| The machines, which separated the rich butter fat from raw milk,
were manufactured at Sharples’ factories in West Chester, Pennsylvania
and near Hamburg, Germany. After achieving worldwide financial
success, Sharples began to purchase parcels of farmland just north
of West Chester, ultimately assembling almost a thousand acres
on which he planned to build a magnificent home and surrounding
estate. |
THE ARCHITECT: CHARLES BARTON KEEN
| Sharples selected a prominent Philadelphia architect, Charles
Barton Keen, to design the mansion and the outbuildings on the
estate. Keen had designed many residences in the Germantown and
Overboork sections of Philadelphia and many mansions for wealthy
patrons on the Main Line as well as houses on Long Island. He
later designed the Aronomink Golf Clubhouse and “Rose Garland”,
now known as “the Willows”. His best known project other than
Greystone, is “Reynolda” the Winston-Salem, North Carolina estate
built for the R.J. Reynolds family which is now a museum of American
Art. |
END OF AN ERA
|
After Sharples’ first wife Helen died in 1911 and their three
children were on their own, he remarried and with his second
wife Jean had three more children. They lived at Greystone until
1935. His early great success was paralleled by financial ruin.
Greystone, which had been pledged as collateral on loans, was
foreclosed in the Depression and Sharples and his young family
moved to Pasadena California where he lived until his death
in 1944.
During the late Depression years and the first years of World
War II, about half of Greystone’s acreage was sold in small
parcels. Greystone Hall, as with many of the great mansions
of yesteryear, was considered “a white elephant.” In 1942, Greystone
Hall and the five hundred acres remaining of the estate was
purchased by Aram K. Jerrehian of Philadelphia, an importer
and appraiser of fine oriental rugs, for the Jerrehian Brothers
partnership.
|
THE JERREHIAN FAMILY AT GREYSTONE HALL FROM 1942 TO THE PRESENT
| The Jerrehian family emigrated to America in the early twentieth
century to escape ethic persecution of the Armenians in Turkey
and to seek a new life in the new world. They came from Diyarbakir,
a city in the historic Armenian provinces of Turkey. The family
settled in Philadelphia, first establishing a family grocery store
in 1905 and then the Oriental Rug Renovating Company in 1907 which
later became “Jerrehian Brothers - Rugs of Quality”, specializing
in the importing, selling and appraising of antique and modern
oriental carpets. |
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