This French Norman-style house is Grey Towers.  It sits on a 102 acre estate outside Milford, Pennsylvania.  It was built in 1886 by James Pinchot, a successful New York City wallpaper merchant and his wife, Mary. James grew up in Milford and moved back after retiring from business to raise his family.  The house was designed by Richard Morris Hunt (who designed many gilded age mansions such as Biltmore) and the grounds included contributions by Frederick Law Olmsted, the most influential American landscape architect of the 19th century.  

The Pinchots lived at Grey Towers for many years before James passed away in 1908 followed by Mary in 1914. The Grey Towers estate was split between their sons, Amos and Gifford with the latter taking the house. Gifford was a graduate of Yale University with a degree in forestry and also studied forestry in France. His first job after returning from France was managing the forests on the Biltmore Estate, the North Carolina home of George Washington Vanderbilt. He attracted the attention of Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt who appointed him as the first head of the U.S. Forest Service. In this role, Pinchot was a staunch conservation advocate and fought against the industrial forestry practices that characterized the Forest Service during most of the 20th century.

After leaving the Forest Service in 1910, Gifford served as Governor of Pennsylvania for two terms. Cornelia was active in the women’s suffrage movement and was a major donor to the NAACP. She was a close friend of Teddy Roosevelt and shared his passion for progressive causes. She also tried her hand at politics but was unsuccessful in runs for Congress and the Pennsylvania Governorship. The Pinchot family used Grey Towers mostly as a summer home. Gifford passed away in 1946 followed by Cornelia in 1960. Their son, Gifford Jr., donated Grey Towers to the U.S. Forest Service as a house museum and a conference/educational center focusing on conservation. Grey Towers is the only non-forest asset managed by the Forest Service. The house and gardens are open to the public on a daily basis. Click here for more info on Grey Towers or here for a YouTube video showing scenes from Grey Towers.

Gifford Pinchot’s legacy of forest stewardship lives on today. The Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Washington State is named after him along with several other natural and geographic features around the U.S. The Giffords son, Gifford Jr., helped found the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), one of the preeminent environmental legal advocacy organizations in the U.S. today.