Grumblethorpe, Philadelphia

About Grumblethorpe

Grumblethorpe is a restored 1744 stone house in Philadelphia where visitors tour period rooms furnished to reflect the Wister family's tastes across generations. Built by German immigrant John Wister from local schist and oak timbers, the house features stone coursing on its facade, front and rear balconies, and double front entrances characteristic of Germantown architecture. The property includes cultivated gardens and the grounds where the family maintained orchards and vegetable beds. In the early nineteenth century, John's grandson Charles Jones Wister Sr., an astronomer and horticulturalist, renamed the house Grumblethorpe and added a Federal-era observatory. Visitors explore the interior rooms and farm gardens to understand how successive generations of the Wister family lived on this country property outside Philadelphia.