72 THE BOTANISTS OF PHILADELPHIA. 



garden and its valuable collection of trees for all time, he 

 applied to Robert Buist, who was then the leading nursery- 

 man of Philadelphia, to engage for him, within one week, 

 some one who should combine a botanical knowledge with 

 practical horticulture and civil engineering. Buist promised 

 to procure such a man, but found he could not do it within 

 the limited time, and to keep faith with Eastwick, he 

 offered his own foreman, the now well-known nurseryman 

 and Select Councilman, Thomas Meehan, to take charge of 

 the garden during the absence of its new proprietor in 

 Russia. This offer was accepted, and Mr. Meehan took 

 charge of the place, remaining there two years. 



About a year later, Eastwick returned from Russia, and, 

 as it was known that he intended to build a new residence, 

 an architect, then unknown in the city, ascertaining 

 the spot where he proposed to erect it, drew up, without 

 consulting Mr. Eastwick, a plan, and came with it unasked 

 to him, requesting that he examine it. Eastwick, in a 

 pleasant and courteous way, told the architect that it was 

 unnecessary to examine it, as he had in mind several 

 houses he had seen in the old world, after some of w^hich he 

 intended to pattern his own. 



He w^as finally induced, however, to look at the plan, 

 and in an off-hand way indicated his objections to it, giving 

 the architect a sufficient knowledge of his ideas to draw 

 a more satisfactory one. Within a week or two the archi- 

 tect returned with a new plan, which came so near to 

 Eastwick's ideal, that his visitor was engaged as architect of 

 the building, which was built by a well-known Philadelphia 

 builder, John Stewart. It w^as supposed by every one that 

 the site of the residence would be somewhere wdthin the 



