Cedar Crest (Gladwyne, Pennsylvania)

Interest in French-Norman architecture grew in the early 20th century, prompted by American architects who had attended the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and veterans of World War I who had served in Europe. Its greatest exponent in the Philadelphia area was architect George Howe, whose own mansion, "High Hollow" (1914–17), is a significant example of the style. The Architectural League of New York awarded Howe's firm its 1925 Gold Medal for Excellence in Design for the French-Norman manor-and-farm, "Laverock" (1921–28, demolished),[2] in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania. But, in an influential review in The New Republic, critic Lewis Mumford denounced it as "architectural anaesthesia" and "hocus-pocus":

"The critical weakness of the romantic architect is that he is employed in creating an environment into which people may escape from a sordid workaday world, whereas the real problem of architecture is to remake the workaday world so that people will not wish to escape from it."[3]

Gilchrist was best known for his English-Cotswold-style suburban houses in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Chestnut Hill. He had made alterations to the elder Griscom's estate in 1905,[4] but the son's estate was the most ambitious single residence of his career. Gilchrist's "Dolobran II" can be seen as Howe's "Laverock" on an even grander scale – a late example of architecture as escapist fantasy.

The buildings are grouped around two courtyards, 400 feet apart, connected by a cobbled lane. The entrance courtyard is asymmetrical, and its buildings evoke a storybook French village. It is dominated by the corner turret of the caretaker's house, and also features a 10-car garage, a barn with horse stalls, a sheepfold, a staff cottage, and other service buildings. One turns onto the lane and glimpses the manor house through the narrow portal between the main courtyard's twin gatehouses.[5] A long greenhouse ran the length of the lane, until it was removed in the 1980s.

The main courtyard is a rigidly-symmetrical "court of honor," with a two-and-a-half-story manor house to the south, and what seem to be one-and-a-half-story ancillary buildings to the east and west. These are actually wings of the house, connected by curving one-story corridors. The master bedroom wing to the west contains a two-bedroom suite and library, and the service wing to the east contains the kitchen and breakfast room, with servant rooms above. The manor house features three first-floor rooms – the entrance hall, living room and dining room – and three bedrooms above. The gatehouses provide five additional guest bedrooms.[6]

The 67.5-acre grounds include formal gardens, orchards, pastures and woods, two swimming pools, a tennis court, a duck pond, and an aviary in the form of a turreted tower.

The estate was completed in 1931, at a reported cost of $700,000.[7]

The Philadelphia Chapter of the American Institute of Architects awarded Gilchrist its 1929 Gold Medal for Excellence for "Dolobran II."[8] Hundreds of drawings and photographs of the estate are in the Edmund Beaman Gilchrist Collection at the University of Pennsylvania.[9] A set of blueprints is in the collection of the Athenaeum of Philadelphia.[10]

• William Morrison, "Cedar Crest," The Main Line: Country Houses of Philadelphia's Storied Suburb, 1870 – 1930 (New York: Acanthus Press, 2002), pp. 221–26.