The Red Rose Girls: The Red Rose Inn

"The Red Rose" by Violet Oakley

"Philadelphia summers were notoriously unpleasant. The weather occasioned much misery, causing more than one resident to recall with irony William Penn's proud boast that his city lay 'six hundred miles nearer the sun' than England. The heat also caused Violet Oakley, Jessie Willcox Smith and Elizabeth Shippen Green to take their work and escape to the country.

One day, as summer was waning and their return to the city imminent, they drove out to Villanova to see the famous Red Rose Inn. The estate had been the subject of numerous newspaper articles centering around the plans of the owner, Frederick Phillips, to turn the property into an artists' colony by subdividing the more than eight-hundred-acre property, building new homes on these lots and then leasing them to creative people with few resources but refined taste who might then 'develop their talents amid the graceful surroundings of country life.' 

In spite of legal battles from family members and neighbors, Phillips' grand scheme was not completely thwarted. He opened the farmhouse to the public as the Red Rose Inn, planting a garden full of red roses and presenting one to each of his visitors when they signed the guest book. 

Eventually, he won his legal battles and was proceeding towards the establishment of his initial dream when his death halted all plans. His litigious relatives immediately put the Red Rose Inn, along with 205 acres of the property up for sale, so Violet, Elizabeth and Jessie made plans to tour the grounds before it was too late. After seeing it, Violet wrote: 'I knew at once that I had come home. This was it.'

Purchasing it was far beyond their means ($200,000), but they formulated a plan to rent the estate.  Elizabeth's cousin, who was a lawyer, approached the agent with their proposition, and in the spring of 1901, they leased the inn for a year and a half with the intent to extend if possible. Violet explained to the nearby residents, 'This is not going to be an artist's colony at all. We have grown tired of working in the midst of trolley cars, drays and heavy traffic, so we three are going out to where the green trees grow, where the cows roam and where the air is pure, and quietness prevails..."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Red Rose Girls: Art and Love on Philadelphia's Main Line" by Alice A. Carter.)