The Cliffs
building in Pennsylvania, United States
The Cliffs is a historic country house located near 33rd and Oxford Streets in East Fairmount Park, Philadelphia. It is a Registered Historic Place.
History
The Cliffs was built in 1753 by Philadelphia merchant Joshua Fisher (1707–1783), the great-grandfather of Joseph Wharton. It overlooks the Schuylkill River from the east, just north of the Girard Avenue Bridge and quite close to where Fountain Green Drive meets Kelly Drive along the river. It is a country house in the Georgian style, constructed in stone, with two stories and a basement, originally heated by double fireplaces on both floors and basement. The estate surrounding the house included a farm.
The house was the location where Benjamin Franklin's daughter, Sarah Franklin Bache, and her sewing group made clothing and bandages for the Continental soldiers during the Revolutionary War.
Joshua Fisher settled in Lewes, Delaware, marrying Sarah Rodman, and as a young man started a hat-making business using the locally plentiful animal skins. He developed a robust transatlantic trade in animal pelts and became wealthy, moving his family to downtown Philadelphia in 1746, and building the Cliffs as a country getaway. He brought his family to the Cliffs house and farm in the summer and they grew up interested in nature, with an appreciation of the Quaker testimony of simplicity.
“The Cliffs” enters the record as building in Pennsylvania, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Cliffs, building and Pennsylvania can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“The Cliffs” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Cliffs, building and Pennsylvania provides the most credible route into that argument.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7723384. Authority coordinates are 39.979, -75.194. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1753, 1707, 1783 and 1746.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “The Cliffs”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow The Cliffs primary sources, The Cliffs archive and Cliffs research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Cliffs”?
- Which earlier names or jurisdictions may reveal additional records?
- What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “The Cliffs” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.