When we think of wealthy, high society enclaves in Philadelphia the usual suspects come to mind: Rittenhouse Square, Chestnut Hill, and the Main Line. Yet, in the early to mid-19th century, affluent Quakers turned farmland into an enclave of lavish estates in another area. They called it Powelton.

Shaped like a pie wedge, Powelton is bordered on the north by Spring Garden Street, on the east by the Schuylkill River and along the southwest by Lancaster Avenue. Powelton remains unique with its large collection of authentic Victorian architecture, including early Italianate, Second Empire, Queen Anne, and Colonial Revival. There are even a few buildings that defy classification.

Mark Brack, who served as the resident architectural historian at Drexel University until his retirement in 2022, has an insider’s perspective of how Powelton managed to preserve its architectural heritage. “I have lived in Powelton for 17 years, and I was chair of Powelton Village Civic Association’s preservation committee when we campaigned to make our neighborhood part of the Philadelphia Historic Register in 1972,” said Brack.

Brack chalks up the success of that campaign to the number of long-term activist community members. “But we all feel endangered,” he said. “Powelton is only 14 percent owner-occupied. The rest is owned by landlords who rent to students.”

“Powelton had been a National Register Historic District for decades, but that affords no protection whatsoever,” said Brack. “We raised money to hire a professional to create a report and submit it to the Philadelphia Historical Commission. They approved it in 2022,” he explained. It was the City’s largest historic district in almost 20 years, containing 817 buildings. If you want to make changes to a building now or demolish it, you have to go through the City and they will turn you down. I have never lived anywhere with such a sense of civic responsibility.”

While almost every house in Powelton is historic, this article looks into five built in the late 19th century that have been repurposed and well preserved.

One of the oldest houses, 3401 Powelton Avenue, was built in 1886 for George Burnham, one of the founders of Baldwin Locomotives, the largest manufacturer of steam locomotives in the world. Burnham hired architect Theophilus Parsons Chandler Jr., the founder of the Department of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, to design a house that matched his ambition.

The result was a two-and-one-half story building and a gate house with a cupola of massive stone that combined Romanesque and Gothic with heavy rusticated stone, limestone trim, and a porch arch. The most interesting feature of the building is the use of curved elements.

Burnham was an early member of the Union League of Philadelphia and the prestigious Powelton Club, a place where power and politics were traded over a game of wisk. His daughter, Mary A. Burnham, a member of the New Century Club, used her family’s wealth and influence to become a major contributor to the Pennsylvania suffrage movement, leading a string of 150 women-filled automobiles up Broad Street during the 1916 presidential election.

The mansion stayed in the Burnham family until the 1930s when, like many Powelton private homes, it became a rental property. According to the 1950 Census, the Burhnam estate became a nursing home that primarily served elderly Jewish immigrants. Even in the early 1960s, when property values tanked and the once-popular shopping areas along Lancaster Avenue were abandoned, Powelton remained a desirable area for students and faculty.

When Drexel’s Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity moved into the historic Burnham mansion in 1966, no one blinked. By that time Powelton was the center of Philadelphia’s counter culture and anti-war movement. By comparison, a frat house was a sign of financial stability. Over the years, the fraternity spent millions of dollars to preserve the mansion’s original grandeur.

The next industrialist to build an estate in Powelton was Frederick A. Poth, a German-born brewer. By 1875, his brewery was the largest in the United States. In 1887, he commissioned Albert W. Dilks to build a red brick and brownstone German Gothic home with a sweeping bay porch and turrets echoing High Victorian style at 216 N. 33rd Street. Dubbed “the castle on the corner,” this four-story mansion containing 16 bedrooms was well-suited to the large extended families of the day which, in Poth’s case, included rooms for four servants.

After Poth’s death in 1905, his mansion stayed in the family when one of his daughter’s married another German-born industrialist. By 1920, it became a rental property. One of its tenants, Drexel’s Dean of Women, made for an easy transition to the property becoming the home of Drexel’s Alpha Pi Lamda fraternity in 1939.

After closing in 2003 due to structural problems, the fraternity launched a large-scale fundraising campaign. The Poth mansion reopened in 2008, functioning as a residence to more than 20 undergrads. 

The same year Poth built his dream house, a two-and-one-half story Victorian twin with elaborately milled porch latticework, turned posts, and balustrades was built for Mary Bancroft at 3300 Baring Street. Bancroft was the widow of Edward Stephen Parrish and the grandmother of artist Maxfield Parrish. The painter visited the home as a child and returned there when he studied at Drexel University. In 1889, Bancroft was a founding member of the West Philadelphia Hospital for Woman, specializing in maternity and obstetrics, which later was absorbed by the University of Pennsylvania.

The stately home passed through various affluent owners until 1930 when it was bought by a Russian Jewish immigrant. After his death, the deed was passed to the remaining women in the family until 1956. As was the case for many grand Powelton mansion at the time, the massive stone house became a rental property in the 1960s.

A 1996 ad in the Philadelphia Inquirer described the 100 year-old property as a “Glorious triple-sized, 14 room, stone single family home on corner lot w/ double garage, wrap porch, 4.5 bath, magnificent stained glass windows.”

In 2009, this late 19th century mansion became the Cornerstone Bed and Breakfast. While the massive size, upkeep, and age of the property may have deterred others, it was exactly what Jill Moody had in mind. A Philly native, Moody grew up admiring her grandmother’s inn in New Hope, Pennsylvania. Moody doesn’t run the B&B by herself. Her parents are working partners and there is an innkeeper. All of the rooms are much the same as when Maxfield Parrish was a student, with high ceilings, large windows, and period furnishings. It’s most striking feature is the brightly painted porch latticework that now welcomes guests from across the nation and around the world.

On the southeast corner of 34th Street and Powelton Avenue is yet another beautifully preserved and repurposed Victorian mansion. It was designed in 1888 by architect T. P. Lonsdale for Pennsylvania Railroad magnate Max Riebenack. While we may wince at the solid gold toilets of Mar-a-Lago, there was nothing subtle in the scale or style of this limestone castle with its medieval towers and sheathed turrets with conical red slate-shingled roof and wrap-around porch.

Riebenack was one of the founders of the Powelton Club, treasurer of the Union League, and a member of Merion Cricket Club, Engineers Club, and the Philadelphia Yacht Club. He occupied the majestic mansion from 1900 with 11 family members, an English butler, a cook, two maids, and a servant.

Following Riebenack’s death, the building was acquired by Drexel University in 1928 and was used for its Domestic Science program with a nursery school on the first floor. In 2001, Drexel converted the mansion into Ross Commons, a student center containing dining areas, the office of the student union, lounges, and meeting rooms and, since 2011, the popular Sabrina’s brunch spot. While this conversion updated the interior, much of the exterior appears today as in 1888 with the exception of the enclosure of its former wrap-around porch.

Powelton has always been racially diverse, but it never had a Black-owned B&B until 2018. That is when Brooklyn residents, Glenn Pogue and his wife Monique Greenwood, opened Akwaaba Philadelphia at 3709 Baring Street in a Powelton property that dates back to 1879.

The couple’s goal was to create a space where African American guests could feel comfortable without excluding other cultures. Akwaaba means “welcome” in a dialect spoken in Ghana and is the name of all of the couple’s inns, starting with their first one in the Bed Sty section of Brooklyn that they opened in 1995. With Akwaaba B&Bs in Cape May, Washington, D.C., New Orleans, and the Poconos, opening one in Philly completed their collection of luxury inns.

The original owners of the Baring Street mansion were Quakers. By 1910, the property was owned by a widow who took in boarders. In 1950, it became the Friendship Coop House, a Quaker housing cooperative that still exists today offering affordable housing to low-income community members. In 1999, the home became the Spruce Hill Manor Inn.

When Greenwood, former editor-in-chief of Essence magazine, first saw the 5,000-square-foot, three-story mansion with a cupola, she recognized its potential. The couple renovated and redecorated its six suites to pay tribute to Philadelphia’s Black musical legacy. Meanwhile, original, ornate woodwork, stained glass, and marble fireplaces convey the property’s history throughout the inn. In June 2024, Greenwood opened Akwaaba Tea Salon around the corner at 3811 Lancaster Avenue which offers high tea on weekends.

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The author would like to thank the Powelton Village Civic Association for its online historical map and detailed history of every house.

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