Thunderbird Lodge

Built within a late eighteenth-century fieldstone banked barn, this artists' residence in Rose Valley, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, was remodeled in 1904 by architect William Lightfoot Price for the illustrators Alice Barber Stephens and Charles H. Stephens. The asymmetrical house combines quarried gneiss and flint, stucco over frame, and red Mercer ceramic tile, with two studios having large northern windows. A thunderbird motif in a fireplace and in tile gave the building its name. The property is regarded as a major early work of the Arts and Crafts movement in America and as Price's first large-scale new construction in the style he later promoted in his writings. The house also served from 1921 onward as the home of Allen Seymour and Mildred Scott Olmsted, who hosted informal meetings on racial equality, civil liberties, women's rights and peace. The grounds, with pergolas, a springhouse, a stable garage and a 1926 monument marking the Great Minquas Trail, are documented as retaining their original design.