Archibald Johnson Mansion: A Brief History

Bethlehem Township’s Historic Archibald Johnston Mansion in Housenick Park has a fresh new look, thanks to an agreement between the Housenick Foundation Trust and Township commissioners. It’s a great start to a productive new future for the building.

The Township’s Housenick Park has a surprising history. Before the arrival of William Penn and Zinzendorf’s Moravians, the fertile Monocacy Creek valley was the home of the Lenni Lenape people, who farmed the rich soil, harvested deer from the forest and native trout from the limestone creek. For some years after the arrival of Moravians in Nazareth and Bethlehem, the natives and Europeans lived in peace in the land between the two settlements. The hill along the road to Nazareth became known to Moravians as “Quaker Hill”, so-called (according to the authors of “Northampton County Place Names”) after a dead Quaker found under a pile of rocks.

Meanwhile, Bethlehem had become not just a settlement for Moravians, but two boroughs where iron was forged and steel was made. A young Scottish-American man, Joseph Johnston, and his family came from another iron city, Phoenixville, to work for the Bethlehem Iron Company. One of his children, Archibald, followed in his father’s footsteps.

Young Arch did well in Bethlehem. He attended school, and graduated from Lehigh University as a mechanical engineer. He joined the iron company, which soon blossomed into the Bethlehem Steel Company of South Bethlehem. His rise into management was swift, aided no doubt by a marriage to a young woman, Estelle Stadiger Borhek, daughter of an owner of the Brown and Borhek Lumber Company. They formed a strong team.

While trained as an engineer, Arch’s strong people skills placed him in a sales role for Bethlehem Steel, and he traveled first throughout the country, and later around the world selling Bethlehem-made armaments. The Steel’s bonus plan made Arch a rich man.

Johnston may be best known for a charge he received by the Steel’s senior management to lead a committee to consolidate the three Bethlehem boroughs - Bethlehem, South Bethlehem, and Northampton Heights - into a single city. An election in 1917 achieved the goal, and Johnston served as the new city’s first mayor.

Camel’s Hump Farm

While serving as the new city’s mayor, Johnston quietly began purchasing farms on the north face of Quaker Hill, as it was still known on topographic maps. He bought about 600 acres, bounded by Township Line Road to the west, Nazareth Pike to the east, and Brodhead Road to the north. The peacefully-named Quaker Hill became, under Johnston’s ownership, “Camelshump” after the twin hill’s unusual shape. And Camels Hump Farm, 600 acres in the city and township of Bethlehem was born.

The Johnstons took up seasonal lodgings in one of the properties on the city portion of Camel’s Hump Farm while their new home, designed by a young Bethlehem architect, Curtis Lovelace, was under construction. In 1923, shortly after the conclusion of his only term as mayor, Arch and Estelle moved from their Church Street home into their new residence in Bethlehem Township.

Johnston’s business trips took him to the homes of many business magnates and people of wealth, including the Loretto, Pennsylvania estate of Charles Schwab, the president of Bethlehem Steel. Johnston recognized the unique features of the terrain of Camel’s Hump Farm with the curvaceous Monocacy running northeast to southwest through the property. He chose a bluff in the center of the property overlooking the creek and floodplain and instructed Lovelace to create a home from which he, his wife, and guests could enjoy the best Camel’s Hump could offer.

By the mid-1920s, most of the native Lenni Lenape peoples had left Northampton County, with their land inhabited by people with names like Frankenfield, Ritter, and Santee, the milling family. Johnston, a steel executive with a passion for engineering, began using his wealth to transform the property into a prosperous, productive, and self-sufficient network of homes and fields with opportunities for recreation for his two children, Archibald Borhek Johnston and Elizabeth Kingsley, and their own children.

Johnston’s creation was not limited to a network of roads connecting the family’s homes, barns, and workshops. He famously walled nearly a mile of the Monocacy, channelizing it, creating a fish hatchery and a lily pond, and reinforcing the mill race driving the grindstones of Santee Mill. He designed his own landscapes and planted native and non-native trees and shrubs. The grounds surrounding what the family called “the Big House” (today’s Historic Archibald Johnston Mansion”) rivaled many of the gardens of merchants and magnates of Philadelphia and New York.

Archibald and Estelle Johnston lived in “the Big House” for 25 years, attended for much of the time by a staff of three or four who lived in the servants’ quarters. Estelle faithfully kept a page-a-day diary of life at Camel’s Hump, two years of which are now at Lehigh University’s archives. The last paragraph of her December 31, 1947 entry, about a month before Arch’s death, summarizes their time together:

Arch’s passing signaled an end to the days of parties and stately dinners at “the Big House”. Newspaper reports suggest that Estelle’s health deteriorated in the four years following her husband’s death. She died at Camel’s Hump in 1952. 

What was once a lively home became more still, then finally silent. The 1948 physical inventory of the home told the story of the family’s life, love, and travels through lists of  furniture, decorative items, books, and art. The inventory, available at the Northampton COunty courthouse in Easton, presents a reflection of the tastes and values of well-to-do people of the first half of the twentieth century.

Archie and Estelle’s Legacy

Readers may have a hard time connecting Housenick Park to Archibald Johnston without an overview of Archibald’s and Estelle’s children and grandchildren. The couple had a son, Archibald Borhek (“Arch Junior”) and Elizabeth, who grew up in the family’s home where Bethlehem’s City Hall now stands. By the time the elder Johnstons had moved to Camel’s Hump, their children were married and beginning families of their own.

The first years of Camel’s Hump Farm saw a flurry of construction projects. The civil engineering projects undertaken by Johnston, including a private road system, several bridges, a swimming pool complex, and the walling and rerouting of the Monocacy, were visible only to the family’s many visitors. In the late 1920s, neighbors passing along Christian Spring or Santee Mill Roads saw large new homes for the Johnstons’ children, Arch Junior and his wife Jean Hale Johnston, and Elizabeth, with her husband George Kingsley and their respective families.

After their parents’ deaths, neither of the Johnston children wanted to leave the comfort of their own homes to move into a 6,000-square-foot mansion. Arch Junior, as the farm’s manager, administered the nearly square mile of property from the Christian Spring Road side. Elizabeth’s life was less and less connected to Bethlehem and the Tudor “Castle” on the hill above old Santee Mill.

By the mid-1950s, Arch Jr.’s three daughters and Elizabeth’s two sons were adults and had embarked on their own lives, starting new careers and beginning families of their own. The farm operations, administered by Harold Fabian, continued until Fabian’s retirement in 1987. The tennis court and swimming pools were shared by the extended family enjoyed the tennis court, swimming pools, and the core of the property.

Over time, excess parcels assembled by Johnston into Camel’s Hump Farm were sold by the family. The old “North Farm” east of Township Line Road was partially converted into warehouse and distribution space. Parcels to the southeast and at the top of Camel’s Hump were sold as lots for single-family homes. Only a portion of the original Johnston purchase remained with the extended family.

Subsequent generations found the three-story, 6,000 square foot home to be too large for comfort. The Johnstons’ children, Arch “Junior” and Elizabeth Kingsley, had large homes of their own on the estate built for them by the end of the 1920s. The Kingsley house, known as “the Castle”, sat above the Santee Mill millrace on the north face of Camel’s Hump. Arch Jr.’s home, more modest in design and size, anchored the east end of the property near Christian Spring Road. Their parents’ mansion at the top of the bluff separated the childrens’ homes and provided a haven for the five grandchildren.

Three of the five Johnston and Kingsley grandchildren had left the area by the 1980s. Brothers Archibald and George (“Skipper”) Kingsley had moved to Virginia with their families. Elizabeth Johnston spent most of her time in Manhattan, and developed a dollhouse collection now at Bethlehem’s Kemerer Museum of Decorative Arts. “Johnnie” (Amanda) Johnston had married Bill Leckonby, the Lehigh football coach and lived in a farmhouse on Santee Mill Road.   

The third Johnston sister, Janet, married a science teacher with the Bethlehem Area School District, Bill Housenick. They made their home at the end of a lane off of Christian Spring Road a quarter-mile beyond her father’s house. Janet grew up on the estate and knew it as only a native could. Bill came to love the property and, according to his Morning Call obituary, was an active member of the Monocacy Creek Watershed Association.

Janet and Bill became stewards of the mansion after the passing of Janet’s father, Arch Jr. They, too, had a comfortable home with a direct line of sight to it, and recognized that a house of that size would be a significant challenge to heat, cool, and update to modern standards to suit their own needs.

Janet’s first gift of a portion of Camel’s Hump Farm was to Northampton County. The land followed the banks of the Monocacy Creek and measured 36 acres. Unlike the parcels adjacent to Brodhead Road and Route 22, the newly-named “Archibald Johnston Conservation Area” was a haven for wildlife and offered a riparian buffer for the limestone creek and its surrounding wetlands.

Before Janet’s tragic death in a house fire in August 2005, she made provision to make a gift of the mansion and the 55 acres surrounding it to Bethlehem Township with the proviso that it be made into a park. Along with the gift of the land was a bequest of approximately $2,000,000, administered by a charitable foundation established specifically for the care of the park and mansion.

Residents of Bethlehem Township and other parts of the Lehigh Valley slowly became aware that this once-private estate was now accessible for walkers, birders, and others who loved being in the middle of nature in the heart of a major metropolitan area. Meanwhile, the mansion, sitting atop the bluff overlooking the creek, continued its slow weathering and deterioration.

I first learned about the park and the mansion in 2013 while reading an article in the Express-Times/LehighValleyLive.com. When I moved to the Lehigh Valley, I purchased a home on the Monocacy, and when I realized that the park was five miles directly upstream from me, I took a drive and had my first walk of the grounds in May 2013, just as the trees were filling with new leaves. 

Inspiration

The experience of seeing a deteriorating mansion, a system of private roads, and the pride Johnston had in the literal transformation of his property, was life-changing for me. Visiting the park and walking the trails became a weekly and often daily pastime. In 2014 I was fortunate to have a tour of the interior of the mansion with the firm originally founded by its architect, Curtis Lovelace. I published a video on YouTube, “Images from Time”, chronicling my first visit inside.

Since then, Bethlehem Township’s Board of Commissioners entered into an agreement with the Housenick Foundation’s trustees to stabilize and restore the exterior of the mansion on condition that the Township raise private funds to restore the interior for meaningful use. The work on the exterior was completed in 2019.

In late 2018, a non-profit corporation, the ARCHIE Project, was formed and a board was assembled consisting of a mix of Bethlehem Township and non-township members. I serve the board as its president. We look forward to an exciting time as we showcase the mansion and park to local government officials, private organizational funders, and individuals who share our vision to bring life back to the Historic Archibald Johnston Mansion.

I am indebted to Jim Bullock of Bethlehem for the local newspaper research he completed and shared with the ARCHIE Project.