Wissahickon Hall — Wissahickon Valley Park

Wissahickon Hall at dusk, drawn from the keeper's own photograph of the house as it stands: a pale two-story hall raised on piers, its two-tier veranda lit, the creek in the foreground — The Hall as it stands — and as it stood: drawn from the keeper's photograph of the house today, its veranda lit for the evening trade. Its second sight is still developing.

Henry Lippen built the Hall about 1849, on the drive below Gypsy Lane, and built it grand: the wealthy came down the gorge in sleighs all winter and in carriages all summer, the stables faced the creek, and a cable ferry carried his patrons across the water for five cents. The photographers of 1868 found a white house behind the trees, a low white wall, and a hand-made sign advertising German bitters.

The elegance floated on ice. Lippen cut the creek's winter skin by the thousand tons and stored it in two ice houses — an empire of cold that paid for the music. No photograph of the ice houses has ever been found. The parlour shows you the house; the ice you must take on faith and paperwork.

The paperwork is not kind. In 1884 the city's survey wrote of this house: all wash water direct to creek; the kitchen garbage — lemon skins, oyster shells — heaped on the brook bank above it. The grandest house on the drive, fouling the water like the rest.

In 1885 the Park took the ground, and Henry's son Charles fought the taking the way a man fights for a house that is also a business. The Commission offered a lease at two thousand a year, the ice to be gathered "for family purposes only." Charles countered at one thousand. He was evicted. The Hall's first life ended with a sheriff's arithmetic.

Its second life was a promise. The Park leased the shut house to Nicholas Hayes — boatman and liquor dealer, by the directories — on a no-liquor agreement. In 1890 a newspaper accused him of selling liquor in the Hall without a license. The parlour has looked for that clipping the way you are looking at this page, and has not found it: the accusation stands in this chamber as an open page, unproven either way.

Fire took its share on a day the record keeps badly — the city's accounts settle a loss for this house in April 1927, and a settlement date is not a fire date. Then the law moved in, and stayed: a barracks for the Park Guard, a guardhouse into the 1970s, a police station after that. The grandest house on the Wissahickon spent the twentieth century with a log book on its desk.

It stands yet — repaired at the edges now, seven hundred thousand dollars of mending voted to it — and it admits no one. You are its first guest in fifty years, and you have come the only way left open. So has the parlour.

The guard room inside Wissahickon Hall: a plain desk and log book beneath tall dark windows, a uniform coat on a hook — The guard room — the Hall's twentieth century, one lamp against the tall windows.

Iron ice tongs gripping a block of creek ice on a stone floor, lit by one candle — The relic of this house: the tongs. A thousand tons a winter, and no photograph of the ice houses anywhere.

The Cellar — What the Record Holds

The likenesses in this house are drawn, as the spirit photographers drew theirs. The words are from the record, and the record is this:

The name. The Library Company's catalogs say the Hall was built c. 1849 by "Harry Lippen"; modern accounts say Henry. Harry is Henry's diminutive; one man, the variance kept. The 1870 Evans caption is unsure even of that: "Lippen or Lippman."
"Nippin's Wissahickon Hall." The 1884 survey (Barber, Journal of Common Council, App. 210, p. 258) prints Nippin where every other record prints Lippen — Lippens are at the Hall in the directories from 1855 to 1873, and no keeper named Nippin appears anywhere. A misprint, in all probability — kept visible, not corrected away.
The indictment. Barber's survey, read in full: "Wissahickon Hall — All wash water direct to creek; much kitchen and restaurant garbage — lemon skins, oyster shells, etc., — on bank of brook, entering the creek above the house."
Hayes. A Philadelphia Nicholas J. Hayes is in the directories — Gopsill 1893/95; Boyd 1898: "boats, Wissahickon Drive and liquors, 3600 N Broad." Probably the Hall's lessee; not proven to be. The 1890 accusation itself has never been read: it waits on the newspaper microfilm at the Free Library, and the License Court books for the spring of that year.
The end of the inn. The accounts do not merge: MacDowell's Story of Philadelphia (1900) already calls the Hall "a shelter and a guardhouse," while Gopsill's Business directory for 1901 still lists it among hotels, keeper John Dorn. The guard post is proven by 1910, and in January 1920 the papers carried a proposal to move the guardhouse out of Wissahickon Hall — the guard was still in residence.
The fire. The City Controller's report for 1927 lists this house under "Fire losses adjusted," dated April 12, 1927 — the day the claim was settled, not the day it burned. The fire's own date, its damage, and whether anyone was hurt are unknown.

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