Cliveden

Cliveden, the Benjamin Chew House, is an outstanding example of late Georgian architecture. It is also the most important surviving landmark of the battle of Germantown, fought on October 4, 1777, when Washington's army was unable to break through the British line guarding the northwestern approaches to Philadelphia, which they had recently captured. Despite the defeat, the Americans’ exhibition of proficiency and determination helped convince the French to join the war on their side.

The Chew House was built in 1763-1764 by Benjamin Chew (1722-1810), then attorney general of Pennsylvania. A Marylander, he had come to Philadelphia as a teenager to read law with Andrew Hamilton, after which his father sent him to London to continue his studies at the Middle Temple, one of the Inns of Court. After his return to North America in 1744, he began a lucrative practice in the “Lower Three Counties” of Pennsylvania (now the state of Delaware), representing the substantial interests of the Penn family.

He also oversaw and increased his own family’s land holdings in the Chesapeake region, which ultimately included nine plantations that employed hundreds of enslaved workers.  Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, was born enslaved on one of Chew’s Delaware farms.

In 1754, Chew moved to Philadelphia, where he continued his distinguished legal career and was appointed or elected to a series of significant offices, culminating in 1791-1808 in the presidency of the Pennsylvania High Court of Errors and Appeals—the highest court in the commonwealth.

He lived on Front Street, but in 1763 he undertook the construction of this house as a refuge from summer heat and, in the 1790s, yellow fever. He brought to the project his own substantial wealth, augmented by that of his second wife, Elizabeth Oswald, whom he married in 1757. The lawyer and draftsman William Peters (1702-1786) made drawings for the house, undoubtedly steered by Chew to consult the latest English pattern books, and it was constructed by German-American master craftsmen, carpenter Jacob Knorr and mason John Hesser.

The powerfully formal, classical presentation of the house is amplified by its symmetrical framing by two “dependencies,” the kitchen and wash house, which were built at the same time. The material is local Wissahickon schist, squared and laid up in regular courses for the main façade, while the sides and rear are stuccoed rubble masonry. The belt course, sills, lintels are cut sandstone, and all details are robustly three dimensional. The barn and carriage house was built in 1766 by Hesser and Knorr and subsequently enlarged and altered.

The interior of Cliveden is unusually monumental, with a very large T-shaped central hall in which the stem (containing the stair) is divided from the crossing by a screen of Roman Doric columns that carry a full entablature. This arrangement, more suited to a public building, may have reflected Chew’s political power and ambitions.

When the British captured Philadelphia, Chew, a sometime pacifist, was relieved of his political duties by the Continental Congress and paroled to New Jersey. Thus, on October 4, 1777, it was not Chew, but Colonel Musgrave and six companies of British infantry who were occupying Cliveden when Washington’s army arrived. Unable to breach the stout walls of the house with cannon fire, the Americans were stymied and, after other setbacks, chose to withdraw.

Benjamin Chew was allowed to return to Cliveden the following year, and, after repairing the damage, he entertained Lafayette, Washington, and other leaders. The house was inhabited by seven generations of the Chew family until 1972, when they turned the property over to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.