The First Bergdoll mansion
Brewery founder Louis Bergdoll hired renowned brewery architect Otto C. Wolf to design and build a large brick mansion at North 29th and Cambridge Streets in Brewerytown, Philadelphia, several blocks uphill from the Bergdoll Brewery. It may have been the first free-standing great home in Brewerytown. It’s still standing today, in remarkably good condition. A unique feature of the property is the elaborate iron fence around the house. Each balustrade is topped by an iron flower from hops, one of the main ingredients in beer.
The first Bergdoll mansion in Philadelphia.
Both Louis Bergdoll, the elder, and Louis C. Bergdoll, the younger, lived in the Brewerytown mansion only briefly. Their funerals were performed in the same room in 1894 and 1896. Upon her husband’s death, Emma Bergdoll built a large multi-story carriage house around the corner from the mansion on Cambridge Street for her barouche, and later, her electric car and limousines. The barouche remained stored away in the carriage house well beyond the 1940s because it would not fit through the diminished doors when the carriage house’s ground floor was renovated into living quarters.
The first Bergdoll mansion. Black and White images are from the National Register of Historic Places, Department of the Interior.
The first Bergdoll mansion is historically significant in Brewerytown, along with the remains of the brewery complex. I’ve described their construction and use in great detail in the book.