Andy Warhol considered him "the only person in town with glamour." The Philadelphia Art Alliance deemed him "the first gentleman of Philadelphia." Connoisseur Magazine named him one of the top ten art collectors of all time.
When Henry Plumer McIlhenny died in 1986, he left everything - an estimated $100M worth - to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where he had served for 50 years as curator, trustee and chairman of the board. His collections were housed in both his magnificent Rittenhouse Square townhouse and at Glenveagh in Ireland, the largest privately-owned plot of land in the country. His parties were legendary. His friends were society's giants.
At his death, someone commented "I had always thought that no one was irreplaceable, but Henry is irreplaceable."
Fellow volunteer tour guide and historian Thomas Keels tells you of this remarkable man in the mid-August edition of “Biographical Bytes from Bala: Laurel Hill West Stories.” Wherever you get your podcasts.
ABC #019: The Other Side of Paradise - Sigourney Fay, Hobey Baker, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Connection
ABC #018: The Calder Connection - Alexander Milne & Alexander Stirling, The Warner Plot, and Henry Charles Lea
ABC #017: Fathers of American Medicine, Part 1
ABC #016: Curtis Publishing Company and The Saturday Evening Post
ABC #014: On with the Show! - Edward Fry, Adam Forepaugh, and J. Fred Zimmerman
ABC #015: Quarantine Special: She’s Not There - Florence Leontine Lowe (“Pancho” Barnes), Ethel Huhn “Bobo” Bailey, and Princess Olga Demidoff Troubetzskoy Stoever
ABC #013: On the Tube - Dave Garroway, Anne Francine, Edie Huggins, and Sheela Allen-Stephens
ABC #012: A Night at the Opera: Giuseppe del Puente, Eleanor Mayo, Camille d’Elmar, David Bispham, and Robert Carson
ABC #011: She Invented What?! - Martha Coston, Rachel Holloway Lloyd, and Mary Engle Pennington
ABC #010: FOAL - Friends of Abraham Lincoln: John and Ulric Dahlgren, Rev Matthew Simpson
ABC #009: The Attorneys General: Richard Rush, Henry Gilpin, and Seven State AGs
ABC #008: The Lady Artists: Alice Barber Stephens, Cecilia Beaux, and Harriet Frishmuth
ABC #007: Play Ball!! Harry Wright, Benjamin Shibe and Al Reach, Harry Kalas
ABC #006: Fathers and Sons: Thomas and Albert Sully; Robert and Francis Patterson; Peter, George, and Harry Widener
ABC #005: Building Philadelphia: John Notman, Napoleon LeBrun, Frank Furness, and Horace Trumbauer
ABC #004: Holidays among the Stones: Sarah Josepha Hale, Martha Tillman, Anna Jarvis, and Stephen F. Whitman
ABC #003: Easterners of the Old West: Henry Deringer, Owen Wister, and John B. Stetson
ABC #002: Famed Arctic Explorer + Spiritualist / Con-artist: A Match Made in Heaven
ABC #001: The Origins of Laurel Hill: How and Why Did It Get Here?
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