. Erected
prior to 1796 by Samuel Pancoast.]

Thus from the very outset brick construction has been favored in
preference to wood in Philadelphia. Homes in the city proper were built
of it chiefly, and likewise many of the elegant countryseats in the
neighboring townships, now part of the greater Philadelphia of to-day.
The wealthier residents very early set the fashion of both city and
country living, following in this custom the example of William Penn,
the founder, who not only had his house in town, but a country place, a
veritable mansion, long since gone, on an island in the Delaware River
above Bristol.

British builders had forsaken the Jacobean manner of the early
Renaissance and come completely under the spell of the English Classic
or so-called Georgian style. Correspondingly, American men of means were
erecting country houses of brick, with ornamental trim classic in
detail, and of marble and white-painted wood. Marked by solidity,
spaciousness and quiet dignity, they are thoroughly Georgian in
conception, and as such reminiscent of the manorial seats of Virginia,
yet less stately and in various respects peculiar to this section of the
colonies. Like the bricks, the elaborate interior woodwork was at first
brought from overseas, but later produced by resident artisans of whom
there was an ever increasing number of no mean order.

Almost without exception the Colonial brickwork of Philadelphia was laid
up with wide mortar joints in Flemish bond, red stretcher and black
header bricks alternating in the same course. The arrangement not only
imparts a delightful warmth and pleasing texture, but the headers
provide frequent transverse ties, giving great strength to the wall.
With this rich background the enlivening contrast of marble lintels and
sills and white-painted wood trim, in which paneled shutters play a
prominent part, form a picture of rare charm, rendered all the more
satisfying by an appearance of obvious comfort, permanence and intrinsic
worth which wood construction, however good, cannot convey.

Many of the splendid old pre-Revolutionary country houses of brick no
longer remain to us. Some are gone altogether; others are remodeled
almost beyond recognition; a few, hedged around by the growing city,
have been allowed to fall into a state of hopeless decay. Woodford,
however, located in the Northern Liberties, Fairmount Park, at York and
Thirty-third streets, is fairly representative of the type