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Nestled in Upper Darby, blocks from the 69th St Transportation Center, is one of the oldest homes in America. A farmhouse from a time when Upper Darby was all farmland and a home to the Sellers family for close to 250 years, the building was facing demolition by the mid-2000s. In spring of 2010, Alanna Stewart Piser (MSHP’11) was introduced to Sellers Hall through a course at the University of Pennsylvania. In the last 16 years, she has not just become a respected preservation designer with John Milner Architects (JMA), but has also led the charge in restoring and reimagining the home. Now the president of the Friends of Sellers Hall (FOSH), she reflects on how that work is grounded in her experiences at Penn. This interview has been edited.
What initially drew you to historic preservation?
My undergraduate degree is in Interior Design, so I knew I always wanted to be an architectural designer or something similar. My first job after college was with an architecture firm in Wilmington, Delaware. I started working on some historic projects, including the Queen Theater in Wilmington that was built in the 1930s. During the 1960s, there were race riots in Wilmington, the theater shut down, and it was empty for decades. We were hired to document and restore the theater, and that's when I thought this is really what I want to do. I applied to the Historic Preservation program at Penn and that's what led me to Sellers Hall.
You were introduced both to Sellers Hall and John Milner during your time at Penn. Could you tell me a little bit about how that relationship developed, and then when you realized that that was going to be something you wanted to have a longer commitment to?
It's been almost 16 years since I started working on this building. I was in John Milner's Architectural Archaeology class in spring of 2010. I had never done anything like that before. We documented the building, had free reign to take things out, to take things apart, to really study the building and how we could determine the chronology of development. We also documented the history of the building, including research on the Sellers family. From all of that information we developed a Historic Structure Report.
We found that the earliest part of the building was constructed in 1684 with subsequent additions in 1714, 1752, and the early 1800s. We documented everything that we found, and there was such an abundance of information that John taught another class at Sellers Hall the following year. He did this sometimes when buildings were complicated like Sellers Hall.
After graduation, I worked for an architect in Philadelphia, and then for a cultural resources company in Lansdale. I knew that I wanted to implement design into my career, so I kept in touch with John and eventually a position at JMA became available in 2013.
At that point, Sellers Hall was being stabilized and “mothballed.” It was slated for demolition until FOSH was formed. They installed a temporary roof and were just trying to keep the building standing. One of the first things I did at JMA was have the building listed in the National Register of Historic Places. That was critical because a developer was using federal funds to develop the site around Sellers Hall, and its listing in the National Register halted the demolition of the building directly next to it. They had plans to build a high-rise which would have completely overshadowed Sellers Hall. It would have completely changed the context of the historic building, however we were able to save the site from being extensively developed.
Alanna Piser and John Milner (left) with a group of students outside Sellers Hall during Summer Institute 2023. Michael Emmons, who led that Summer Institute, is in the back row
I'm now president of the board of FOSH, and we have been restoring the building for the past eight years. We have completed multiple phases of restoration with gifts from an anonymous donor who has ties to the Sellers family. He gave us about $100,000 to restore the south facade and part of the west facade, and another $150,000 to restore the remaining part of the west façade and part of the north facade.
We received multiple grants to complete smaller projects as well. One was stabilizing the northwest corner of the building, which was essentially falling down, and one was to have the north gable end repointed. Most recently, our donor gave us a gift of $500,000, and we are currently installing a slate roof, which is great because it’s going to last 100 years.
Is there anything that you learned in one of your classes at Penn that impacted or changed the way you approached Sellers Hall?
I feel like everything I have learned from the Architectural Archaeology class at Sellers Hall is how we deal with buildings in our profession. We work on a lot of Historic Structures Reports at JMA, and everything I learned in that class on how to date materials and how to determine the chronology of a building is implemented in those reports. With Sellers Hall, we do not intend to fully restore the building. We just don't think that it's feasible. We would love to restore the earliest part, dating to the late 17th century.
We do have several non-profits in the area that are interested in leasing space on the second floor. We have a large library on the first floor that we think could be used by various groups in the community. The site around the building has been developed into affordable senior housing, and the residents seem to be very interested in the building and its history, so we're hoping we can plan events for them, or they can host smaller events of their own.
We want to focus on restoring the oldest part of the building and rehabilitating the rest of it. We’d also like to build an addition for an accessible entrance, an accessible bathroom, and a new stair. It's really going to be a mix of restoration, rehabilitation, and renovation.
How has the preservation process evolved over the last 16 years that you have been working there?
It was a private residence for a long time, for a little over two and a half centuries. Then St. Alice Parish bought the building, and they used it as a library. And really, when we started, it was just to make sure the building wasn’t demolished. I was never quite sure what the best use was for the building, but from the preservation plan we recently completed through a grant from the National Trust, and engaging with the community, we don't see this as a house museum. We just don’t think it’s sustainable. We'd like to try and have some interpretation, some non-profit use, and a space for small events.
Was there anything else that you feel like you wish people would ask you about?
I'd love my colleagues and fellow alumni to know that the work is still going at Sellers Hall. We have plans and we see a future for it. It's all encompassing: it's grant applications, it's fundraising, and it's lots of different restoration projects. I'd love to have some attention on the building and say, look, it's been 16 years, and we're still going! It’s a little gem.
