Page 50 - The Hunt - Winter 2022

HOME & GARDEN
Indeed, it’s the ultimate fixer-upper. Gross notes the “amazing plaster work, fabulous fireplaces and a beautiful sweeping staircase.”
The house has 13-foot ceilings and hardwood floors set in a herringbone pattern. And although the six bathrooms no longer function, they retain their vintage cast-iron tubs and subway-tile walls.
Cedarcroft’s crowning glory is the five-story tower positioned over the entrance portico. From the top floor, there are views of the Delaware River. Though the 7,131-square-foot house is currently uninhabitable, the structure has been maintained over the years, heated in winter and air-conditioned in summer.
Taylor entertained lavishly at Cedarcroft, undeterred by neighbors who disapproved of his winemaking, counting writer and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson and circus impresario P.T. Barnum among his celebrity friends.
At a housewarming party, guests launched a balloon with a card that read, “Cedarcroft, August 19, 1860, 9 o’clock PM. Please report
by Village Record where this balloon descends.” It landed in East Marlborough.
A writer of tremendous industry, Taylor covered the California gold rush for Horace Greeley and the New York Tribune. He reported on the expedition of Commodore Matthew Perry to Japan, and he translated Goethe’s Faust from German to English. His book Joseph and His Friend: A Story
of Pennsylvania, based on the poets Joseph Rodman Drake and Fitz-Greene Halleck, is believed to be the first gay novel.
But Taylor couldn’t make ends meet
at Cedarcroft, starting with overruns that pushed construction costs from $10,000 to $17,000. “Being away from home a great deal of the time, he was unable to see that his plans were executed,” Genevieve R. Pratt wrote in her brief history of Cedarcroft for the 1952 Chester County Day celebration. “Much as he loved it, he became very weary and discouraged in keeping up a place that had become a great burden to him.”
continued on page 26
SETTING THE STANDARD SINCE 1978
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