Alan Wood, Jr.
Woodmont was designed in 1891 by Quaker architect
William Lightfoot Price in the French Gothic style for
Alan Wood, Jr., a steel magnate and former U.S. Congressman. Overlooking the
Schuylkill River, the industrial town of
Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, and the Alan Wood Iron & Steel Company plant, the
chateauesque mansion was completed in 1894 at a cost of one million dollars ($37.8 million in 2023). The site features views of 15 to 20 miles. The
Schuylkill Expressway passes by the estate, hundreds of feet below. The model for Woodmont was the
George W. Vanderbilt mansion,
Biltmore, in
Asheville, North Carolina. Price had designed a nearby hotel for Vanderbilt, the
Kenilworth Inn (1890–91), and was intimately familiar with the then-under-construction chateau. Woodmont includes tennis courts, a swimming pool, stables, several outbuildings, greenhouses, a stream, and walking paths. The original property spanned more than , including a working farm with two dairy barns (one survives). Alan Wood, Jr. occupied the estate for less than a decade. A year before his 1902 death, he sold it to his nephew, Richard G. Wood, who lived there for 28 years. Richard began subdividing the land in 1929, including the sale of to the
Philadelphia Country Club. A description from 1897: WOODMONT.--Alan Wood, Jr., owns the estate with the above name. The section around the house, including the gardens, is styled Woodmont Park. The house was constructed between 1891 and 1894. William L. Price, of Philadelphia, being the architect. The style is that of a French Gothic chateau. Stone from the vicinity furnished most of the walls, the cellar being cut out of the rock. Lieperville stone, with limestone trimmings, were used in facing, and the stable is from the stone quarried from the cellar. The site is 475 feet above tidewater, overlooking the Valley of the Schuylkill for fifteen or twenty miles around. The highest site in Montgomery County is on the Woodmont Farm, being twenty-five feet higher than the mansion site. There are neat lodge-houses. Woodmont Farm contains about 100 acres, and Bellevue and Highland Farms, owned by Mr. Wood, adjoining, also contain about a hundred acres each. The Woodmont Farm had been owned by the Newberry family for a century before Mr. Wood purchased it in 1880. The Bellevue and Highland Farms were a part of the John Y. Crawford estate, and were bought from the estate by Mr. Wood in 1885. Highland Farm was well-named in old time from its elevated position. The farms are well-kept, and in the best condition. On Highland Farm was a stone mansion house, which Mr. Wood beautifully remodeled, and it has been rented to citizens yearly, furnished. Richard G. Wood, of Pittsburg , is dwelling there this summer. There is also a fine farm-house. The stone barn on Bellevue Farm is believed to be the finest one in Montgomery County, accommodating fifty cows and twenty-five horses; and hospital stalls are added for sick cows and horses for isolation. ==Father Divine==