Lost and Found
Written by PA Heritage Staff in the Lost and Found category and the Spring 2004 issue Topics in this article: Bethlehem Steel Corporation, Carnegie Steel Company, Centennial International Exhibition of 1876 (Centennial Exposition), Charles M. Schwab, Fairmount Park, Hermann J. Schwarzmann, Hurricane Hazel, Mt. Assisi Monastery, Philadelphia, United States Steel CorporationLost
In 1954, the year before it was demolished, Horticultural Hall was described by the Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine as the “most spectacular garden under glass in America.” The 1.5-acre hothouse, designed by Hermann J. Schwarzmann, was erected in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park for the 1876 Centennial Exhibition and served as the centerpiece of gardens totaling thirty-five acres. The vast iron and glass structure, in twelfth-century Moorish style, awed visitors with its tiled interiors brimming with lush and exotic tropical foliage, fountains, and statuary. Once the largest conservatory in the world, it was intended to be a permanent botanical glasshouse, but years of neglect and, finally, damage inflicted by Hurricane Hazel sped its demise, two decades before its own centennial.
Found
Charles M. Schwab (1862-1939) celebrated his meteoric rise from steel laborer to steel leader by building Immergrun (German for “evergreen”), a forty-four-room mansion in Loretto, Cambria County, in 1919. Schwab rose from stake driver to – at the age of thirty-five in 1897 – president of the Carnegie Steel Company, president of the United States Steel Corporation in 1901, and president of the Bethlehem Steel Company in 1904. The grounds of Schwab’s summer estate – once totaling one thousand acres – originally featured statues, rock gardens, fountains, reflecting pools, a medieval-style stone water tower, a golf course, a waterfall, and chicken coops built to resemble Normandy-style cottages. Immergrun now houses the Mt. Assisi Monastery, whose friars welcome visitors to stroll the restored historic gardens.
