Samuel Sloan (March 7, 1815 – July 19, 1884)[1] was a Philadelphia-based architect and best-selling author of architecture books in the mid-19th century. He specialized in Italianate villas and country houses, churches, and institutional buildings. His most famous building—the octagonal mansion "Longwood" in Natchez, Mississippi—is unfinished; construction was abandoned during the American Civil War.
Samuel Sloan married Mary Pennell in 1843. Their children were Ellwood Pennell, Howard L., Laura W., and Ada. He had three grandchildren by his eldest son, Ellwood. They were Maurice, Helen and Samuel A. Sloan.[3]
By 1851, Sloan had won a commission for the Delaware County, Pennsylvania, courthouse and jail, and designed Andrew Eastwick's villa "Bartram Hall" near the site of Bartram's Garden in Philadelphia. These successes prompted him to begin to list his vocation as "architect".
Authorship
Clinton County Courthouse, Lock Haven, Pennsylvania (1869). Samuel Sloan & Addison Hutton, architects.
Sloan became a prolific author on architecture most notably for The Model Architect as well as City and Suburban Architecture and Sloan's Constructive Architecture (1859). In 1861, he wrote Sloan's Homestead Architecture and American Houses, and A Variety of Designs for Rural Buildings. Sloan also reached thousands of potential customers through the pages of Godey's Lady's Book, which began publishing his designs in 1852.
"The man who has a home," wrote Sloan in 1871, "feels a love for it a thankfulness for its possession and a proportionate determination to uphold and defend it against all invading influences. Such a man is, of necessity . . . a good citizen; for he has a stake in society."[4]
Economic downturns and work outside Philadelphia area
Economic downturns in the late 1850s as well as the American Civil War put a halt to his professional success and Sloan briefly left Philadelphia for New York in 1867. Important examples of his later work are found outside Pennsylvania, notably in Morganton, North Carolina's Western State Asylum for the Insane.[1] Sloan ended up building about 20 hospitals for the insane based on the "Kirkbride Plan System".[5]
Sloan enjoyed some later success in North Carolina, opening an office in Raleigh, where he died on July 19, 1884.[1] His body was buried in Mount Moriah Cemetery, Philadelphia, Lot 11 Sec 20.[2]
Associated architects
Architects associated with Sloan include: Charles M. Autenrieth (1828–1906), Edward Collins (1821–1902), Willis G. Hale (1848–1907), Addison Hutton (1834–1916), John S. Stewart and Thomas Webb Richards (1836–1911), Isaac Pursell (1853–1910), and Charles Balderston (1852–1924). his half-brother, Fletcher Sloan, was also an architect.[6]
Institute of the Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Kirkbride's Insane Asylum) (1856–1859)First Baptist Church of GermantownAllison Mansion, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1860)Lancaster County Courthouse, Lancaster, Pennsylvania (1852)Forks of the Brandywine Presbyterian Church (1875)George Allen house, Cape May, New Jersey (1863).Winter Place, Montgomery, Alabama (1855)
Third Westmoreland County Courthouse, Greensburg, PA - 1883, demolished (not to be confused with current courthouse)
Old Main: first building of Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania Campus (then called Cumberland Valley State Normal School), Shippensburg, PA - 1870–1873.
Mistletoe Villa in Henderson, NC is said to have been designed by Sloan but that fact has never been officially documented[29][30] although historians believe that the style and details are consistent with his other designs[31] - c. 1883–1885
Bell Building (New Bern Graded School), 517 Hancock St., New Bern, NC - c. 1884–1885
(Old) Memorial Hall (demolished), University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC – completed 1885[1][32]
Esperdy, Gabrielle; Kingsley, Karen, eds. (2012). "Temple of Israel [Wilmington, North Carolina]". SAH Archipedia. Charlottesville: Society of Architectural Historians. Retrieved December 26, 2023.
Works of the North Carolina Preservation Fund Inc. (June 1979). "This Private Agency Stays Busy Rescuing Valuable Old Structures". We the People of North Carolina. XXXVII (6).
