Of massive stones and durable materials: Architecture and community in eighteenth-century Trappe, Pennsylvania

In 1745, Henry and Mary Muhlenberg built a stone parsonage in the small village of Trappe, Pennsylvania, located in Providence Township, Philadelphia County (now Montgomery). For the next sixty years, the Muhlenbergs and their descendants lived in Trappe and made a significant impact on the area's built environment that continues to be felt today. The large, two-story stone houses built or occupied by the Muhlenbergs dominated the local landscape and were a distinct departure from the houses of their neighbors, which were predominantly wood or smaller stone dwellings.; The architectural choices of Henry and Mary Muhlenberg reflected more conservative and traditional sensibilities, while the houses and behaviors of their sons revealed an increasing desire to participate in polite society. The adoption of classicism by status-conscious Pennsylvania Germans, however, was not necessarily indicative of assimilation, but rather of the growing engagement by elites with international trends. Ownership of classically-styled houses, together with the refined spaces and objects within them, enabled the younger generation to create places familiar to all knowledgeable members of polite society. By representing the architectural legacy of one family for almost six decades, the Muhlenberg houses indicate that elite Pennsylvania Germans willingly chose classicism and that by doing so, they created spaces of mutual understanding where people of diverse heritages could traverse cultural boundaries and find common ground. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...