Independence National Historical Park - Declaration House (Graff House) - National Parks (U.S.) on Waymarking.com

The Declaration House, located on the southwest corner of 7th and Market Streets, was reconstructed in 1975. The exhibit is open year round, though hours vary by season.The house was originally built in 1775 by Philadelphia bricklayer Jacob Graff, Jr. During the summer of 1776 Thomas Jefferson, a 33-year-old delegate from Virginia to the Continental Congress, rented the two second-floor rooms and there drafted the Declaration of Independence. The first floor contains exhibits and a short film on the drafting of the Declaration. On the second floor, the bedroom and parlor that Jefferson occupied have been recreated and contain period furnishings. Also included are reproductions of Jefferson's swivel chair and the lap desk he used when he wrote the Declaration.

In 1976 the National Park Service reconstructed the three-story brick house on the southwest corner of Seventh and Market Streets where Thomas Jefferson in 1776, penned the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson, seeking relief from the summer heat by living on the out skirts of Philadelphia, rented from May 23 to September 3, 1776,the two second floor rooms of the Graff House as his bedroom and parlor, in the latter of which, by his own recollection, he "wrote habitually," including the Declaration. These two reconstructed rooms have been furnished to the period of his occupancy. Some furnishings represent items documented in Jefferson's own diary and account book entries during his three-month stay.

Young newly-wed Jacob Graff, a second-generation brick layer in Philadelphia, purchased the lot at Seventh and Market Streets in 1775, and by May 1776 had completed his new house. It was a large well appointed brick structure with wood and stone trim typical of those constructed by the eighteenth century Philadelphia building trades. The house measured 16'6" wide by 51'1" deep and had an uncommon off-center entrance on its five-bay Seventh Street side. The Market and Seventh Street facades were in Flemish bond with glazed headers. Other facade refinements included a double moulded brick water-table, belt courses, gabled roof with pent return across the gable end, tooled stone window lintels, and a pedimented entrance door. The first two floors of the house each had two rooms separated by a central stairhall. Jefferson's second floor parlor was the northern room, his bedroom the southern one.

The Graff House was much altered before its demolition in 1883. After nearly twenty-five years as a residence for Jacob Hiltzheimer, from 1777 to 1801, brothers Simon and Hyman Gratz purchased the structure for commercial use. Between 1802 and 1808 they raised the building to four stories, extended it south 40 feet, and removed the central stairhall and Seventh Street entrance, replacing the latter with an entrance on Market Street and on the south end of the Seventh Street extension. In this condition it was photographed in 1854-55, producing the only known photographs of the house in existence. In 1882 the Pennsylvania National Bank purchased the "Declaration House," as some interested contemporaries labeled it, and tore it down the next year to build a new bank building. Philadelphian Thomas Donaldson, who had failed in his effort to activate a preservation effort for the building, salvaged what he thought valuable toward a reconstruction of the house as a museum site. The masonry and wood building materials were stored, but since Donaldson's efforts came to naught, the materials were never put to use and eventually were lost, except for a few items which survived in private ownership. Mortar evidence on the two stone lintels from the Graff house which were passed onto the National Park Service gave the key to determining window and brick size, as well as mortar color in the 1976 reconstruction. These lintels have also been incorporated in the second floor windows facing Market Street. Although his preservation efforts failed, Donaldson published a book (1898) which provided evidence for the house reconstruction. Recollections from the Gratz brothers who altered the house at the turn of the century, as well as testimony from John McAllister, one of Philadelphia's most noted antiquarians who personally remembered the house in the late eighteenth century, were among the important items of evidence in his book. This information, along with structural comparisons with other typical corner brick houses of the period, the 1808-1849 insurance surveys of the property, and the 1845-55 photo graphs, provided enough information for the National Park Service to reconstruct the house in 1975 and restore on its interior the two rooms Jefferson rented for nearly 100 days during the summer of 1776 and the profile of the stairhall on the east wall of the second floor.

The first, third, and garret floors, however, have been adapted for exhibit and staff use. A modern attached three-story interpretive wing along the west side of the Graff house which was built simultaneous to the reconstruction, provides interpretation and the only public access to the refurnished rooms on the second floor. Prior to initiating a reconstruction, the National Park Service had to demolish a one-story hot dog stand ironically called Tom's Thumb which was built sometime after 1932, when the bank building of 1883 was torn down. Subsequent archeological investigations of the site provided no important evidence for the Graff House reconstruction.

State/States the Park is located...: Pennsylvania Park Designation: Historic Park/Site Website From the National Parks Service Page of this Waymark...: [Web Link] Are pictures included?: yes Times the Visitors Center (or Park) is Open....: Not listed Months the Visitors Center/Park is open...: Not listed SECONDARY website.: Not listed

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