History and mysteries · Riverton
The lost stone house at 505 Bank Avenue
Historic images and advertisements compared · Ownership sequence incomplete
A substantial stone house once stood near Bank and Howard avenues in Riverton. Its image survived in a photographer’s print and an old sale lithograph even after the building disappeared.
How the house came back into view
The Historical Society of Riverton’s February 2023 investigation begins with a small building mark on an 1860 Stone and Pomeroy map and a sketch on an 1890 bird’s-eye view. Neither image alone makes the lost house easy to recognize. A donated late-1890s view of the yacht club showed it in the background; a detailed David Lothrop photograph showed its stone walls and the neighboring house’s distinctive cupola. The neighboring house in a 1912 postcard helped the society distinguish this building from a similar-looking house farther along Bank Avenue.
A name on the back of a picture
A dealer later offered the society a lithograph of the riverfront villa. A sale description fixed to its reverse named “Jas. Willis,” matching “J. Willis” on the 1860 map. The society also located an April 26, 1860 Philadelphia Public Ledger advertisement for the cottage. These are stronger identification clues than the later resemblance alone, although the society says it had not yet completed a deed chain. Its suggestion that Willis divided land from the neighboring 503 Bank Avenue property and built the stone house by about 1860 remains an inference, not an established construction date. Historic map, photographs, lithograph and advertisement reproduced by HSR.
James Willis beyond the riverfront
The society traces James Willis to a Philadelphia women’s-shoe business and reproduces advertisements in the 1842 National Anti-Slavery Standard and 1851 Pennsylvania Freeman. The ads promoted shoes made without enslaved labor. They document how Willis marketed his goods in abolitionist newspapers; they do not, on their own, supply a full biography or prove the details of his relationship with Riverton’s other antislavery founders. The residents and later owners of the stone house remain to be reconstructed from deeds, directories and census records. HSR’s reproduced advertisements and research notes.
Read the block today
The stone building is gone. The map shows an approximate historic address area, not the footprint of a surviving house or a place to enter. The society describes a view from the small public space at the foot of Howard Avenue. Compare its published photographs and maps from public sidewalks, and respect the present residents’ privacy. For another Riverton site where a later building replaced a documented landmark, see the Roberts store fire.
Sources and research limits
- Roger Prichard, “A ‘Mystery House’ found,” Gaslight News, February 2023 — Reproduces the 1860 map, 1890 view, late-1890s and Lothrop photographs, house lithograph, 1860 sale notice and antislavery-paper advertisements.
- Historical Society of Riverton, “Changes at The Point,” 2022 — Early town plan and changing riverfront setting.
The images and printed advertisements were inspected in the society’s presentation, not as separate originals. No deed chain, demolition date or complete resident list was established in this pass.