In the fight to save Boxwood, a large, late-19th century home at 156 W. Schoolhouse Lane, preservation advocates are down to Plan C. Or is it Plan D? Maybe E? Whichever it is, there are still plenty of letters left in the alphabet, said Irwin Trauss, a longtime near-neighbor of the home and member of the Penn Knox Neighborhood Association, a local RCO that supports the building’s preservation.

That might be reassuring words to some, as it sure looks like the advocates are losing the fight. As previously reported by Hidden City, Boxwood has been under immediate threat of demolition since December 2023, when the Philadelphia Historical Commission approved a request from property owner Pennsylvania School for the Deaf (PSD) to raze the structure, citing financial hardship, despite the building’s listing on the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places.

Since then, advocates have struck out on appeal. First, the City’s Board of License and Inspection Review (BLIR) ruled against an appeal filed by a neighbor after a July 2024 hearing. Penn Knox then appealed the BLIR decision to the Court of Common Pleas, a state court. But in September 2025, Judge Christopher R. Hall ruled against Penn Knox, leading the Historical Commission to spike the proverbial football in its meeting minutes the following month: “In its opinion, the Court offered a stunning rebuke of the appellant’s case,” the report concluded.

Indeed, Judge Hall was rather unequivocal in his 16-page ruling, calling Boxwood a “low-value historic building,” dismissing Penn Knox’s legal arguments and ultimately opining that “the demolition permit would allow PSD to proceed with a plan to make its campus safer and more effective for the hearing-impaired community.”

Yet, Trauss said his group has since appealed the decision to Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court, the next rung up the legal ladder and one below the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. As of March 2026, not much has happened, with the appeal still in a pre-trial stage at Commonwealth Court, and the demolition of Boxwood legally stayed all the while. Lose there, and who knows what comes next, Trauss said, while revealing what he believes is an ace in the hole for those who want to see the building preserved. “To their credit, the order that the Philadelphia Historical Commission entered did not simply permit [PSD] to demo Boxwood,” Trauss says. “It permitted them to demo it conditioned on their getting the necessary zoning, which they probably won’t be able to get without the cooperation of the neighborhood and residents.”

Trauss said his group also remains open to a detente with the school and is willing to return to what he says used to be an amicable relationship. Preservationists would help the school come up with an alternative plan that works for both parties, he added. Whether the PSD shares that instinct in any way appears doubtful. Matthew McClure, an attorney with law firm Ballard Spahr that is representing the PSD, wrote in an email that the Court of Common Pleas ruling “speaks for itself.” “We don’t comment on pending litigation,” he added and did not respond to a followup email asking to confirm the PSD personnel were indeed not willing to comment.

 Thinking Outside the Box

Built 1898 as the residence for a well-to-do family, Boxwood is a “handsome” example of Colonial Revival architecture popular during that latter part of the Gilded Age, according to a 2019 historical nomination authored by Germantown-based architectural historian Oscar Beisert.

Beisert believes the building historically significant for its distinguished architectural style and design by notable architect Mantle Fielding, Jr.. In 2021, the Historical Commission agreed, adding Boxwood to the Philadelphia Register, while also concluding the residence is “associated with an event of importance to the history of the City, Commonwealth or Nation,” could yield important information or artifacts yet discovered, and “exemplifies the cultural, political, economic, social or historical heritage of the community,” all official criteria for a building being listed on the registry and obtaining protection from demolition.

Boxwood was built for a wealthy couple married in 1890: Mary West Huston, a Coatesville native and heiress of the Lukens Steel Company, and Robert Bowne Haines, Jr., a Cheltenham native and industrialist with at least one patent to his name. By 1897, the couple had contracted Fielding to build their new residence. The architect quickly came up with a design that “would ultimately pay homage to the past,” while also including new modern amenities, “such as a low pressure steam heating plant,” Beisert’s nomination states.

Constructed largely from local Wissahickon schist, the two-and-a-half-story Boxwood features doric columns supporting a pair of porches, decorative windows including still-working wooden shutters, and a gambrel roof whose uncommon design features add an “almost oriental touch,” Beisert observed in the nomination. He added the style matches those of the existing tastes of other wealthy Germantowners of the time.

“Unlike the Moorish, Queen Ann, and other revivalist styles of the mid-to-late 19th century, the Colonial Revival represented a ‘return’ to chaste and tasteful, softening of more flamboyant motifs and styles associated with the 19th century,” Beisert wrote. “While the 20th century would see a hardened and more respectful interpretation of the style, important architects like Mantle Fielding bridged the gap between the old and the new in the ‘Colonial’ style.”

Fielding was the architect of several other notable properties in Northwest Philadelphia, including a gymnasium built on the adjacent campus of Germantown Academy, also in the Colonial Revival style. Time, of course, would alter the local dynamics. Thomas Haines died in 1932 and Mary in 1946, at which point Boxwood passed to their heirs, and ultimately out of the family altogether in 1968. Germantown Academy, founded at the site in the 1760s, had decamped for its current location in Fort Washington three years earlier.

Trauss said the campus then passed through several other educational tenants until they all left, leaving the property vacant and in hands of the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority. Penn Knox then played an active role in recruiting the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf to the campus in the 1980s after they announced sale of their former location in Mt. Airy. Trauss said neighbors and the school then maintained a good relationship for several decades, as PSD did a “wonderful job” restoring old buildings, designing new ones, and preserving open space and community access.

Meanwhile, by the 1990s, Boxwood was being used by an organization called the Men’s Induction Center, which a Philadelphia Inquirer article from the era identified as a nonprofit housing 24 men at the location, where they received drug counseling, education, and spiritual guidance. In the 2000s, a related organization called the Teen Challenge Training Center owned and operated the building. Property records show that organization then sold Boxwood to PSD in July 2019 for $515,000. Trauss noted that sale occurred after the initial historical nomination of the building in January of that year.

The nomination was approved by the Historical Commission in March 2021. Less than two years later, PSD went before the Commission to successfully argue for a hardship exemption to demolish the building. School leadership at the time said they had created a new master plan for the campus and needed to destroy the building to reconfigure vehicular and pedestrian traffic, using the Boxwood footprint for parking in order to clear up space elsewhere on campus. Leadership also told the Commission that the school was running a deficit and estimated it would require $3.5 million to restore Boxwood to a productive use.

The Historical Commission appeared to agree, with staff alleging that its own leadership had inspected the building and concluded it was in poor condition and would need a full rehab, including all new mechanicals. PSD also insisted that the building was not ADA compliant and was ill-suited for use by deaf students.

All of these arguments have and continue to be dismissed by Trauss and allies as reasons to tear the building down. He believes PSD is simply taking the easiest way out, when neighbors continue to believe viable alternatives exist and are prepared to help financially “invest” in other outcomes, including converting the building back to a financially-sustainable residential use.

As the court case progresses, he argued, it’s not just the future of Boxwood at stake, but the City’s increasingly-imperiled historic preservation ordinance. That’s because, according to Trauss, the school was not required to try and sell the property before seeking a demolition permit. “One of the main issues of the case is a reading of the ordinance and regulation about, what is the obligation of a nonprofit to show, if they want a hardship demolition permit?” Trauss explained. “What the Commission held is that a nonprofit only needs to show that they can’t use the property. If that ruling is left to stand, it would completely undermine the preservation ordinance when a property is owned by a nonprofit.”

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