Humphry Marshall House

The Humphry Marshall House, also historically known as Marshall's Garden, Marshall's Arboretum, and the Botany Farm, is a historic property in Marshallton, an unincorporated village in West Bradford Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. Built in 1773-74, the house is a good example of an 18th-century Pennsylvania country house, which is most notable as the home of early American botanist Humphry Marshall . The property was also where Marshall established one of the first botanical gardens in what is now the United States. The house was documented by the Historic American Buildings Survey in July 1958. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 27, 1971 and was designated a National Historic Landmark on December 23, 1987. The property is now privately owned; the gardens have declined since Marshall's time, but its basic layout has survived.

The Humphry Marshall House stands on about 2.5 acres on the west side of Marshalltown, on the north side of Strasburg Road at its junction with Clayton Road. The house is set well back from the road, from which it is screened by mature plantings of the garden space. The house is 2-1/2 stories in height, and is built out of locally quarried limestone that has an ashlar finish. It is nominally five bays wide, but the bays on the ground floor are irregularly spaced, and not all of the bays on the second floor have windows. A single-story shed-roof porch extends across the front facade. There are two entrances, one a standard entry, the other a shorter doorway providing access to what was probably once a conservatory.

More information

Comments Statistics

| | Public