The $250 million Longwood Reimagined project is a month away from being finished and open to the public.
The opening is scheduled for Nov. 22, which coincides with this year’s A Longwood Christmas.
Members of the media had the opportunity to take a press tour of the work in preparation for next month’s official opening.
In a nutshell, there are six new buildings, renovations of others, and rearrangement of a few pathways. The bonsai and cascade gardens have been moved, and the lower level of the main conservatory was renovated to include a new restaurant and event space.
But Longwood’s President and CEO Paul Redman said the biggest change and the centerpiece of the project is the construction of a new conservatory, the West Conservatory.
That new conservatory is a 32,000-square-foot glasshouse built where a parking lot had been. Peaks rise from a pool, making it seem the building is floating. Mediterranean gardens inspired plantings. There are 65 plant species evoking Mediterranean climate zones.
But the exterior is just as important. Michael Manfredi, an architect with Weiss/Manfredi of New York, said the structure was designed with nature in mind.
“When we’re in the conservatory, we’ll start to see this rather unusual development of columns. Marion [Weiss] and I are interested in nature teaching us how things are built,” he said.
He pointed to a group of trees and noted how the trunks branch out as they take shape.
“Typical architecture is a column with a post on it, so this is very much inspired by nature where the column becomes a beam,” Manfredi e said.
He and Weiss designed the vertical columns for the new conservatory, which branches the same way. In addition, the columns on the roof have gutters to recapture rainwater and store it underground in cisterns to maintain water for the interior’s floating aspect.
The glass used is also designed with nature in mind. It has dots that birds can see so they don’t crash into the window panels.
Landscape architect Christine Frederickson of Reed Hildebrand spoke more about the garden and interior of the West Conservatory.
“The garden is conceived as a series of floating planes that…descend into the pools,” she said.
Longwood President and CEO Paul Redman
Redman added that the precedent Weiss/Manfredi brought to Longwood was the great cathedrals of Europe.
“We wanted that type of aspirational experience,” Redman said.
The press kit for the tour included the comment: “The West Conservatory is a living, breathing building which tunes the interior climate through a unique combination of automated roof and wall vents, active shades, and earth ducts. Rainwater is collected from the roof and stored for reuse in the water features. Together, these systems sustain the vitality of the garden.”
Work crews are putting the final touches on most of the buildings, but not everything will be ready on Nov. 22. Redman said the waterlily garden will not be finished until the end of the year and will open to the public in the spring.
The project was announced in February 2021, and work began a month later. However, according to Longwood’s president and CEO, Paul Redman, the idea had been percolating for several years before that.
“Here at Longwood, we have a culture of planning that we are deeply devoted to. So, we give a great deal of thought to anything we embark upon,” Redman said. “For us, this particular project began with our far-reaching and visionary comprehensive site master plan that we initially developed in 2010 and 2012. The purpose of this master plan was to capture ideas for how we would fulfill our mission on the property here at Longwood, far, far, into the future…We’ve been working that plan to get to this point.”
Again, Longwood Reimagined will open to the public on Nov. 22, and A Longwood Christmas will run through Jan. 12.
Rich Schwartzman is editor of Chadds Ford Live, a sister publication. This story was published there on Oct. 23.
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