Lynnewood Hall, Elkins Park’s near-abandoned Gilded Age mansion, hosted a high-fashion photo shoot

Lynnewood Hall, a hulking, dilapidated 110-room mansion across from the Elkins Park post office, has long had a mystique that extends beyond this Philadelphia suburb. With the tragic Titanic connections, the opulent Gilded Age architecture, and the dramatic state of ruin, it’s no wonder the 123-year-old house is a mild obsession for many.

Now there’s a new subset who may take note: fashionistas.

Lynnewood Hall recently served as the backdrop for Zimmermann’s 2024 ready-to-wear resort collection. Photos on the Australian luxury brand’s site and social media showcase the estate’s grand entrance hall.

Models in ruffled midi dresses and V-neck gowns pose against the checkered marble floor, green-carpeted staircase, and wrought-iron banisters. You can spy glimpses of the intact 18th-century Italian mural in the gilded ballroom as they sashay down a creamy Caen stone hallway in one video.

Unlike most of the Lynnewood Hall footage that has surfaced online, this was sanctioned — and likely lucrative.

The photos were shot June 5 after a day of setup, according to Edward Thome, the executive director of the Lynnewood Hall Preservation Foundation, a nonprofit working to stabilize and preserve the estate. The group shared pictures from the photo shoot on its Instagram page.

“It was a pleasure working … on the first fashion shoot to ever occur at Lynnewood Hall,” its post read. “Future venue collaborations … will be key component of fundraising in the early stages of the project,” it continued, soliciting interested parties to reach out by email. “This is just a taste of more to come at Lynnewood Hall.”

In an interview with The Inquirer, Thome and Angie Van Scyoc, the nonprofit’s COO, said members of the foundation were present, though not directly involved with the photo shoot. They would not speak to whether there was a venue fee associated with the shoot.

“The nonprofit had nothing to do with it other than observing the process, because we do have a contractual right to be here, and our primary focus is to make sure the house is protected,” Van Scyoc said. (The foundation has been in negotiations to purchase the 34-acre estate from Richard Yoon’s First Korean Church of New York since early this year.)

“You could call us glorified hall monitors,” Thome joked.

Thome also couldn’t share much about how the photo shoot came about — “What I can tell you is it was not us” — though both he and Van Scyoc said that the foundation would welcome such events as a fundraising avenue once it acquires Lynnewood Hall.

The Instagram post was overwhelmingly met with fanfare by followers happy to see the mansion serve as a venue for anything, given the recent decades of disuse. For years, observers speculating about the mansion’s level of deterioration have done so at a distance, kept out by a single caretaker, guard dogs, and towering gates around the estate’s perimeter. That didn’t always stop urban explorers, some of whom trespassed and documented their explorations of Lynnewood Hall on YouTube.

But things have taken a turn for the better since the involvement of the Lynnewood Hall Preservation Foundation, which formed in 2019. The group gained regular, legal access to the house in the following years, after Thome established a rapport with Yoon. That’s allowed them to examine and secure the estate and begin to stabilize critical issues even before they take ownership of the house. In the process, they’ve revealed more photos and details about the mansion on social media.

The foundation was officially designated a nonprofit last summer. “We were determined to get the 501(c)(3) status because it was at a critical point where the property can’t withstand many more winters without proper stabilization,” Van Scyoc said.

“The house was really approaching its final hour,” Thome added.

While the group acted immediately to prevent further decay — replacing windows and adding bracing — it also found much more of the house’s architectural and interior design details are intact than were thought.

“The house is not stripped,” one board member told Hidden City last year. Van Scyoc echoed that sentiment: “The property is in much better shape than what a lot of people anticipated.”

Though Thome and Van Scyoc could not offer any updates on when the sale might be completed, they did say they anticipate a day when they can be more transparent about developments around Lynnewood Hall — and when those curious to see it might have a chance to step inside its gates.

“Lynnewood Hall is not just a Philadelphia icon of architecture, but it really is a United States icon of architecture,” Thome said. “We just so look forward to the day when we’re able to open it up to the public again, just as the Wideners did so many years ago.”

As for those Titanic connections: Peter A.B. Widener, who built Lynnewood Hall, held a stake in the International Mercantile Marine, whose subsidiary, White Star Line, owned the Titanic. Widener lost one of his three sons and a grandson when the ship sank.

To see more pictures and keep track of progress on Lynnewood Hall, follow @lynnewood_hall on Instagram.