Cliveden of the National Trust

Cliveden of the National Trust is an eighteenth-century historic house and the site of the 1777 Battle of Germantown. Cliveden's site includes two historic properties on over five acres of green space in Philadelphia's Historic Germantown. A National Historic Landmark, Cliveden was the summer home of prominent Colonial attorney Benjamin Chew. Following the discovery of records describing the Chew family's slaveholding, Cliveden began a process of reinterpretation that considers the relationship between wealth, privilege, and slavery in early American culture. Center support for Cliveden has included a 2009 Project grant for an adaptive reuse of Upsala, a historic home on the Cliveden site; a reinterpretation of the site based on extensive evidence of the Chew family's slaveholding; and a historical interpretation project to compare domestic life in two centuries through the exploration of the site's 1767 and 1959 kitchens. In 2019, Cliveden received a Discovery grant to explore community responses to its interpretation of Revolutionary-era history in the context of modern-day gun violence. In 2021, Cliveden received a collaborative Re:imagining Recovery grant, along with Stenton and Historic Germanton, to consider how an 18-member consortium of historic sites in Northwest Philadelphia can leverage shared resources to strengthen community relationships.