CITY MANSIONS & COUNTRY ESTATES
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City Mansions & Country Estates will showcase the mansions in the Rittenhouse Square and Society Hill neighborhoods of downtown with the country estates of Fairmount Park, including three interior home tours.

Beginning in Rittenhouse Square, known as the “old money” part of downtown, you will see the former mansions that line this captivating French-inspired park.

From here, you head to Fairmount Park where stately homes were established during the period by prominent families of the city as “country seats” or rural retreats. Some functioned as working farms, while others provided elegant, fashionable and healthy retreat from the urban environment, summer heat and periodic epidemics.  You’ll have private interior tours of Woodford and Strawberry Mansion. 

Lunch break (lunch not included) will be at the historic Bourse^*, the first in the world to house a stock exchange, maritime exchange, and grain-trading exchange simultaneously. Today, the historic space has been repurposed into an internationally inspired food hall with deep local roots.

Next you’re off to the Society Hill neighborhood, the largest concentration of original 18th- and early 19th- century architecture of any place in the United States.  Society Hill, named after the 18th century Society of Free Traders, is a charming district with cobblestone streets bordered by brick row houses in Federal and Georgian style.  Private tour of the Powel House. 

Samuel Powel was Philadelphia’s mayor at the time of the revolution.  As one of the most prominent Philadelphians of the day, “anyone who was anyone” was entertained at by the Powels.  Washington was there.  Franklin was there.  Adams was there.  Jefferson was there.  Now you will be there too!

^*Lunch location subject to change