The April 8, 2020 lecture has been cancelled to comply with the CDC and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s recommendations for group activities during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The From Lyndon to Curtis Arboretum: “A Panorama of Surpassing Beauty” is being rescheduled for Fall 2020.
From Lyndon to Curtis Arboretum: “A Panorama of Surpassing Beauty“
For 170 years after the William Penn land grant to William Frampton, the rolling fields of today’s Curtis Arboretum were legacy Quaker farmlands. The name “Chelten Hills” was affixed to the area in 1854 by Edward M. Davis, an abolitionist entrepreneur who sold estates for country homes to wealthy Philadelphia businessmen. Prominent Philadelphia banker Abraham Barker purchased his estate in that year and named it “Lyndon.” Following his dramatic bank failure in 1890, the estate was purchased by an enterprising publisher, Cyrus Curtis, who constructed his own million-dollar mansion on the property. In this lecture, OYRHS Vice-President Dr. Thomas Wieckowski will trace the history of Curtis Arboretum and its two most prominent owners as it progressed from the colonial agrarian age, through the Gilded Age, and into the 21st century as a verdant haven for the residents of a gracious Philadelphia suburb.
7:30PM
Lectures are FREE and open to the public.
Abington Friends Meeting, The Barnes Room
520 Meetinghouse Road, Jenkintown
The lecture series is sponsored by a grant from the Jenkinstown Lyceum. For more information please call the Old York Road Historical Society at 215–886–8590.
