Living History on the Riverfront

After the first floor of their house along the Delaware River in Erwinna went underwater for the third time in twenty-two months, succumbing to the historic flooding that inundated the River Towns between 2004 and 2006, Jim and Christina Greenwood decided they had to make a move.

 

“You can imagine the trauma,” says Jim, a former Pennsylvania state legislator and U.S. Congressman, referring to the seemingly endless cycle of emptying out the first floor as the river rose—with the help of their friends and a piano mover—and then moving in with someone else for up to three months while they made the needed repairs and cleaned out the mud the rushing waters had left behind.

 

“We would finally get it all finished,” Jim says, “and the drywall repainted and hang the last picture and go, ‘You know, it was horrible, but the place looks better than it ever did,’ and then another time and then another time.”

 

The Greenwoods decided to put the house up for sale. The timing seemed right. It was 2005, and Jim had just completed his sixth and final term in Congress. He’d represented Pennsylvania’s eighth Congressional district, then centered in Bucks County, since 1993, but resigned his seat to become president of Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), a trade association based in Washington, D.C.

 

Jim and Christina had met in 1977, when both were caseworkers for the Bucks County Children & Youth Social Service Agency. Christina later became an adult probation officer in Bucks County, retiring in 2007 after twenty-eight years on the job. Jim stayed with BIO until 2020, then moved to DLA Piper, a Washington law firm, where he chaired the firm’s Life Sciences Policy and Advocacy Group. He retired two years ago. Last fall the Greenwoods celebrated their forty-first wedding anniversary.

 

Their exhaustive search for a new home led them to a house in Upper Makefield with a history that predates the Revolutionary War. The property sits on five acres beside the river and the Delaware Canal, but at a higher elevation than their previous home.

 

The house consists of five sections built at different times, from 1732 to the early twenty-first century. The earliest section the Greenwoods call the Tavern Room because it once served as a one-room tavern catering to passengers waiting to be ferried across the river. In researching the home’s history, Jim found a 1760 real estate listing describing the property as a shad-fishing operation. “A lot of the deeds from this property talk about the fishery and the tavern,” he says.

 

A two-story house was built in 1840, and a structure that connects the two buildings was added later. “We suspect it was a summer kitchen early on and that it was connected sometime in the 1800s,” Christina says. Today it’s the Greenwoods’ dining room. Their former kitchen, one of the country’s first all-aluminum kitchens, was added to the far side of the Tavern Room in the mid-twentieth century. Today the Greenwoods use it as a catering kitchen when they host events.

 

Jim had renovated two previous houses but was reluctant to take on a third. He credits Christina for realizing the property was right for them. “It was really a brilliant decision on Christina’s part,” he says. “She said, which is really true, ‘If we move into a house that somebody else fixed up, it’s how they want to do it. This is like a blank slate. We can fix it up the way we want to do it.’” She also promised they would hire someone to do the work.

 

They called on Doylestown architect Ralph Fey, who drew up plans for both the existing 3,500-square-foot farmhouse and a 5,000-square-foot addition, which includes an unfinished basement. The result is a home that blends seamlessly both inside and out. The Greenwoods later hired Fey to design the renovation of their barn, just across the driveway from their home.

 

The addition includes a family room, Jim’s office, filled with memorabilia from his time in elected office and beyond, and a primary bedroom suite, which offers sweeping views of the river and canal and includes a home gym. The spacious kitchen, which also overlooks the water, features an eight-foot-long antique dining table made to fold up and fit inside a Conestoga wagon.

 

The Tavern Room is distinguished by its massive fireplace and low, beamed ceilings. “Cozy” is Jim’s summation, though it wasn’t big enough for large gatherings of family and friends, given the presence of the semi-grand piano (and, in winter, a Christmas tree). The larger family room, with a wood-burning stove, accommodates three generations for birthdays and holidays and allows overflow space beyond the kitchen.

 

The family includes Rob McClure, one of two sons of Christina’s from a previous marriage. Rob and his wife, also named Christina, and their son Julian, 16, live in the renovated barn, which features geothermal heating and solar panels.

 

Jim and Christina often use their home for fundraising events for political candidates and River Towns nonprofits. On the political side, they’ve hosted former Bucks County District Attorney (now a Court of Common Pleas judge) Matthew Weintraub, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, and U.S. Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, among others. (Though a lifelong Republican, Jim supports candidates on both sides of the political aisle.) The Greenwoods held a meet-and-greet at their home for Anne Corso soon after she became executive director of the Michener Art Museum. And they’ve hosted fundraisers for Penn Environment and A Woman’s Place, the Doylestown-based nonprofit that helps people experiencing domestic violence.

 

Avid birders, the Greenwoods planted native Pennsylvania trees and a one-acre meadow of native Pennsylvania wildflowers and grasses that attract pollinators, such as butterflies and bees, and provide food for birds.

 

Much of the renovation of the old house—modifying the staircase, enlarging doorways, installing balustrades, wainscoting, and radiator covers—as well as the construction of the addition, were overseen by Jim’s childhood friend, Bob Holt, who hired Rob McClure to help with the carpentry.

 

Paul Steinbeiser, who operates a landscape design and construction business in Kingwood, turned an outdoor slab on the river side of the house into a colorful terrace bordered by local shrubs and wildflowers. Several stones from the original White House, burned by the British in the War of 1812, were installed outside the porch, courtesy of Steinbeiser, who acquired the stones at a local quarry when he was working on a project at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

 

When the renovation of the old house was completed in 2006, the Greenwoods moved in, living there until the new addition was finished five years later. McClure’s family moved into the old house when the addition was completed and lived there until the barn renovation was done in 2020.

 

The addition was Holt’s first from-the-ground-up building, Jim says. Holt, who is now retired, had earlier worked with the famed Solebury woodworker and furniture maker George Nakashima. For the Greenwoods’ project, Holt custom-built kitchen cabinetry and installed random-width pumpkin pine floors to match the old house. Stonemason Ron Christman, also since retired, used stone he had collected from old farmhouses that had burned down, Jim says. After looking at the stonework on the Greenwoods’ farmhouse, Christman selected from his collection stones that matched the original. “So it looks exactly like it was built in the eighteenth century,” Jim says. “People marvel when they look at the stone on the addition. It looks like it was the same stone.”

 

Jodi Spiegel Arthur is a news editor at the Bucks County Herald.