Huckleberry Road. South Sterling Joseph Hirshhorn built The French Manor. He modeled the chateau after the one he had in southern France. Construction began in 1932, and was completed in 1937. Craftsmen from Germany and Italy used river stone from the valley below, and imported Spanish slate to cover the steep roof. A Romanesque-arched entrance way leads to a great hall. The walls of the beamed rooms are covered with Florida "pecky" cypress. Joseph Hirshhorn came to America from Austria as a child. He accumulated a fortune by investing in stocks and Canadian mineral mines. He collected over 12.000 paintings, sculptures. drawings, and mixed-media pieces, which he donated to the U. S. Government during the Lyndon Johnson administration. An Act of Congress in 1966 established the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden at the Smithsonian Institution. Hirshhorm sold this property shortly after its construction to the Kress estate (of the 5-and-10-cent store chain). It was used to store the Kress art collection, which was donated to the National Gallery of Art in 1939. The property was then donated to Bucknell University, and it remained unoccupied for sixteen years. In the mid-80s it was opened as The French Manor bed and breakfast. Ron and Mary Kay Logan purchased the property in December 1990. It has been rated by Country inn Magazine as one of the top ten country inns in America.
This page was one month of the calendar and was made possible through the Wayne County Commissioners and a Tourism Promotion Committee’s Tourism Grant.