Shadow lawn

Woodrow Wilson Hall, formerly known as the Shadow Lawn mansion, was built in 1929 at a cost of $10.5 million as the private residence of former F.W. Woolworth Co. president Hubert Templeton Parson and his wife Maysie. Philadelphia architect Horace Trumbauer and his assistant Julian Abele, the first African-American professional architect, designed the mansion in the neoclassical French tradition. The construction incorporates limestone quarried in Belford, Indiana (also used in the Empire State Building), steel, concrete, and 50 varieties of Italian marble.

The mansion stands upon the precise site of the original Shadow Lawn, which was destroyed by fire in 1927, soon after $1 million had been spent on its refurbishing. That former colonial frame structure contained 52 rooms and was built in 1903 for John A. McCall, former president of the New York Life Insurance Co.

It was later purchased by Joseph B. Greenhut, the head of Siegel, Cooper Co., a New York department store. Greenhut loaned the mansion to President Woodrow Wilson during the campaign of 1916 as the presidential summer home. Thereafter it was known as the Summer White House.

The current mansion fell under municipal ownership in the Depression, and later served as the site of a private girls’ school until the University




I want to be here.And yes, it is the warbucks mansion.