frank furness

Last night I was able to tour a friend of a friends apartment on the first floor of a house designed by Frank Furness in Kennett Square, PA.  It was RIDICULOUS!  Furness trained Louis Sullivan who was the first person to create a multi-story building or high rise and was an unbelievable architect.  He in turn trained Frank Lloyd Wright who is widely considered the greatest american architect of all time and in the discussion of possibly the greatest 20th century architect in the world...

Furness practiced out of Philadelphia and created some amazing work based in the Victorian Style of architecture.  He took that style and went in a completely unique direction and really created his own thing.  It is crazy work and really not my thing to live in or want, but there is no denying the craftsmanship and artistry involved.  It is just overwhelming.  Unfortunately, most of his greatest and largest commissions were destroyed.  Apparently, most of them at the hands of Edmund Bacon, city planner of Philadelphia and father of Kevin Bacon.

The first picture above is of the fireplace in the parlor.

Detail of the top.

His coat in the carving on the mantle.

Lillys in metal in the actual firebox.

The carving continues around the sides.

The tile of the hearth.

This next fireplace is in the main hall opposite of the stairs going up.

Totally wild...

These are the stairs across from the fireplace.  They go up three stories and are open all the way up.  They have this railing that just fits your hand perfect as you hold on...very grand.

Close up of the dog/dragon on the hall mantle.

First tile from the left...

Second tile.

Third tile.

Fourth tile.

Fifth tile.

Sixth tile.

Seventh tile.

Eighth tile.

Ninth tile.  The artistry of each of these is incredible...It is rumored they came out of Oxford, PA at this tile company that was very famous and expensive...they could be worth a ton.

This is another mantle in the study.

The detail of the iron work.  Furness was actually a Civil War hero and rode as a Lancer...He rode on a horse and jousted people...doesn't that seem crazy?  Anyway, is metal work was apparently influenced by that time in his life.

This is the bottom of the fireplace.  It has this real rough limestone that becomes ordered as it rises vertically.  

It was a humbling and inspirational experience to see this work first hand.  I have been through his train station a ton of times, but was not ready for this work...it was really wild and I hope to get to see the upper floors in the future.

Also, his office went up in a fire at some point and they don't have accurate records of all the work he did and they believe that there are probably 100 projects that are built that have never been identified...let me know if you think you spotted one!

Comments

[Mario Cimino]

Just came across this post - thanks for sharing these rarely seen images of Frank Furness's Chalfont house.

For anyone not familiar with the exterior of this house, the huge flared chimneys are almost a caricature of Furness' penchant for bold, outsized Victorian architectural details. They look like those impossibly balanced rock spires in Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah, but I suspect that the real inspiration was the huge railroad locomotive smokestacks common when this house was built. I also suspect that one of Furness' tortured junior assistants might have been having a bit of fun with him in this case. If you read the biography Frank Furness: Architecture and the Violent Mind by Michael Lewis, you'll get a sense of where I am coming from with that.

It is pretty clear Furness would be diagnosed today as bi-polar/manic depressive, and apparently his office could be as much of a madhouse as his buildings like the Chalfont house sometimes appear to be. Staffers later recalled that when he was older, he had a habit of taking pistol target practice down the hall of the office, and staffers quickly learned to take a careful look before stepping into the hall. Fortunately, it seems that no one was seriously hurt by this activity. Today, for better or for worse, I think OSHA might have a problem with this kind of work environment. But I bet there was never a dull moment, and the buildings left behind certainly give that impression.

These photos attest that the interior of this house carries through with the proto-Savador Dali surrealism of the exterior. The ferocious carved dragons and medieval dungeon-like spikes and spears of the ironwork are typical of Furness houses, and I think Furness can clearly claim the title Grandfather of the Man Cave. It is suspected that the young mind of Theodore Roosevelt was inspired by the incredibly graphic carvings of animals eating each other that Furness designed for Roosevelt's father's townhouse in New York City. That house is long gone but some of the furniture is on display at Sagamore Hill, Roosevelt's country home on Long Island.