July 13 -- Bishop White house

.

After the Todd house, we visited the Bishop White house, which would have been part of the same row of houses as the Todds', back in the day.   This is a much bigger house than the Todds' house.

Fire was a constant problem.  Many structures were wooden, and given that the only source of warmth, or heat for cooking, was fire.....  There were fire insurance companies in Philadelphia.  If you were insured, there would be a plaque on the front of your building. We were told that they would put put the fire, whether or not you were insured, but insurance would help with the cost of replacement.

Bishop White was Episcopalian.  No proscription on fanciness there, as was apparent the moment we walked in the front door.

Wallpaper, wallpaper borders, and a diamond-painted canvas floor cloth.

Dining room.  More wallpaper.  Fancy chairs; imported china (from China, made for the export market).

One of the things that is very cool about the White house is that all (?) of the furnishings were actually his.  So often, with a property that is hundreds of years old, the furnishings will have been disbursed to the heirs, and lost, destroyed, or sold.  In Bishop White's case, we were told, his granddaughters saw to it that the house stayed pretty much the way it was when he died.

These are actually his chairs, and they are his dishes.

I like this dramatically-lit image.

But if you actually want to see the stuff, it helps to lighten it up!

Fancy.

Down a short hallway, which runs beside the stairs, is the kitchen.  Sugar.

Grater.

Cooking utensils.

We have a popcorn aficionado in the family.  That's a popcorn popper.

Highchair.

Note doorway -- into indoor privy, which was exceedingly rare, we were told.  A servant would dump water into it, from time to time, flushing what was there into the nearby creek.  Nice.  Not.....

Fancy open staircase (stark contrast to the closed narrow staircases in the Todd house), with kid running up, as kids no doubt did in Bishop White's day.  He had a big family, and various grandkids lived here at various times.

Park ranger's hat, on a hat peg in the hallway (directly behind me when I took the pic before this one).

When the Bishop died, his granddaughters commissioned a painting of his study.  The painting makes it possible to know that this room is as near as possible to being just as it was when he left it.  (as always, click on any image to embiggen)

Apparently the bishop didn't take himself or his possessions too seriously.  We were told that one of his favorite things was a ceramic piece showing someone preaching, and someone else hopelessly asleep....  (I tried to get its pic, but the result was too blurry to bother posting.)

The Bishop lived a long life, which he attributed to "two cigars, two apples, and two glasses of Madeira every day."

The dark thing hanging from the wall, next to the chair, is what passed for a cigar -- a tight twist of tobacco.  The smudgy looking place, in the shadow of the paper pinned to the mantel, is apparently where the bishop put his cigars out, on the wall.......

This is clearly visible in the painting.

This doorway-surrounded-by-bookshelves does not appear in the painting -- it is to the left of the mantel.

Also not in the painting -- boxes and glasses on the mantel.

The open doorway in the painting leads to his bedroom.  There is also a door from the bedroom into the hall.  It has this doorknob.  I'd never seen one like this before. There were more like this in this house, and also in the Powel house (our next stop).

Mid-distance images hardly ever catch my eye, and I often don't think to capture them.  I did not get a pic of his whole bedroom.  This sitting area is near the foot of the bed.  Note playing cards on the edge of the table.

Unlike most people of his means, the bishop stayed in Philadelphia through the yellow fever times.  Perhaps we know why he survived...........

His bedroom, like his study, is just as he left it when he died.  One of his granddaughters wrote on the flyleaf of this book that he was reading it shortly before his death.

Slippers to fit very long and narrow feet.

.