John Bartram began building his stone house shortly after he bought his farm on the Schuylkill River in Kingsessing in 1728. He completed construction of the original four-room house in 1731, later greatly expanding the house and adding the carved stone facade between 1740 and 1770. Bartram quarried the stone himself and into his whimsical design incorporated elements based on classical architecture including a two-story, columned portico, and hand-carved baroque window surrounds. An inscription on a panel beneath his library window is a frank statement of his Deist philosophy, for which he was disowned by his Quaker meeting in 1758.
The Bartram House, a National Historic Landmark, is furnished and open on a regular schedule for tours. (Photograph at left of John Bartram's study).
