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Swedish Log Cabin

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c. 1654; later addition. Creek Rd., 2.4 miles west of Upper Darby.
  • Swedish Log Cabin (Richard W. Longstreth)

Where English settlers brought brick building techniques, Swedish settlers brought hewn-log construction techniques that were quickly adapted across the region and were then taken west by the pioneers who flowed out of Pennsylvania. Windows have replaced the original sliding panels, but this one-room cabin with clapboarded end gables represents a rare survivor of the first European settlers. The building is open to the public.

A more complicated example is the Morton Homestead at 100 Lincoln Avenue in Prospect Park borough, which was preserved for its presumed association with John Morton, signer of the Declaration of Independence. It began as a single-cell cabin of hewn squared logs with dovetailed corners c. 1654 but was extended by a second cell at the end of the seventeenth century. Both pieces were joined by a second story that spanned the two buildings. It is now a museum of early Swedish life.

Writing Credits

Author: 
George E. Thomas
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Data

What's Nearby

Arlington Cemetery
John H. McClatchy Building
Tower Theater
69th Street Terminal
Horn and Hardart

Citation

George E. Thomas, "Swedish Log Cabin", [Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/PA-02-DE34.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of PA vol 2

Buildings of Pennsylvania: Philadelphia and Eastern Pennsylvania, George E. Thomas, with Patricia Likos Ricci, Richard J. Webster, Lawrence M. Newman, Robert Janosov, and Bruce Thomas. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012, 231-231.

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