Cape May Diaries
17- A visit to the Physick Estate
We had heard rumor about the Physick Estate our first trip south to Cape May in 1990, but we didn’t approach it, content to stare at the remarkable structure from across its great lawn.
Years later, we decided to investigate the place. The estate, the tour guide told us later, originally rested on a 14-acre plot of land and the building once looked out on a marshland and the ocean. Since then the property had been reduced by 90 percent and seven blocks of land lay between the building and the sea.
Despite this, the property still commanded local respect with a vast lawn on two sides and a drive that led to its carriage house (containing a glass museum) and numerous other stables in the rear.
The seven dollars fee entitled us to one trip through the house and entrance into the glass museum. Our tour guide told us a little bit about the owner from whom the house got its name. Emlen Physick, the son of a prominent at Philadelphia surgeon -- who to obtain his father’s vast inheritance -- had to get a degree in medicine.
“To his credit the 23-year-old Physick did what any boy his age would do,” our guide said. “With his degree clutched in one hand and his inheritance of the other, he promptly retired.”
The real mover shaker, however seemed to be Physick's mother Mrs. F. M. Ralston, who along with a close personal friend of hers, Emilie Parmetier, shared the house with her son, and was at least, partly responsible for its conception. But the design of the house and many times in its interior was credited to an avant-garde architect named Frank Furness.
So in August, 1878, the family announced the construction of a cottage on Washington Street in the English style of architecture, distinctly different from what existed in Cape May at the time.
Even before one shovel struck the ground or one beam put up, Mrs. Ralston and her son already called it the Physick House, as if well aware of its impact on the cape and future generations who would visit it with awe.
Furness was a part time resident of Cape May so was well aware of the radical change his design would bring to the area. He was a top designer whose credits included more than 600 buildings in and around Philadelphia.
According to or guide the Physick House was constructed of a stick style -- wood construction with box-like projections for bays, wings, towers, including a grid work of raised boards overlaying clap-boarded walls. Many of its parts seemed odd to me as we stood on the lawn and stared up the house we had come to visit, as if Furness had designed and built a three dimensional rendition of a Picasso painting.
Our tour guide instructed us to take no pictures while inside nor to touch anything, and if we had to leave before the tour was over, she would get an escort for us.
"This is a museum," she told us. "Please don’t lean on anything."
Once inside the entrance hall, I was struck with a wave of nostalgia. Having grown up in a Victorian era house, many of features of this house and others in Cape May struck me as personally familiar as if I could stick out my hand to the dark and know my way around most of the rooms.
Our guide pointed out that the woven willow screen over the main staircase, willow straws used and soaked when very young to make them pliable, the column decorations had faces suited more for the Halloween house, this was once rumored to be than a wealthy family's home, though many buildings of that era had such displays.
During the tour our guide also noted the gas burners and the odd combination of gas-lamp styles attached to each unit, since the Physicks had changed lamp several times, to keep up with the current fashion, the estate showed several types used over time. The units themselves incorporated the fashionable Far East tastes of the time by including pieces of a Japanese tea set as part of the lamp itself.
In various parts the house, sincrusta, a wall and ceiling covering -- resembling tin ceilings but made of a material not much different from linoleum (and designed by the same man who invented linoleum) -- was added to the house in 1889.
"Panels could be rolled out with various patterns and then painted," she said.
Most Victorian houses had a front hall of some sort, where guests were greeted by a servant. My house for had one similar enough for me to recognize common features, wooden walls, banistered stairs and a sense of separation from the rest of the house.
Although the contractors were careful to reconstruct the house, what we saw as we passed into it was not the same house constructed in 1878 or 1879. While the group had managed to recover a significant number of original pieces -- especially from one family who had purchased many of the items when they went up for sale just after World War II -- the people from MAC could not get all the old stuff back or even be sure of the exact locations of the stuff they got. In some cases they provided look-a-like pieces or installed furniture typical of the time period.
Even more frustrating to the restoration efforts were the changes the Physicks themselves made to the estate. In some cases, they altered the original East Lake design features in the house’s first renovation. While as many as five the original Furness mantels remained, the others were of later, and perhaps lesser design quality.
Like my house, which was built about 1898, the Physick Estate was well ahead of its time, with a central heating system that made the fireplace largely unnecessary. Indeed, for most part in my house, the fireplaces were not use. In the Physick House, they were never used. They were for decoration only.
The dining room here as in my own house also was a place to display fine china and as with my house glass frosted china closets displayed and eloquent collection of plates and glasses. Our guide then led us to the servant's wing, a section a house with an added later in order to provide better service to the family. The Physicks kept no servants overnight except for the cook on occasion and she stayed the room just off the servant's stair on the second floor. The staff was required to don their uniforms when they came to work and remove them when they left to avoid soiling them along the mostly muddy roads.
Unlike my house into which toilets were installed later as in minor edition to the rear, the Physick Estate had hot and cold running water, and internal toilets built with the house -- with one toilet situated right off the master bedroom.
Doctor Physick never married, therefore had no children, and when his mother died, he soon followed her to the grave, leaving the house and fortune to Mrs. Ralston’s close companion. Eventually the house was sold and his possessions scattered and overtime, the house became ruined. The restoration of the house was in some ways symbolic of the saving of Cape May.