The former "Fairview Cottage" (later, simply "Fairview") possesses two areas of significance for the architecture and history of Philadelphia. As the home, successively, of three of the most successful and prominent mill owners of the region (and, therefore, among the most prosperous and influential of Philadelphia businessmen) and, as the last remaining of the hilltop mansions of Manayunk, it exemplifies the economic and historical heritage of the community. And "Fairview" stands after nearly a century and a half as an established and familiar visual feature in the landscape. Its prominent location and visibility give it the status of landmark to those who live in Manayunk and in surrounding communities.

Perched high atop a rock cliff, carved out long ago by the formation of the Schuylkill River as it made its way from the Appalachian Mountains to the Delaware Bay, sits "Fairview Cottage." From its lofty promontory one can view the entire history of the region named Manayunk, where the original native people of the Lenni Lenape tribe lived and died out when European settlers came to claim ownership of a new nation and its land. History of the parcel of land on which "Fairview Cottage" stands can be traced back to 1681 when William Penn was given the Schuylkill River as payment of a debt to his father by Charles II of England.¹⁰ Penn acquired the lands surrounding the river from the Lenni Lenape¹¹ and created Roxborough Township. He then divided this region into eleven parcels which, over the next two hundred years, subsequent owners continuously subdivided and sold as smaller plots. Titus Levering, one of the founding fathers of Manayunk, at one time owned the lot where "Fairview Cottage" sits. He sold it in 1829 to Francis H. Latch,¹² who kept it undeveloped until 1857.

In 1819 the Schuylkill Navigation Company sold water rights to encourage industrial development along its newly built canal and laid out the town (Manayunk) on its property, then calling it Falls of the Schuylkill. The sixty or so inhabitants of the area called it "Flat Rock," but by 1824 it blossomed as an industrial community renamed Manayunk, for the name given the river by the early Indians.¹³ By 1828, Manayunk, favorably compared to Lowell and Manchester, took the lead in large-scale mechanized production of cotton textiles away from Kensington, Moyamensing and Northern Liberties, Philadelphia's traditional centers of cloth and yarn production.¹⁴

As the industry grew so did the wealth. For the mill owners who chose to live near their businesses the suitable locale was the lofty hills above the mills. These mansions dotted the cliffside like pearls in a topographical necklace, the crowning jewels of reward for hard work and vision. While the earlier mansions built in and around Fairmount Park had the vistas of their land as farm industry, Manayunk's mansions had vistas of their "industrial farms," the mills. Regardless of the setting, these mansions were as elegant and of their time as the park houses preceding them. Of the handful of mansions that mill owners built, "Fairview Cottage" remains. "Tower View", the next-door neighbor to "Fairview Cottage," built by Henry K.B. Ogle and his wife (the daughter of John Towers, another early Manayunk founder),¹⁵ is gone. "Schuylkill View" on the cliff above 3811 Main Street, built by Richard Hey,¹⁶ owner of Progress Mills, is gone with only the remnants of the carriage house remaining on the street below. It is unknown how many others have been lost.

In 1857, Francis Latch sold his hilltop property to John Campbell.¹⁷ Campbell was born in County Down, Ireland, in 1820, the first of two sons of John and Mary Campbell. The other son was Archibald, born 1824, and together the two men became wealthy mill owners in the booming textile world of Manayunk. According to Scharf and Westcott's "History of Philadelphia", there were ten mills either in operation or being built in Manayunk in 1828 and by 1840 there were seventeen cotton factories and fifteen woolen factories.¹⁸ This mill town, referred to as the Manchester of America, allowed many new immigrants to make their fortunes here. The Campbell brothers' enterprise, the Crompton Mill, at Leverington Street on the west bank of the canal, was one of the largest mills in Philadelphia. From this and their Union Mill, manufactured goods went to all parts of the United States before 1874. They expanded their business to Campbell, Knowles, & Co., a cotton and woolen goods store at 125 Chestnut Street.¹⁹

Both Campbells built estates to reflect their prosperity: Archibald's, located on sixty acres of land on School House Lane called "Chestnut Grove"; and John's, located on a few acres on the most prominent cliff top in Manayunk -- "Fairview Cottage." The original deed for John Campbell's land, dated September 1, 1857, which Mr. Campbell purchased for $600.00 reads, "...All that certain lot or piece of ground...", indicating that there were no buildings on the property at that time.²⁰ Another deed appears May 22, 1861, which explains that the original deed contains a mistake concerning the property's boundaries, and indicates that "Fairview Cottage" now exists on the land; the new deed states:

...And whereas the said John Campbell being thus seized in his demesne as of fee and in said lot of ground afterwards erected a messuage or tenement and other Buildings and improvements thereon. And whereas upon a survey of said lot recently made by Jas. Keily esquire surveyor and regulator for the eighth District the description thereof contained in the above or cited Deed is found to be inaccurate, and the said John Campbell having requested the said Francis H. Latch and wife to confirm the said Lot to him the said John Campbell his heirs and assigns by the description hereinafter setforth which is in conformity to the said survey and they being willing so to do.²¹

John Campbell and his wife, Anne, lived together at "Fairview Cottage" until his untimely death at the age of 53 in 1873.²² Anne Campbell continued to reside in the house until June of 1876, when "Fairview Cottage" was sold at sheriff's sale.²³ John Ridgway, a descendant of Jacob Ridgway, the chief business and legacy-leaving competitor of Stephen Girard, bought the house and sold it a year later to James M. Preston,²⁴ a woolen manufacturer who is listed in the Industrial Census of Philadelphia, 1882, as the owner of "four mills, yarns, jeans and cloth." He was born in 1824 at the Falls of Schuylkill, one of three sons who took over their father's Preston Mill in 1854. James became sole proprietor in 1861 when his two brothers withdrew from the business. He then purchased the Wabash Mills and the Sciota Mills. The Manayunk National Bank, founded in 1871, lists James M. Preston as an original subscriber of shares in the bank, and he became, for several years, director of the bank. According to his obituary in the Manayunk Sentinel in 1888, "Mr. Preston took an active interest in any movement tending to benefit Manayunk..." The newspaper also noted that Preston died at his home, "Fairview."²⁵

Graham J. Littlewood, another prosperous mill owner, bought one portion of the property after its division into two parcels in 1884.²⁶ The other parcel, the one with "Fairview Cottage" on it, sold in sheriff sale to James G. Kitchen in 1889.²⁷ In May of 1890 Joseph M. Adams, a manufacturer of wool for carpet yarns, purchased both parcels.²⁸ Adams was born in County Donegal, Ireland, in 1850 but attended public schools in Philadelphia after his parents relocated to the city. Owner of the Arcola Mills at Shur's Lane for 35 years, Adams purchased the old Shur's Lane Mills in 1880 and tripled its size in six years, becoming one of the largest worsted and woolen yarn producers in the United States. He was politically active, serving on the Philadelphia school board for Manayunk, as well as both governing city councils, the Common and the Select. He was an active member of the 21st Ward Republican Club and was often a delegate to Republican State Conventions. In 1904 he was one of the original "Theodore Roosevelt men" at the National Convention. Mr. Adams died in 1915 at his home.

After the death of Mr. Adams, "Fairview," during the early 20th Century, entered a more commercial realm of existence. In the 1920's Saint John the Baptist Church, filling a need for a Catholic men's social club, formed a group called the Manayunk Club. Located originally on Main Street, a forerunner of Knight's of Columbus halls, the Manayunk Club outgrew its quarters and relocated to the vacant "Fairview" then called the "Adams Mansion." Although mainly a private drinking club serving the needs of its members during prohibition, it also provided outings and athletic events such as golfing, fishing, picnics and other social activities. During the 1940's slot machines in the basement provided another kind of entertainment.³⁰ In 1933 a fire destroyed St. John's High School allowing "Fairview" to serve a new function -- from January to June of 1934 it substituted as the church's high school, and that year's class graduated from "Fairview."³¹ Although ownership passed from the church into private hands, the Manayunk Club exists to present day with 150 life members as a private drinking establishment.

Three prominent men in the history and making of Manayunk lived and died in this building aptly named "Fairview." Other prominent businessmen of the time bought it as a sure real estate investment. The house, built on the money earned by the growing, industrialized nation, typified by Manayunk and its natural resources of water power and transportation, stands as a symbol of the rags-to-riches stories that could happen in this new land called America.

x x x

Because of its site, "Fairview Cottage" is both a visible landmark and a hidden treasure. It can be seen from many places in Manayunk as well as from almost any vantage point across the Schuylkill River in Montgomery County. Looking up from the intersection of Main and Grape Streets, the heart of Manayunk's business district, "Fairview Cottage" looms large on the hillside -- in fact, it is the only structure visible beyond the immediate commercial zone. It is a beacon in the geographically steep terrain that rises from the river and culminates at the crest of Ridge Avenue. It hovers some 200 feet above Main Street with a 140-stair climb up the cliff face as its most direct connection to the hillside town below.

Perhaps "The Architecture of Country Houses" by Andrew Jackson Downing (published 1850) influenced the form and siting of "Fairview Cottage." Downing's prejudice for the Gothic Revival Style of domestic architecture was renowned. Downing, himself, built his home, Highland Gardens, in a similar picturesque setting above the Hudson River in New York. He felt that in the country house or villa there is "something wonderfully captivating in the idea of a battlemented castle, even to an apparently modest man"³² and, yet, that "the beautiful, rural, unostentatious, moderate home of a country gentleman"³³ was the ideal to strive for. "Fairview Cottage" seems to be the marriage of these two views.

"Fairview Cottage" has an uncanny presence as a period piece of grandeur that echoes from the hills high above the humble worker town below. It appears in a clearing of the hillside overgrowth as a monument to the heritage of the milltown that built it. Its stone building technology has the same roots as the factories and mills that enveloped the river's edge, although it is adapted to its own residential form and commanding site. Some of the mill buildings remain, many are gone. Almost all of the mill owners' mansions are gone -- "Tower View" and "Schuylkill View" as mentioned before -- so many lost in the name of progress. "Fairview Cottage" remains on its protected cliff as a reminder of the great history of young American knowhow and spirit that built this country and this manufacturing town in the first half of the 19th Century prior to the Civil War. "Fairview Cottage" is, in its own way, as powerful a landmark as the arched train bridge floating above the Schuylkill River, a prime symbol of Manayunk.

"Fairview Cottage" exemplifies the economic and historical heritage of the community of Manayunk -- and of Philadelphia at large -- by having been the home of not one but three of the most important mill owners of the time, and by being the last remaining of Manayunk's hill-top mansions. And it is an established and familiar visual feature of the neighborhood and surrounding communities by virtue of its unique, striking and longstanding location.