Tour the Rose Valley Museum located in Thunderbird Lodge, William Lightfoot Price’s Arts & Crafts masterpiece. Price turned an 18thC stone barn into two artist’s studios for Alice and Charles Stephens connecting the living quarters with an octagonal stairwell. Situated on the property in an arc, daylight shines best on the studios and as the sun sets the warm glow of evening lights the living quarters. The home is the epitome of the Arts & Crafts Movement “to live where you work”.
Following the museum tour and lunch, the group will embark on a walking tour of historic Rose Valley.
In 1901 Wm. L. Price purchased 80 acres of old abandoned mills and farm houses in Rose Valley to establish an Art & Crafts utopian community based on William Morris’s “News from Nowhere”. The guild hall, or Artsman’s Hall, is now home to Hedgerow Theatre and the old furniture shop contains the Borough Office and the home of the remnants of a community organization “The Rose Valley Folk”. Although the original ideal faded, over 100 historic buildings exist as part of the Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places. Price’s architectural designs attracted other prominent architects, Walter F. Price, Howell Lewis Shay, Pope Barney, and William Gray Purcell, to design and live in homes in the wooded environs of Rose Valley.
Members: $60
Non-Members: $70
