A Postcard History » Cornwall Hall
Cornwall Hall
Robert Habersham Coleman’s mansion near the old plank road (now Cornwall Road) was built adjacent to “The Cottage,” his parents’ home seen to the right. Recent research indicates that it was constructed between 1888 and 1891, never completed, and never lived in. Designed by Philadelphia architects George W. and William D. Hewitt, Cornwall Hall had a limestone foundation, red sandstone superstructure, and glazed brown Spanish tile roofing. Sandstone came from the Colebrook estate of the Colemans.
Robert H. Coleman lost most of his estimated $30 million fortune in a period of only a few years in the early 1890s in stock market speculation. He moved to upstate New York and lived out his days in relative anonymity in the Adirondacks. Cornwall Hall, symbol of the rise, fame, and decline of the King of Cornwall during America’s Guilded Age, was demolished after 1914.
