The Greenhouse

The Greenhouse was designed by Frank Miles Day (1861-1918), a Philadelphia-based architect who specialized in residences and academic buildings. This may be the only type of structure designed by Frank Miles Day. He graduated from the Towne School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1883 and then studied in England at the South Kensington School of Art, the Royal Academy in London, the atelier of Walter Millard and the office of Basil Champneys. When Day returned to Philadelphia in 1886, he gained further experience working for architects George T. Pearson and Addison Hutton. He established his own office in 1887. In 1893 his brother Henry Kent Day joined him, forming Frank Miles Day & Brother. In 1911 Charles Z. Klauder joined the firm and the name of the office became Day Brothers & Klauder. H. Kent Day retired soon after and the firm name was revised to Day & Klauder and the practice continued under the name until 1927, years after the death of Frank Miles Day.

​

The design of the Greenhouse complex adheres to the three principles to which he subscribed throughout his career. He described these principles in the forward of Historic Houses and Their Gardens, published in 1908. 

​

• union of architectural style and horticulture

• the garden serving as an extension of the house

• house and garden simultaneously enhancing each other's beauty

​

A "union of architectural style and horticulture" is seen in the combination of architectural eclecticism and eclectic horticulture. The working garden, the greenhouses and container gardens and beds, would have contained a variety of vegetables and flowers, often companion plants. We see in the Olmsted blueprints that there are also rose gardens which are a feature of a more formal garden.  The garden serves as an extension of the structure. While the brick walls create firm boundaries, defining the borders of gardens and greenhouses, the open doorways and arches, pergola draw the visitor in and, from within, convey and openness to the outdoors.  There is a masterful balance between green space and brickwork, structure and gardens house and garden "simultaneously enhancing each other's beauty."

​

Frank Miles Day was heavily influenced by the architecture he sketched and photographed on world travels, a blend of classical and gothic styles of architecture. Day, with a small group of young Philadelphia architects, developed an informal association they called the T-Square Club and referred to their styles as "New Eclecticism" or "Creative Eclecticism". They freed themselves from the rigidity of both the Beaux Arts principles (classical Roman and Greek forms) and Victorian Eclecticism (steeply pitched roofs, ornate gables, towers and turrets to draw the eye upward).  Their structures were "sensitive in detail, delicate in ornamentation, and subtle in proportion." The Greenhouse is just this.  

​

At Acorn Cottage, brick served as a vernacular material. Here, brick was used to correspond to the brick at Acorn and also as it was Frank Miles Day's material of choice. He was a master of intricate brickwork, as seen in the examples of his architecture shown below. In 1895, he published Suggestions in Brickwork, a 244 page text with Illustrations from the architecture of Italy, together with a catalogue of bricks made by the hydraulic-press brick companies.  This guide is extensive: It includes instructions for construction of arcades (a series of arches supported by columns or other vertical elements) and loggie (open balconies), doorways and entrances, windows, moulded bands (trim), cornices (the horizontal decorative moulding crowning a building), brick mosaics, fire-places, balconies, piers (vertical weight bearing elements) and columns and gate posts. It includes a catalogue of shapes and, of course, instructions for ordering.

The Greenhouse includes many examples of complicated brickwork depicted in the book's illustrations: curved, Jacobean style arches, curved porticos over the doors and globe-like finials.  The windows are arched and have the original triangular panes. When you look at the façade, you notice small openings or gaps in the brick walls that would have held beams for the pergola and circular footing where the pergola's classical columns stood.

​

Enter the greenhouse and look around. 

​

Three of the  four greenhouses, which would have had wooden and iron frames and glass ceilings, have been taken down, but you can imagine where they once stood, lining this complex. In between the greenhouses were paths and another hothouse. To the left is the building that was used as a shop and, over the wall to the right, more gardens. The sheds and workshop spaces are entered on the back side of this wall facing Acorn Cottage. A few interesting original details can be seen on the shop exterior: a sign bracket, bronze bell, bird box. Within the shop are original barn doors and intricately designed hinges, clay pots from the early 1900s and enormous structural beams. The basement has high ceilings and arches, a huge plumbing system and coal boxes with original shovels (with grates above where coal would be delivered). Within the one still intact greenhouse are original potting tables, iron framing, iron gutters and iron piping...and even a tiny loo. 

​

The only published commentary we have discovered regarding the Greenhouses is the dissertation of Patricia Keebler from 1980 and confirms these connections, as well as suggests the influence of several well known landscape architects and popular concepts of the early 1900:.

​

It is not surprising to find that, as with the Heyt Houses, Jacobean curved gables and the brick bond of the University Museum were utilized in the greenhouse design. 

​

The grouping of glass greenhouses, garden sheds, and stable were all enclosed within a distinct area, tidily confined by a brick wall. This idea was patterned after a suggestion by Gertrude Jekyll, a an established and highly esteemed British landscape architect, whose work Day knew well. He owned a copy of her book, Wall and Water Gardens and, as one of the editors of House and Garden, was probably responsible for a review of the book which appeared in Volume I of October 1901. Jekyll was an influential force in landscape design and frequently worked closely with Luytens.

​

In keeping with her suggestion that service areas should be enclosed in walls that were both useful and decorative, Day's greenhouses at Villanova were surrounded by brick walls high enough to conceal the glass buildings but low enough to avoid becoming a barrier. An open colonnade of paired columns formed a pergola on the southwest, between two garden sheds. These sheds were transformed into quaint little houses with carved stepped gables ornamented by stone finials. On the west side, a one-story brick building with a suggestion of crenelation contained the stable, tool shed, and boiler room. The pergola with end pavilions was not an unusual form in walls surrounding formal gardens, but, incorporated into a utilitarian wall in an effort to integrate the ornamental and functional aspects of garden design, it was an innovative solution to one of the problems of garden architecture.

​

Compare the design elements of Oakwell's Greenhouses with some of Frank Miles Day's most well known Philadelphia architecture. The majority of his residences and academic buildings have ornate brickwork with Byzantine and Jacobean influences, as seen in the arched windows, decorative brickwork and geometrical and animal motifs.  Some of the best examples of his "New Eclecticism" are the Philadelphia Art Club, the University of Pennsylvania Museum and Franklin Field and Weightman Hall ("The Fieldhouse") at the University of Pennsylvania.