Porch of the Old Revolutionary War Hospital
Site 3
Covered with a roof during the Academy period, the walkway sheltered the students as they went back and forth between the Main Studio on the hillside and the dormitories below. “The Porch” by Doris Kunzie Weidner is a rare painting with a view of the Women’s Dormitory (the Lincoln Building), looking down from the porch of the Main Studio. The artist’s finely detailed brushstrokes reveal the spider web-like shadow and shapes created by the architecture.
The building itself exists today only in memory and in the stones of the restored ruins. Constructed on the foundations of the Hospital after the “old Barracks” burned in 1902, it was the home of the Soldiers’ Orphans School classrooms and chapel until 1912. After the PAFA purchased the property in 1916, it was trans formed into a spacious studio, with a large skylight and several smaller studios on the second floor, and a theater and dressing rooms on the first floor. Laughter and applause resounded throughout the Main Studio when the art students staged their “theatricals”–plays, humorous sketches, pantomimes, and costume balls-for the local farm families. Some students still remember the dances and volley-ball games there. (Good News Productions/Valley Forge Films, 1952-1974, used the building as a studio and theater until it burned in 1962).
To reach the next marker, follow the path down the hill to Art School Road and stop in front of the Chester Springs Studio.
