The Rescuing of the Harmon Talley House

The Harmon Talley House

In the last post we took a deep dive into the history of the Harmon Talley House on Mt. Lebanon Road 
in Talleyville, and looked at some of the people who lived there over the past 200 years. In this post I want to bring the story up to the present day, and show you some of what's been going with the house over the past few years. At the time of my original post in 2015, the state of the house was, to put it mildly, poor. It had been all but abandoned for seven or eight years, there was a large hole in the roof, and the interior was in bad shape because of it. I really expected at that point that it would fall down or be torn down sometime in the very near future.

This was all set in motion where we left the house in the last post, when in the late 1960's Woodlawn Trustees decided to sell off most of what had been Tippecanoe Grove Farm. If you recall, Woodlawn was (and still very much is) a trust formed by William P. Bancroft in 1901 to oversee his acquisitions and disposition of land in Wilmington and in Brandywine Hundred. At one point Woodlawn owned over 2000 acres in Brandywine Hundred -- most of the land between Brandywine Creek and Concord Pike, from Sharpley Road up to the PA state line. In a contentious point that still comes up today, Woodlawn Trustees has always had a dual mandate to both preserve land and to occasionally sell off some of the land to help fund the rest of its work.

In the late 60's they decided to sell the old Talley farm, and the neighborhood of Tavistock was born. A lot of about an acre was carved out for the old house, and in 1975 it was finally sold. Woodlawn regularly placed deed restrictions on properties it sold (I've heard stories of residents in Tavistock, even recently, having to go to court to fight some of these), but in this case some of those restrictions probably ended up saving the house. It was resold in 1982, and when we picked up the story in 2015 those owners had allowed it to deteriorate so badly that a developer at first wanted to tear it down, claiming it could not reasonably be restored. At that point, it seems that only the Woodlawn deed restrictions against it prevented the house's demolition, and those plans were rebuffed.

Drawing of the adaptive reuse office center, proposed in 2019

A few years later in 2019 a new developer came along (I'm pretty sure it was a different one) with a different idea -- adaptive reuse. Instead of tearing down everything and starting over with new housing, this plan would have seen the preservation of the stone portion of the house and the removal of the frame ell in the rear. There then would have been a new, two-story office structure of 5,651 sq. ft. built behind the house, along with a parking lot on the west side. I have very mixed feelings about this idea.

On the one hand, it's certainly better than nothing. At least the original stone house would have been saved and restored, which is more than I expected eight years ago. And in theory I don't have a problem with adaptive reuse, if that's the only viable option available. There are other places where an old house has been converted to commercial use (like the Dixon-Jackson House) or has been saved and incorporated into a larger redevelopment of the property (like the Samuel Dennison House or the Joseph Ball House). If the options are to raze the house or turn it into an office, I'll take saving it just about every time. Often this is the only choice when a house has deteriorated so much, and restoration of it is so costly, that only a commercial entity would have the money to do so. It takes a special eye to look at a 200 year old house in very poor condition, and say "I can make this nice again." Fortunately, that was the case here.

To fully appreciate the work done by J Stevens Construction after they purchased the property in 2021, we need to go back and see what the house looked like then. Luckily for us, when the University of Delaware's Center for Historic Architecture and Design (CHAD) compiled their report on the house in 2019, they took extensive photographs of the exterior and interior of the home (the entire report can be found here). Below are views of the exterior of the house at that time.

The sorry state of the front of the Harmon Talley House in 2019

The east end of the house, 2019

The rear ell in 2019. The small shed was ultimately removed, but the rest remains

As you can see, it was in pretty rough shape, and that was actually a slight improvement --  I believe the roof had already been replaced by then. And of the two, the outside actually looked better than the inside. There had been reports of mold inside, not at all surprising considering that there had been a hole in the roof. This likely explains why all the interior walls had been torn out, exposing the studs and stone walls. There was definitely a lot of work to do, but apparently the core structure was still in good enough shape to be saved. Below are some shots of the interior of the house in 2019, to give you an idea of the starting point for restoration.

Front room, first floor, looking west, showing original fireplace

Front room, first floor, looking east

Rear of first floor, looking northwest. In the restoration,
the stairs were repositioned to the northeast corner

Second floor, looking northeast

As these photos attest, there wasn't a whole lot left in the interior of the home, but new owner John Stevens was determined to preserve as much of the structure as he could. Yes, the first and second floor layouts were modified and updated, and modern windows, doors, appliances, etc. were installed. Even the stairways were repositioned. There is a legitimate and honest debate to be had about the different ways to restore historic homes, but in this case Stevens was looking for a middle ground between preserving a historic house and creating a modern home for a 21st Century family. But in reality, these types of homes have always been updated as time goes on, whether it be the addition of new sections, or the installation of things like plumbing, electricity, or just updating furniture, walls, and home décor. The photos below show what the house looks like today (and incidentally, this post is done with the knowledge and consent of the owner). You can find these photos and more on the property's listing.

First floor today, looking northwest. For orientation, note the fireplace

First floor today, looking northwest, with door to the side porch

View from the kitchen, looking west to the family room in the new (replacement) addition

Master bedroom in the north end of the rear ell

But as beautiful as the interior of the house is, the most stunning, and most noticeable to the most people, transformation was with the exterior of the house. The pictures higher up the page show what the outside of the home looked like before Stevens Construction came along. They cleaned up the landscaping, removed the stucco to expose the beautiful fieldstone construction, and installed beautiful new siding on the rear ell. Throw in some great exterior lighting (you have to drive by there at night to appreciate it) and the home is almost unrecognizable, in the best way, from what it was only a couple years ago. The only parts of the house that were removed were a small shed on the back and a later 20th Century one story addition on the west side, which was replaced by a new, two story section containing the family room and a bedroom above.

Front façade of the house as it looks from Mt. Lebanon Road today.
 Compare it to the 2019 photo seen earlier

East end of the house, porch, and rear ell with garage

Aerial view of the Harmon Talley House in 2023. I like drones

The Harmon Talley House has been standing for almost 220 years now, and thanks to the recent intervention and hard work of John Stevens and Stevens Construction, it's set to be here for many years more. The interior would no longer be recognizable to Harmon Talley, Samuel McCaulley, Eli B. Talley, John Talley, or or any of the other farmer-owners of Tippecanoe Grove Farm -- but then again, neither would Talleyville or the rest of Brandywine Hundred. Times change, and homes have always changed with them. In the last few years, this house has been transformed from a rotted-out wreck in danger of being torn down to a beautiful, modern home awaiting a family to enjoy it and, hopefully, appreciate its rich history.