own
Avenue starts its winding course toward Chestnut Hill. At the original
lottery distribution of the land of the Frankford Company in the cave
of Francis Daniel Pastorius, there being no permanent houses at that
time, the site fell to Thomas Kunders, in whose house at Number 5109
Germantown Avenue the first meeting of Friends was held in Germantown.
After the Battle of Germantown the hill was used as a hospital, and many
dead were buried there. From 1820 to 1835 Loudoun was rented to Madam
Greland as a summer school for young women, and it was during this
period, probably about 1830, that the pillared portico was added.

A successful Philadelphia merchant and well-known philanthropist, Thomas
Armat, gave the site for St. Luke's Church in Germantown and assisted in
its erection, also setting aside a chamber at Loudoun which was known as
the minister's room. He was among the first to suggest the use of coal
for heating, and one of the early patentees of a hay scales. Armat's
daughter married Gustavus Logan, great-great-grandson of James Logan and
grandson of John Dickinson, whose "Farmer's Letters", addressed to the
people of England, are said to have brought about the repeal of the
Stamp Act. Loudoun still remains in the Logan family.

No stranger house can be found in all Philadelphia than Solitude on the
west bank of the Schuylkill in Blockley Township, Fairmount Park. It is
a boxlike structure of plastered rubble masonry twenty-six feet square
and two and a half stories high, with a hip roof having simple
pedimental dormers and two oppositely disposed chimneys. The wood trim
is severely simple throughout, from the heavy molded cornice under the
eaves to the pedimental recessed doorway with its Ionic columns and
entablature. Two slightly projecting courses of brick, one some ten
inches or so above the other, form an unusual belt at the second-floor
level, while a distinctive feature of the fenestration is seen in the
fact that most of the windows have nine-paned upper and six-paned lower
sashes.

Within, the entrance doorway leads into a hall some nine feet wide and
extending entirely across the house from side to side. The remainder of
the first floor consists of a large parlor with windows opening on a
portico overlooking the river. A beautiful stucco cornice and ceiling
and a carved wood surbase are its best features. In one corner a
staircase with wrought-iron railing rises to the second floor, where
there is