Here's some great news: the 1884 Chalfant House at 220 North Union Street in Kennett Square, boarded up and vacant since it was heavily damaged by fire in November 2014, is being rehabbed. I'm told that the owner plans to have her real-estate office on the ground floor, with apartments above.
Known for its imposing "upside-down chimneys," the house was designed by noted Philadelphia architect Frank Furness and built for Kennett businessman William Chalfant. In addition to repairing the fire damage, the workers have torn down the garage behind the house and will also raze the frame addition at the rear. (Local historian Lynn Sinclair told me that the frame structure was added by Chalfant's widow, Sarah, in 1913. It contained "an extra bathroom and other conveniences," according to a contemporary newspaper item.)
In their book "Greetings from Kennett Square," Joe Lordi and Dolores Rowe described the Queen Anne-style house is "magnificent" and wrote that the top-heavy chimneys "are thought to resemble early locomotive smoke stacks."
The house, once a funeral home, was an important work by Furness, who also designed the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts on North Broad Street in Philadelphia, the old library at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Wilmington train station.
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