When an historic building is lost part of our past, our history, dies with it. Lynnewood Hall is a 110 room mansion built by the renowned architect Horace Trumbauer for the wealthy industrialist P.A.B. Widener. It once housed a magnificent art collection (over 2000 pieces) that now graces the National Gallery. I drive past the old gilded age mansion on my way to and from work everyday and over the last ten years or so I have been watching this once grand building fade. An idea for saving this building has been slowly forming in my imagination. Joy Alter Hubel captured the problem with these mansions in her New York Times article “Gilded Age Estates Hold a Key to Open-Space Efforts” stating that “the challenge of these estates is to find a creative use for them that will preserve their historic integrity, generate the funds necessary to keep them going, while at the same time satisfy their neighbors, who don't want their quality of life sacrificed.” Hubel also went on to say that “these estates represent not only the architectural past, but also our social and cultural roots.”

There is still public outrage over the loss of a similar Trumbauer designed estate, Whitemarsh Hall. I hoped that a lesson was learned by the community and that would somehow prevent the loss of yet another architectural masterpiece, but sadly it is still in a state of rapid decline.