Take a Visit to Pennsylvania’s Oldest House Right Here in Delaware County

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Pennsylvania's oldest house, built more than 300 years ago, is right here in Pennsylvania.
Image via AZ Animals.
Pennsylvania's oldest house, built more than 300 years ago, is right here in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania’s oldest house is over 300 years old, built around 1640.

It’s also in Delaware County, on Creek Road in Drexel Hill, writes Ava Peluso for AZ Animals.

Swedish immigrants built the Lower Swedish Cabin near the Upper Darby River, close to the Great Minquas Trail, a trade route and a way for farmers to get their grain to the mills.

The cabin was both a farmstead and a trading post to exchange furs and other goods with Native Americans.

The two-story Lower Swedish Cabin is made of logs fitted together by notches cut into them so the building can be constructed without nails.

The cabin was part of a colony known as New Sweden, which covered parts of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey.

Various groups of settlers used the cabin in the 1700s and 1800s. In the early 1900s, filmmaker Siegmund Lubin used the cabin as a movie set.

Eventually, Upper Darby Township bought it and in 1976, the historical society Friends of the Swedish Cabin set out to restore and preserve the historic property.

It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, and it was fully restored in 1987.

Read more about the history of Pennsylvania’s oldest house in AZ Animals.


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