{"nrhp_refnum":"76001653","name":"Highlands, The","other_names":[],"category":"building","location":{"address":"W of Fort Washington at Skippack Pike and Sheaff Lane","address_restricted":false,"city":"Fort Washington","county":"Montgomery County","state":"PA","lat":40.13459958100003,"lon":-75.23179674199997,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1976-12-12","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Landscape Architecture","Politics/Government","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["state"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"The Highlands is a large 2½-story dressed fieldstone house in the late Georgian style, built 1794-1796 on a 300-acre setting overlooking the Skippack Valley in Fort Washington, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. The grounds include a formal garden, carriage house, tenant farmhouse, springhouse, stone barn and a gardener's cottage.","why_significant":"The nomination argues the house is perhaps the finest dressed-fieldstone house in the countryside beyond Philadelphia, apart from pre-Revolutionary Cliveden, and is architecturally unique for Pennsylvania. Its London townhouse character and engaged classical order drawn from Palladio are cited as distinctive. It was also built as a residence and a setting for lavish entertaining, and was home to Anthony Morris, an early state legislator, Speaker of the Pennsylvania House, and U.S. Minister to Spain.","narrative":"Built between 1794 and 1796 as a 2½-story dressed fieldstone house above the Skippack Valley in Fort Washington, Montgomery County, the Highlands was designed in the late Georgian manner with a two-story engaged marble Ionic order and a pediment with a semicircular fanlight. Its front block rises from a raised basement, and marble belt courses, sills and keystones add detail. The house was built for Anthony Morris, a state legislator who served as the first Speaker of the Pennsylvania House and later as United States Minister to Spain under Madison. Its scale and classical treatment recall London townhouses and the President's House in Philadelphia, and the nomination regards it as the finest dressed-fieldstone house in the countryside beyond Philadelphia apart from Cliveden. George Sheaff, a wine merchant, added a glazed gallery dining room across the rear around 1830. The house passed to the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission in 1920.","period_of_significance":"1794-1830","architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Late Georgian","criteria":["C"],"status_note":"The house has been unoccupied for several years and suffers occasional vandalism.","vacant_flag":true,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-haiku-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.1-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 17:11:29.523735-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_PA/76001653.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/76001653/ed2d6e12af-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/76001653/ed2d6e12af-1600.webp","licence":"CC0","author":"Smallbones","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Highlands_Montco_PA.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Smallbones</a>, <a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Highlands_Montco_PA.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/71995606","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Highlands_(Whitemarsh,_Pennsylvania)","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7739653"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/pennsylvania/montgomery-county/highlands-the-76001653/"}