I was invited to the annual meeting for the Eastern Province of the Lay Dominicans which doubled as a retreat. It spanned from Thursday evening and concluded Sunday morning after Mass of the last weekend in October, Sunday being November 1st, All Sou’s Day. The meeting/retreat was held at St. Mary of Providence in Elverson, Pennsylvania, about 50 miles west of Philadelphia. It was a beautiful fall weekend with perfect though unusually warm weather.
St. Mary of Providence is a facility centered around the Langoma Mansion, the former mansion of the Potts family and now run by the Daughters of St. Mary of Providence. The mansion was built in the 1890s by Joseph D. Potts, who died before it was completed in 1897 but taken over by his son William and his family. The Daughters of St. Mary of Providence took possession in 1948. You can read its history.
This was an honest to true, real life mansion! Other than some museum that might have once been a mansion, I had never been in one, let alone slept in one. According to the website it says it has 76 rooms. It had an East Wing and a West Wing connected by family rooms. Each wing had a spiral staircase which must have gone up three or four floors. Each area had an abundance of fireplaces.
I am going to share a large number of photos I took while there.
Let’s start with the outside of the mansion.
Inside between the two wings on the ground floor is the
Dining Room.
If you don’t get the scope of the room from the picture,
that’s three long dinner tables with ten places each with a chandelier above
each table and plenty of room after the tables to fit more tables. You can see one of the fireplaces in that
picture. The second identical fireplace is
by the first table. Here is a close up.
In between the two fireplaces is the entrance to the solarium.
We held a number of our informal discussions in the solarium.
Each wing had an identical spiral staircase. Here are pictures of the west wing’s.
I can imagine Scarlett O'Hara of Gone with the Wind coming down those stairs!
I did not see what the regular bedrooms were like but I was
told some had four or five beds in a room.
I for one was given a servant’s bedroom, a very humble and spare room.
I felt quite at home in the little room, and the simplicity
of it did good for my humility. Outside
my window was the chicken coop, and I got to hear some roosters crow in the
morning. Here are the chickens from my
window. That little structure is part of
the coop.
I was quite fascinated with the chickens, and so I went down
and took some pictures of the coop.
Breakfast included eggs of various sizes and colors, and I suspect they were fresh from the flock.
Off to the side of the chicken coop was what I thought a
strange structure, a round, stone tower.
I asked Sister Brenda, one of the Daughters of St. Mary of
Providence who runs the facility, what the tower was used for. She said the bells are now located inside,
and we did get bell chimes at various hours of the day. She said at one time it served as a water
tower to provide water pressure for the facilities. It would rank as the most beautiful water tower
I have ever seen. Here is the tower at
sunset.
My time there was just perfect autumn days at the height of
fall colors. Here are some gorgeous
pictures of the grounds.
Goodness. Some of those are breathtaking. Could heaven be this beautiful?
The grounds were filled with all sorts of Catholic statues
for devotion. From my other bedroom window,
I could see a statue of St. Joseph.
There was the Good Shepherd.
Behind the statues of the Good Shepherd were the Stations of
the Cross.
And inside the little stone hut nearby was the Resurrection.
I couldn’t see the light switch, so I snapped the photo in the dark.
Elsewhere there was a set of statues for Fatima.
And a display for Lourdes.
Finally, there was a display for the rosary with a plaque
for each of the twenty mysteries similar to those for the Stations of the
Cross. Unfortunately night had settled
and it was so dark I only took a picture of Our Lady of the Rosary which stood
in the center.
It was not my last night when I took that picture, so I figured I would return the next day with better light for the mysteries. Unfortunately I never got the chance.
But I was blessed to have the chance to spend three days there. I certainly recommend you do if you can.
These were a lot of pictures for one post. I hope you enjoyed them.
