The Jonathon Swift Home
Known to architects far and wide, the Swift Home in Henrietta was considered one of the famous Greek Revival one-story houses in the United States. Built in 1841, facing north, the wide one-story mansion had a recessed porch with center entrance. Four Ionic columns [said to have been made in Troy, N.Y. and brought to this site by oxteam] gave dignity to the portico. To east and west, side rooms bordered the portico. North windows were four-panelled from ceiling to floor.
The interior was exquisite. Three double fireplaces heated inside rooms.
The two front rooms were large, flanking the entrance hall, with parquet floors. At the rear, the open court was paved with smooth river stone. The rear veranda had round pillars twelve feet high; the whole space measured sixty by sixty feet. The entire house was surrounded by a lattice fence, with big stone posts at the corners, and as gate-posts. Lawns, two acres of them, were cropped short by the cows. The driveway swung around the house to the barn, wagon shed and apple orchard in the distance.
The Swift Mansion burned in November, 1923, caused by whom, no one knows; perhaps hunters who sought shelter. Owned by several since the Swift family departed, Rosedale was still "very special" in the memory of neighbors and town folks who remembered its elegance in its hey-day. Since the fire the grown-up wilderness has replaced landscaped lawns, till no trace of its location remains, except in the minds of those who knew it, at the foot of the hill in Swift’s Hollow.
Transcribed by Lowell Dunlap