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ne man who persists in his courtship of the woman he loves for seven years, a happy marriage filled with children, sudden death and a love that endures into the afterlife are all elements of John Pitcairn and Gertrude Starkey’s remarkable love story. 
s founder of Pittsburgh Plate Glass, and through longstanding connections with the Pennsylvania Railroad, John Pitcairn was one of the leading industrialists of his time with business and social contacts that included Cornelius Vanderbilt and Andrew Carnegie. He was 38 when he met 21-year-old Gertrude Starkey in 1877. Two years later he asked her to marry him. She gently turned him down. Her hesitation lay in her strong New Church beliefs, particularly its ideal of marriage, which required her to examine the spiritual nature of her feelings for him very closely.
ndeterred by her rejection, John Pitcairn persisted in his courtship of the young
Gertrude for five more years when she said yes. After their marriage, they lived on Spring Garden Street in Philadelphia.
John Pitcairn’s considerable fortune allowed him to purchase the land that is now Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania.
He built Cairnwood as a home for Gertrude and their children, Raymond,
Vera, Theodore and Harold. It also became the center for New Church life.
Architecture
harles Eliot, of the famous landscape architecture firm of Olmsted, Olmsted and Eliot, drew up plans for the community and the Pitcairn estate in 1893. (Frederick Law Olmsted, regarded today as the father of American Landscape Architecture designed Central Park in New York City and the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina.)
arrére and Hastings, one the country’s leading architectural firms at the time, designed Cairnwood in the Beaux Arts style. Correspondence between Gertrude Pitcairn and the architects reveals that she was heavily involved in the design process of both the Cairnwood gardens and the home itself. Ground was broken for Cairnwood in 1892, and construction continued until the home was finished in the spring of 1895.
he original country estate consisted of the main house, adjacent courtyard, and a formal garden with a garden house, green houses and a pergola. Just a few feet from Huntingdon Pike were the stable and the entrance gate to the estate. Across the street were many acres of farmland that provided Cairnwood and other homes with milk, eggs, produce and grains.
he most striking feature of Cairnwood when viewed from across the spacious lawn is an octagonal tower with a high-pitched roof. At the top of this tower is the family chapel, placed at the highest point in the house so that worshipers face east. This chapel is the embodiment of John Pitcairn’s strong spiritual beliefs. He was guided by the doctrines of Emanuel Swedenborg, an 18th century Swedish scientist, philosopher and theologian.
Among Swedenborg’s beliefs is that marriage between a man and a woman is a holy covenant with the Lord that can last for eternity.
For a summary of what the New Church teaches, click here.
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ertrude Pitcairn died a few short years after moving into Cairnwood. John never remarried. When asked why, he responded, “I would no sooner remarry than if Gertrude were standing in the other room.”
ohn Pitcairn remained in Cairnwood until his death in 1916. His eldest son Raymond moved into Cairnwood with his wife Mildred Glenn Pitcairn, and lived there with their nine children until their new home, Glencairn (now the Glencairn Museum) was completed in 1939. Cairnwood remained empty until 1945 when Raymond and Mildred’s oldest daughter Gabriele (Pitcairn) Pendleton moved in. Although modernizations were made during Raymond and Mildred’s stay at Cairnwood, the house has remained much the same as it was at the time of its construction.
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n 1980, the family donated the house to the Academy of the New Church, the educational branch of the New Church. The house stood vacant until 1994, when the Academy began restoration of the deteriorating structure. In 1995, to raise money for the restoration project, Cairnwood opened its doors as a designer show house, inviting designers to showcase their work within the beauty of Cairnwood’s architecture.
