Look Up! A light Eyre design in Chestnut Hill

“Look Up!” is a PlanPhilly feature that encourages appreciation of our architectural and historical environment. The photo essays focus on different Philadelphia areas and their distinctive building styles and details, all of which make up the physical fabric of the city and region.

The 25-year-old architect Wilson Eyre was still coming into his own style when he built the sprawling estate called The Anglecot in 1883.

The house was built for oil cloth and linoleum manufacturer Charles Adam Potter, and was named for the way the front sits at an angle to the intersection of Evergreen Avenue and Prospect Street in Chestnut Hill – an angled cottage, though hardly a cottage.

Anglecot was designed in the Queen Anne style, with a mix of materials and architectural details, but with a lighter mood than the Victorian Gothic homes of the period. Eyre’s designs moved toward Arts & Crafts, evident in the Mask and Wig Club, 311 S. Camac St., and combinations of European styles in the 1890s, including the Clarence Moore House, 1321 Locust St., and the Joseph Leidy House Office, 1319 Locust.

Anglecot was altered by Eyre in 1910, and renovated, subdivided, and converted to condominiums in 1983 by Greg Woodring and Associates.

It remains a beautifully preserved tribute to Eyre’s imaginative style. 

 

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Contact the writer at ajaffe@planphilly.com.

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