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but now its interests are chiefly historic. The mansion was 
erected after the "Revolutionary War," and its most con- 
spicuous owner since the days of Henry Hill, was Cornelius 
Smith. 
Returning to Main Street, immediately above Manheim 
Street, appears the garden of Joseph Shippen, after of Caspar 
Heft. What it was originally we have no knowledge. Now 
it is an elaborate, artificial, and to me, not a pleasing garden, 
but at least two of its trees are worth remembering, one 
the Himalayan pine tree near the east front, the other the 
large buttonwood tree planted near the entrance gate by 
Andrew Garret, and this is mainly of interest, because Andrew 
Garret was after murdered. There is a mass of nonsense in 
print concerning this tree. It is not "the largest," nor the 
"finest buttonwood tree in Pennsylvania." It does not now, 
nor did it ever rank with the superb like specimen standing 
in Friends Burying Ground, upon Main Street, a plant which 
is curiously overlooked. 
Germantown, it would appear, had a preference for the 
native Plane Tree, for it was generally planted, and it 
was rare to find a hotel or a public building without one 
or more specimens near. In the minutes of Germantown 
Bank is recorded — "on 22nd of February, 1861, the large 
Buttonwood tree in front of the Bank was ordered to be re- 
moved in consequence of its being deemed dangerous to 
travel, the road being much narrowed by the laying of rail- 
road tracks. This tree" — quoting Charles J. Wister — "is 
about 100 years old, and is 80 feet high, and 9 feet in cir- 
cumference." 
At Heft's, William Berger, now commercially located 
upon Main Street, near Maplewood Avenue, was at 
one time gardener. The place is of interest his- 
torically, not because it belonged to the Shippen family, 
and after was the site of a famous Inn, but because it was 
said to have been the birthplace of Dr. Adam Kuhn, the 
botanist. 
Nearly opposite to "Heft's," is what remains of the 
