At 4:30 a.m. on October 21, 1883, Albert H. Disston took his last breath somewhere in the confines of his dizzying mansion in North Philadelphia. A scion of the world-renowned Disston Saw Works family, Disston was just 34. He left behind a wife, three children, and the four-story, late-Victorian behemoth Disston had completed and moved into just months prior.

Some 140 years later, the Disston empire is all but gone and the rest of the industrialist-fed opulence of North Philadelphia much faded. However, a well-preserved time capsule in the form of Disston’s 1530 N. 16th Street mansion is still available and freshly back on the market for the right price.

The property will go up for auction on Wednesday, August 28, its first sale since 1946 when the home entered the real estate portfolio of Father Divine’s International Peace Mission Movement. A week prior to its sale, auctioneer Barry S. Slosberg Inc. opened the residence’s doors for inspection, giving members of the public and media an opportunity to take in the estate’s splendiferous interior. “It’s an incredible property,” said Alan Le Coff, an associate for Slosberg overseeing the auction. “It’s about 95 percent intact.”

Spanning more than 40 rooms, much of the mansion’s original grandeur is indeed still apparent. According to Slosberg, the home was built for a cost exceeding $150,000, which amounts to around $4.7 million today. It shows. Every nook and cranny of the home’s main floor–dominated by a living room, dining room, foyer, and parlor–drips with gold leaf, marble flooring, hand-carved oak trim, and soaring doors, mural ceilings, and crystal chandeliers. Along the southern side of the home runs an old carriageway with an elevated marble platform emanating from the house to greet disembarking passengers. Across an interior foyer is a centrally-located staircase leading to labyrinth-like upper floors where rich woodwork continues to abound, wowing lay and expert visitors alike.

“The Disston House remains a singular testament to one of Philadelphia’s premier manufacturing fortunes,” noted historian Donna Rilling in her extensive survey of the home for the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) filed in 2000. “It is one of the few surviving mansions built for the city’s industrial and professional elite in this vicinity and is a contributing property to the North Broad Street Mansion Historic District.”

However, the home bears some signs of its age. A two-story rear addition built in the 1920s shows wear and evidence of water damage, particularly on the second level where its floor has begun to buckle. Plaster and paint have given way to exposed substructure in places throughout the residence. Yet, all together, the stewardship of the Peace Mission has left the Disston Mansion an intact and awe-inspiring structure awaiting what comes next.

He Came. He Sawed. He Conquered.

Henry Disston, father of Albert, was born in 1819 England to a machinist father and died in Philadelphia in 1878 as the progenitor of what would become the largest saw manufacturing operation in the world, the Disston Saw Works once located in Tacony.

According to a history of the man and his company compiled by “historic handsaw aficionado” Erik von Sneidern, Disston’s arrival at age 14 was fraught with hardship from the get go. He was orphaned when his father died three days after their arrival, according to a family history and then suffered decades of unfortuitous apprenticeships, business ventures, and further personal tragedies.

However, Disston’s fortunes changed by the middle of the century. In 1855, he became the first saw manufacturer to also make his own steel. The real boon arrived with the Civil War. The Morrill Tariff Act of 1861 placed high tariffs on foreign imports including steel, helping Disston to corner the domestic market. Profits further rolled in when he sold steel tools to the Union during the Civil War. In the postwar years, Disston and his five sons continued to grow the business. In the 1870s, they began purchasing tracts in Northeast Philadelphia to build a massive saw works and empire that would see the company reportedly gain a 75 percent market share of American hand saw sales by the 20th century.

Albert Disston, Henry’s second son born in 1849, did not get to enjoy the family fortune for long. Historical narratives and records offer comparatively little information on Albert. A Central High School graduate with an apparent talent for finance, he worked for several years in the company’s accounting department before officially joining as partner in 1871, precipitating a company name change to Henry Disston & Sons. Other historical records of the 1870s list him as among the directors of the Philadelphia Fire Insurance Company, suggesting financial activity outside of the family business, and also name him as a regular racer of yachts along the Delaware River.

Other records suggest he was a “financial whiz” capable of quickly adding up sums over multiple columns of a spreadsheet, and his 1883 obituary noted Albert was indeed “Chiefly remarkable for his ability as a financier. A large portion of the responsibility for the monetary affairs of the great saw works was his… and of late years his control has been undivided,” it added. Whatever his exact role in the company, it is obvious from the opulence of the 16th Street mansion that Albert shared in its fortunes.

“A Handsome Marble Residence”

Like contemporary Philadelphia, Albert Disston’s efforts to build arrived at a time of some distress in the marketplace. To design and build his mansion, Disston tapped notable architect Edwin F. Durang, most known for his Catholic churches and schools, including both St. Joseph’s Prep and Roman Catholic. In a May 1882 edition of The Philadelphia Inquirer, the newspaper reported that the city’s “hesitating builders” were delaying construction of properties due to high prices of supplies and labor. Among those interviewed was Durang, who mentioned that, in addition to work for churches and hospitals, he was working on “building a handsome marble residence for Albert Disston at Sixteenth and Oxford.”

A Philadelphia Register of Historic Places nomination from 1982, which included the Disston Mansion and 14 other properties on its block, noted their significance in the “architectural and social heritage” of North Philadelphia. According to the document, a collection of independently designed homes on the block in the late 1800s proclaimed “to the world that the residents within belonged to a new managerial class created by the industrial revolution and resulting commercial boom.”

The interior design of the Disston Mansion fell to George Herzog, a Munich-born emigree best known for his interior work at the Philadelphia Masonic Temple and within the homes of other well-to-do Philadelphians of the time, including Peter A. B. Widener and William Lukens Elkins. “The relative restraint of [the building’s] Italianate facade and exterior detailing gives no hint to the deeply complex and sumptuous interior appointments, some of only a handful still surviving that are attributed to George Herzog,” notes the HABS survey.

Disston’s October 1883 obituary suggested the home was completed and occupied only a month prior to his demise. The listed cause of death was bizarre: a “slight sprain of the ankle” suffered in Atlantic City three weeks prior led to a localized case of gout, which then “spread rapidly” until it reached his stomach, after which Disston quickly succumbed. His funeral was held days later in the parlor of the 16th Street mansion, which The Inquirer reported was attended by “many prominent gentlemen” including “ex-mayors, councilmen, and a number of members of the bar.” A procession was led to Laurel Hill Cemetery, where Disston was interred in the family’s mausoleum, one of the largest monuments within the cemetery.

Divine Life After Death

Historical records indicate that after Disston’s demise, the possession of his mansion fell to his wife, Kate Ellen Disston. In 1896, 13 years after Albert’s death, the widow remarried with ceremonies held within the mansion. Four years later, their daughter, Florence Disston, was also married in the home, according to The Philadelphia Times. “The ceremony was performed in the drawing room, which was entirely in white, a small impromptu altar having been erected at the side of the room amidst a profusion of flowers,” while a string orchestra played nearby, the newspaper reported.

While the family still possessed the home, renovations were made. Most notably, in 1906, the firm of Hale & Kilburn was retained to construct a third story room. Although the firm specialized in “decorations and railway car seats,” and seemed “an odd choice,” the HABS survey notes that the company’s president Henry S. Hale was a neighbor to members of the Disston family and that his firm also manufactured “fancy walnut trim” such as that used in the renovation.

The home would leave the family in May 1920, when Jacob S. Disston dispensed with a pair of properties. The 16th Street mansion went to the Progress Club, which The Philadelphia Times described as a “well-known up-town social organization.” The club immediately made its mark on the property, contracting for the construction of a two-story “palm room” to the rear of the property. The following February, The Inquirer reported a lavish house-warming for the organization with 2,000 attendees filling the mansion’s confines.

According to the 1982 Philadelphia Register nomination, the arrival of the Progress Club came during an era of transition for the neighborhood, when white protestant families left the area and a Jewish community took root, “led by members of the Blumenthal, Ginsberg, Schwartz, and Wolf families.” Indeed, a March 1923 article in The Inquirer noted that several hundred prominent members of the Jewish community were to gather at the Progress Club over dinner and plan the reception of Chaim Weizmann, a biochemist and political leader who assisted with the creation of the 1917 Balfour Declaration and later became the first president of a newly-established Israel.

The club’s run at the Disston Mansion was relatively short-lived. In 1931, the building passed from the club to the Blumenthal family. An August 1935 notice in The Inquirer reported the Blumenthals then sold the property to the Bible Institute of Pennsylvania, a Christian educational institution now known as Cairn University and located in Bucks County, for $40,000. Additional newspaper records indicate the Disston Mansion served as the institution’s primary headquarters, with commencement day exercises held in its auditorium.

However, the mansion would find true stability a decade later when, in 1946, the Unity Mission Church Home and Training School, a church within the International Peace Mission movement of Father Divine, purchased the property. The Peace Mission, whose heyday peaked in the 1930s, used its robust resources to purchase numerous real estate holdings during the mid-20th century. The organization’s website suggests the property was used for numerous purposes. “Here Bible classes are held for all desiring to attend. A large auditorium classroom and a beautiful spacious Holy Communion Dining Room are maintained, as well as a Rectory for the Dean.” Le Coff added that he understands the mansion was used as a sort of bible study and training facility, with the former palm room used as a banquet space, and, at one point, was also zoned for 15 boarding rooms.

Yet, as the Peace Mission’s membership diminished over the decades, the organization has divested various real estate holdings, the most recognizable among them the Divine Lorraine at Broad Street and Fairmount Avenue. Le Coff said his company has more recently auctioned other holdings for the organization, including the Lippincott Mansion at 507 S. Broad Street and the Ellis Mansion at 1430 N. Broad Street. Members of the Peace Mission continued to occupy the Disston mansion until just several years ago Le Coff has been told.

After the likely sale of the Disston home, the organization’s properties in the region appear to have shrunk to just two: the crown jewel Woodmont Estate in Gladwyne, and the Circle Mission Church Home and Training School at Broad and Catherine Streets.

Despite the dwindling assets, those in the historical preservation community say the organization has remained a superb steward of its properties. The HABS survey notes the organization repaired the Disston Mansion’s stained glass windows in 1984. Le Coff said that 17 of 19 current such windows are certified. Two were stolen about five years ago, but later tracked down by the FBI. The Peace Mission also repaired and restored a dining room fireplace in 1991.

“It’s an incredibly well preserved, over the top Victorian residential confection,” said Paul Steinke, executive director of the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia.

As for its future, Le Coff expects about a dozen potential buyers, although the Peace Mission has a right to reject even the highest bidder. His firm has largely cleaned out from the building about 30 boxes of memorabilia from the Peace Mission era, including the removal of a portrait of Father Divine from the home’s main foyer and restoration of an original mirror and woodwork in its place. He has some guesses about what could come next. “There’s a variety of possible uses, from a bed and breakfast, to apartments, to condos, to some type of entity, educational or social,” said Le Coff.

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A look inside Disston Mansion on North 16th Street. Photographs by Michael Bixler.

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