Belfield Estate - After Peale

After Peale

After purchasing the property from Peale, William Logan Fisher gave it to his daughter Sarah upon her marriage to William Wister in 1826. According to the Wister's great-granddaughter, Mary Meigs, Belfield served as a stop on the Underground Railroad, though there is no contemporary evidence of this claim. During this time, William Wister and William Logan Fisher together founded the Belfield Print Works, located at the edge of the property, at the present-day intersection of Belfield Avenue and Wister Street. Willaim Rotch Wister, the Wister's eldest son, and father of horticulturist John Caspar Wister, had a house constructed on the estate in 1868 for his family, this house is now La Salle's Mary and Frances Wister Fine Arts Studio. In 1876, he moved his family across the street to another house he had built, the mansion 'Wister', which was deeded to Fairmount Park and demolished in 1956.

The Wister's second son, John, purchased the remaining property upon Sarah's death in 1891. John Wister made several improvements to the property, installing a furnace in the main house, and building a greenhouse next to the ruins of Peale's. The foundations of this greenhouse survive as of 2010. In July 1907, the carriage house caught fire, causing the panicked Wister family to flee Belfield, though there was no actual damage to the main house. After John died in 1900, his wife Sallie Wister continued to live at Belfield until her death in 1922. Upon her death, it was discovered that John Wister's will gave Belfield to his second daughter Sarah Logan Wister Starr, who had lived in another house on the property, later dubbed 'The Mansion', since her marriage in 1901. Wister's eldest daughter, Bessie, felt slighted, leading to a feud between the sisters lasting several decades.

During the ownership of Sarah and her husband James Starr, the property had bathrooms installed and underground electric and telephone lines run to it. They had the colonial kitchen restored, and planted citrus trees, and a garden of one hundred Tea Roses. James, who had an interest in China added several rock gardens and in the rear of the main house, a "Chinese Garden" that still survives. The date of the garden's construction was recorded in Chinese characters on the garden's wall. Also during the Starr's ownership, 20th Street was constructed and a deep trench was cut in the hillside, requiring a 14 foot retaining wall be built along what is now the eastern edge of the estate. In 1926, La Salle College purchased a portion of land on the east side of 20th Street from the Starrs for $27,500. The remaining portion of the campus was purchased from other descendants of William Logan Fisher.

In 1956, S. Logan Wister Starr and her husband Daniel Blain inherited the mansion from Logan's parents, they kept the property a fully functioning and self-sufficient farm, despite spending most of their time in Nova Scotia. Under the Blains, in 1966, the property was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Having rented 'The Mansion' and another house, 'Shaw Manor', from the Blains since the early 1960s for dormitory space, La Salle purchased both houses in 1968, and demolished them for parking space. In 1979, Logan Blain died, and her son, Daniel Blain, Jr. sold the remainder of the estate to La Salle University, in 1984.

La Salle began a renovation of the estate after purchasing it, converting it from a farm into a park-like area. Several structures were demolished, including Peale's stable and hen house, which were leveled to construct tennis courts. The main house of Belfield, now called 'Peale House', was also converted to its present role as the office for the President of La Salle, while the former tenant house on the south end of the property was used for Japanese tea ceremonies from the 1980s until 2007.