Boxhill

Boxhill was built in 1901 by a wealthy stockbroker named Henry Percival Glendenning who lived in Philadelphia around Rittenhouse Square. Glendenning built Boxhill as a summer home to escape the urban heat, and also to go fox hunting in season in the fall and spring. The manor house included a separate carriage house with horse stables. The name “Boxhill” was chosen because the manor house was a “hunt-box” on a hill.  At that time, Rose Tree Hunt Club was located a short distance away in Rose Tree Park. The Hunt Club House is still standing near Rose Tree Road & Providence Road in Rose Tree Park. At that time, there was an active horse community in Upper Providence Township.  In 1920, Samuel Riddle showed his famous race horse, “Man of War” to a large crowd of 15,000 people at the Rose Tree Hunt Club.

To build the home that would become Boxhill, Glendenning engaged a renowned architect named William Lightfoot Price. Price designed many elegant mansions on the Main Line and also built several hotels in Atlantic City, such as the Marlborough-Blenheim and the Traymore. William Price also was active in developing an utopian community named Rose Valley; several of his houses still stand. There was a movement at the time revolting against industrial and mechanical building, leading to the creation of the Arts and Crafts movement, which used hand-crafted designs and methods. Price also worked with renowned tile maker Henry Mercer of Doylestown. Several Mercer tiles are on Boxhill’s Great Room fireplace mantel.

Price used Greek Revival architecture on the front and back of the building. There are matching northwest and southeast pediment portico entrances; four massive round columns were used at the base. On the side of the house facing the Springton Reservoir, there is an open veranda with four square stone pillars covering a brick floor. On top of this veranda is a large, second-floor porch surrounded by a Chinese Chippendale railing. 

The Great Room has a beamed ceiling, and five arched windows with antique glass. There is chestnut paneling on the walls. A large, stone walk-in wood-burning fireplace anchors the room. A grand staircase has an Arts and Crafts-inspired railing and a beautiful, leaded glass arched Palladian window. An elegant, exceptionally large dining room has five arched windows and a double door that leads out into an English garden. There is a wood-burning fireplace with a mantel in the dining room. The basement includes an authentic wine cellar.

Benchmark School is the fifth owner of Boxhill. The Bradley family were the fourth owners of Boxhill. The second owner was the Gibbon family. John Gibbon was a world-renowned heart surgeon at Jefferson Hospital, who invented the heart-lung machine. This machine was revolutionary in that it enabled open-heart surgery, using the machine to re-circulate the blood while the heart was stopped. The machine has saved millions of lives by enabling intricate heart operations. In 1972, Mrs. Gibbon sold the land that would become the site of Benchmark School to Benchmark’s founder, Dr. Irene Gaskins. For decades, Benchmark’s campus grounds had encircled Boxhill, and the purchase of Boxhill in 2023 allowed Benchmark School to create a fully unified campus.