The Northeast Times reports on the meeting about the future of the Benjamin Rush house:
About a dozen community stakeholders offered cemetery officials their thoughts on what the future should look like for the Knights of Pythias Greenwood Cemetery/Benjamin Rush house rehabilitation project last week in a conference room at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America.
In 2005, CTCA moved into the old Parkview Hospital campus, adjacent to the 44-acre cemetery, at 930 Adams Ave., in Northwood.
Greenwood Holdings, a company affiliated with the hospital, and minority shareholder Friends of Greenwood acquired the cemetery and its historic yet ramshackle buildings last year.
That includes the circa 1782 Benjamin Rush House, where Doctor and Mrs. Rush are said to have served tea to George Washington and Annis Boudinot Stockton (who lived at Morven in Princeton).
Greenwood Holdings, working with consulting engineers and preservation architects, plan to restore the house, which was used as the cemetery office for many years, and transform it into the centerpiece for the cemetery.
Philadelphia Graveyards and Cemeteries author Tom Keels, who also guides tours through Laurel Hill Cemetery in East Falls, acted as a facilitator for the meeting, holding off answering questions from attendees, instead asking for their “out-of-the-box” ideas.
Joe Menkevich, former Northwood Civic Association president and amateur historian, suggested that CTCA, which has several hospitals located across the country, might consider naming this particular location the Benjamin Rush campus, noting that Rush himself worked on a treatment for cancer during his lifetime.
Read the entire story here.
