Peale, Charles Willson, House

About this property

Belfield, also known as the Charles Willson Peale House, was the home of Charles Willson Peale from 1810 to 1826, and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965. The Belfield Estate was a 104-acre (42 ha) area of land in the Logan section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, much of which is now a part of La Salle University’s campus. In 1684, William Penn granted to Thomas Bowman 588 acres (238 ha) near Germantown. Bowman kept the land for two years, and sold it to Samuel Richardson, a Quaker who was active in the early colonial government of Pennsylvania. The property extended from Old York Road to the edges of Germantown, with Richardson's home, "Newington", located on Old York Road. Upon Samuel Richardson's death in 1719, his son Joseph inherited the land, and split it among his children, with the area that would become Belfield going to his second son, John. John Richardson sold a portion of the land to John Eckstein in 1731. The 1731 deed mentions "Buildings & Woods & Underwoods, Timbers, Trees, Meadows, Marshes." This is the first time that "buildings" are recorded on the property. The once free-standing, square structure now attached to the rear of the main house is believed to be the oldest surviving building, but it is not known whether this building existed at the time of the sale to Eckstein. Eckstein transferred the land that the main house is located on to his daughter Magdalena and son-in-law Conrad Weber in 1755, and after the death of Eckstein in 1763 the land was split among his remaining children. Two of the remaining children of Eckstein became members of the religious Ephrata Cloister in Lancaster County, and all had sold their land to Weber by 1786. Though the exact date of construction of the main house at Belfield is not known, Peale later wrote that it was built "by a Dutchman". As Weber was the son of a Dutch immigrant, this would date the house to sometime after 1755. Weber sold the property to his tenant Richard Neave in 1804, not having lived on the property himself since the 1770s. Neave owned the property until his death in 1809, when it was sold to his tenants, Charles and Mary Grégoire. The Grégoires possessed the property for just three months before putting it up for sale. Seeking to retire, Charles Willson Peale turned over the administration of his Philadelphia Museum to his son, Rubens, and began to look for a small country estate. He purchased the land in 1810 from Charles Grégoire for $9500. Peale initially named the estate 'Farm Persevere', and wrote to Thomas Jefferson, telling him "by labor and perseverance I obtained it." Friends of Peale's thought that this name was far too solemn, and as a result, by 1812 he had changed it to 'Bellefield', which later, became 'Belfield.'

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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