A stone wall along the highway changed the old inn into a country home. A driveway 
overlooking the rear lawn 
entrance leads around to the end of a wide porch 
The Sorrel Horse Inn Reborn 
THE MAKING OF A DISTINCTIVE COUNTRY HOME NEAR RADNOR, PENNSYLVANIA, FROM AN INN 
THAT WAS USED BY OFFICERS OF THE CONTINENTAL ARMY DURING THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR 
by Jared Stuyvesant 
Photographs by H. H. S. 
T N England a man about to build for himself a home will, as 
a rule, look eagerly over the property on which it is to stand, 
to see whether there is not some old building upon it that might 
serve as the basis of the new work. If it is possible for him to 
remodel and add to an exist¬ 
ing structure, no matter how 
dilapidated its condition, he 
counts himself a fortunate 
man. The matter of economy 
does not enter into the cjues- 
tion at all; the remodeled 
country seat may cost more 
in the end than a new house 
would, but the former will be 
far more likely to meet his 
ideas of what a home should 
be. With an entirely new 
house, the place may be 
brighter, cleaner, more sani¬ 
tary, more conveniently planned, but with a remodeled old house 
there is an atmosphere about it that is absolutely foreign to new 
stone walls or unseasoned woodwork. It is a difficult thing to 
define, but it is no less certainly present about any place that has, 
in part at least, become soft¬ 
ened by time and weather and 
made a more intimate part of 
the land itself. Anything that 
has been in existence for a 
considerable time is sacred to 
the Englishman — buildings, 
laws, customs. He has in him 
something akin to the Japan¬ 
ese ancestor worship, but the 
former is a feeling that we 
of the Western world can 
more readily understand and 
sympathize with. 
And we in America are 
