Green Hills Farm
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Green Hills Farm is the sixty-acre homestead in Bucks County, Pennsylvania where Nobel-prize-winning American author Pearl Buck lived for 38 years, raising her family, writing, pursuing humanitarian interests, and gardening. She completed many works while on the farm, including This Proud Heart (1938), The Patriot (1939), Today and Forever (1941), and The Child Who Never Grew (1950).
The Pearl S. Buck House at Green Hills Farm, an excellent example of 19th century Pennsylvanian architecture, is constructed of coursed fieldstone. It is four bays wide and two deep with the main entrance located in the second bay. Two gable dormers are located on the front and rear slope of the roof. Chimneys are located on each gable end. When Buck purchased the farmstead, she made extensive alterations and additions to the 19th century farmhouse, including a two-story fieldstone wing added to the east gable and two libraries. Today, visitors can tour twelve rooms of the home and visit the pre-Revolutionary War cottage on the property and the barn built in 1827.
The interior melds the two worlds that so greatly shaped the life of this renowned author. In the large library, two Pennsylvania jugs serve as lamp bases upon a beautifully hand carved Chinese hardwood desk, at which Buck wrote her breakthrough novel, "The Good Earth". Buck filled her home with interesting works of original art by Chen Chi [1] and Freeman Elliot [citation needed], iron works of art produced by exiled artisans in China, Peking Fetti carpets that survived revolutions in China, and some of her own sculptures.
The Pearl S. Buck House became a National Historic Landmark in 1980 and opened as a museum the same year. The estate, now on the National Register of Historic Places, is owned and operated by the Pearl S. Buck Foundation. 15,000 people visit each year. [citation needed]
