Modern development is making what perhaps could be the last offer to save a treasured piece of Philadelphia history. A little ways down Route 422 in Limerick and not too far from the Philadelphia Premium Outlets and the Limerick Clean Energy Center is a piece of Pennsylvania history that needs your help most urgently: the John McClellan Hood house. 

John McClellan Hood was an Irish immigrant who arrived in America in 1799. Hood became successful as a wine merchant and a grocer in Philadelphia, and built the house in 1834 as a summer home to avoid many of the disease outbreaks in Philadelphia. The 5,000 square foot house is complete with seventeen rooms and eight fireplaces.

If you’re a creative thinker then this might just be the opportunity for you. The Hood house is being given away for free (if you can relocate it, of course.) It is as significant a piece of Pennsylvania history that you’ll find. They don’t construct houses like this anymore, and its facade remains much as it did in 1834. Called “Bessy Bell” by Hood, its blown out windows and stone walls have stood for nearly two centuries. Tunnels running under the property were used before the Civil War as a stopping point for slaves who were escaping to Canada. Hood passed away in Limerick in 1848.

Our architectural history is evaporating. The cost to maintain and restore properties like the Hood House is astronomical. It would take an investment of $700,000 to $1 million to bring it back to life. But, much like Lynnewood Hall in Elkins Park,  it must be.

The property was vacated by Hood’s descendants in the 1980s. The property was then sold in an auction with a plan for a golf course to incorporate the house that never materialized. Then the owners of Valley Forge Casino (Boyd Gaming) bought the land for an approximate price tag of $17 million. 

For nearly 200 years, the house stood almost completely intact. In 2016, vandalism took its toll on the house as windows were blown out, the interior of the house became damaged, and certain valuable parts of the interior were stolen. When an apartment proposal fell through, the property was sold for a project to build a warehouse with the house still intact.

Like all old things it seems these days in modern America, some will argue to tear it down. And the house will face demolition if it doesn’t get sold and relocated. As a respect to our long history in Penn’s Woods, should we leave it to its fate?

Michael Thomas Leibrandt lives and works in Abington Township, Pennsylvania.