Nestled behind the beechwood and maple trees on Montgomery Avenue in Bryn
Mawr, the stately home of Stephen O. Fuguet was a haven for musicians during the late 1800s.
"My grandmother had regular gatherings of musicians at the house," said Gurney Fuguet Stokes, 80, of Newtown Square. "Many of those same musicians
went on to become the original members, first chair, of the Philadelphia Orchestra in the early 1900s. Every child in the family played or sang."
Music and games are still played at the house, where children also enjoy running among the mature trees.
Now the house is part of the lower school for 74 second and third graders at the Shipley School, which purchased the house and about five acres for $75,000 in 1956.
"It's a lovely old structure that has been maintained fairly well," said Barbara Zolliker, head of the lower school.
"With the fireplaces (though not operated) and the carpeted halls and floors, it gives the students a homey feeling. Parents often remark about the homey atmosphere there. Everyone is very attached to that building."
The Fuguet House and stable, which the family named Sylvula, was designed by Quaker architect Addison Hutton in 1876 and completed about 1878 at a cost of $27,000. The Fuguets used the home as a spring and fall retreat from their red-brick city residence at 1128 Spruce St.
The house, which features Gothic details such as steeply pitched dormers and gables and low, shedlike porch roofs, was one of the stylish, expensive homes that dotted the countryside along the Pennsylvania Railroad.
Inside remains much of the original oak paneling around the doorways and the staircase. When the Fuguets owned the home, a large entrance hall and reception room, dining room, parlor and kitchen were on the first floor.
The second and third floors had three large rooms each, including a billiards room on the third floor.
Zolliker said that today, the third floor has two apartments for Shipley faculty members. The kitchen, with built-in pantry closets, is now the library.
There is a book room for tutors, and instrumental music is taught on the third floor.
In later years, an additional classroom was built onto the back of the house off the kitchen.
According to Stokes, the Fuguets came up from New Orleans, and her grandfather was a tobacco importer. He married Marie Louise De La Forest, daughter of the French consul in Philadelphia.
