the details of architectural design, furnishings, collections, and the history of a gentleman’s farm with wonderful accounts of the people who lived and worked there. This is a must-have for anyone interested in American architectural and social history or who enjoys a very readable glimpse into another time and way of life.”
–Jeff Groff, Estate Historian, Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library
About the Author
David Nelson Wren is an independent scholar who focuses mainly on history and art. In the late 1980s, Wren, a native of Dallas, Texas, relocated to Philadelphia, where his love affair with Ardrossan began. For a period of years when Wren was completing work on the book, he lived in Trumansburg, New York, where he and his husband owned Halsey House, a landmark Greek Revival farmhouse that was one of the top-ranking inns in the Finger Lakes region. There, Wren wrote a twice-monthly column for the Ithaca Journal. He has since moved back to Villanova and currently lives on the top floor of Ardrossan with his husband. Wren is a longtime member of several of Philadelphia’s more venerable institutions, including the Athenæum of Philadelphia and the Franklin Inn Club.