View showing "Morris' Folly," the unfinished brick and marble mansion on Chestnut Street above Seventh Street, designed by Pierre Charles L'Enfant for Philadelphia merchant and financier Robert Morris. Individuals stroll the grounds and a laborer carries a ladder past a guardhouse. Construction began on the mansion about 1796 and was halted as a result of Morris's bankruptcy. The building was demolished in 1800 and its materials sold to finance creditors., Title from plate 14 in the first edition of Birch's "Views of Philadelphia.", Retrospective conversion record: original entry, edited., See Martin Snyder's "William Birch: His Philadelphia Views," The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 73 (July 1949), p. 271-315., Reproduced in Julius Sachse's Pictures of old Philadelphia from the originals in the collection of the Library Company of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1901), vol. 1, plate 44. (LCP Print Room Albums)., Also accessioned as P.9661.
Creator
Birch, William Russell, 1755-1834, artist
Date
[ca. 1800]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department drawings & watercolors - Birch - Unfinished House [5394.Q]
