Grey Towers National Historic Site, also known as Gifford Pinchot House or The Pinchot Institute, is located just off US 6 west of Milford, Pennsylvania, in Dingman Township. It is the ancestral home of Gifford Pinchot, first director of the United States Forest Service (USFS) and twice elected governor of Pennsylvania.
The house, built in the style of a French château to reflect the Pinchot family's French origins, was designed by Richard Morris Hunt with some later work by Henry Edwards-Ficken. Situated on the hills above Milford, it overlooks the Delaware River. Pinchot grew up there and returned during the summers when his later life took him to Washington and Harrisburg. His wife Cornelia made substantial changes to the interior of the home and gardens, in collaboration with several different architects, during that time.
In 1963 his family donated it and the surrounding 102 acres (41 ha) to the Forest Service; it is the only U.S. National Historic Site managed by that agency. Three years later the Department of the Interior designated it a National Historic Landmark. Today it is open to the public for tours and hiking on its trails; it is also home to the Pinchot Institute, which carries on his work in conservation.
Read more about Grey Towers National Historic Site: Building and Grounds, History, Today, Gallery
Famous quotes containing the words grey, towers, national, historic and/or site:
“A great black presence beats its wings in wrath.
Above the boneyard burn its golden eyes.
Some small grey fur is pulsing in its grip.”
—Anthony Hecht (b. 1923)
“Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.—
Her lips suck forth my soul; see where it flies!—
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven be in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.”
—Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)
“Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt.”
—William Cobbett (1762–1835)
“If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The present hour is always wealthiest when it is poorer than the future ones, as that is the pleasantest site which affords the pleasantest prospects.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)