The Highlands: the country seat of Anthony Morris
Date
1981
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
On June 8, 1795, Anthony Morris noted in his daybook, "The Masons began to lay the Stones of the new House", marking the beginning of construction of the country house he would call "The Highlands". Morris had acquired a two hundred acre tract of land the year before in Whitemarsh township, north of Philadelphia. He devoted the next thirteen years of his life and a large part of his fortune to the construction of the house and development of the property into a successful farm and country seat. ☐ Morris was a member of a founding Quaker family of Philadelphia. He was educated by tutors and at the University of Pennsylvania. Trained as a lawyer, Morris was active in politics, and at the age of twenty-seven was elected Speaker of the Pennsylvania Senate. He later served as Legate to Spain under James Madison. Morris also had mercantile interests, and was involved in the China trade. Educated and exacting, he kept detailed accounts of his business and personal activites. His daybooks and ledgers which document the construction and furnishing of The Highlands have been preserved at Winterthur and at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. ☐ At least two factors seem to have prompted Morris to acquire a country estate. First, as a rising member of the Philadelphia Quaker elite, he undoubtedly considered The Highlands as an investment, in both economic and social terms. The second and more immediate factor may have been the yellow fever epidemics of the 1790's in Philadelphia. The Highlands offered an escape from the heat, noise, filth, and disease of the city. ☐ No plans or elevations of the house survive, and it is likely that Morris himself planned the design of The Highlands. The facade, with its projecting central block flanked by giant pilasters of the Ionic order, seems to have been based on a design published in 1754 by Abraham Swan in his Collection of Designs in Architecture, a book available to Morris through his membership in the Library Company of Philadelphia. A more immediate design source for The Highlands is found in the Library Company building itself, built in 1789 according to designs by William Thornton. ☐ The Highlands continued to be used as a country house by later owners until it was given to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1970. Relatively few changes were made to the house and grounds to suitably adapt The Highlands to changes of fashion, family size and structure, and technological innovations. Today, The Highlands is still surrounded by the same cultivated fields which helped its owners to prosper. Not only the house, but many of its eighteenth and nineteenth century farm and outbuildings survive, providing an unusually complete impression of an eighteenth century country house in its proper physical context. Together with the manuscript documentation for The Highlands, they give a detailed picture of the building and trade practices of late eighteenth century Philadelphia, and the house and farm of one of her leading citizens.