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Ruins of a steel magnate's playground in Wrightstown, PA
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Anyone traveling Route 232 (2nd Street Pike) through Wrightstown in Bucks Co, PA has noticed the unusual property near Swamp Road’s famous Octagonal Schoolhouse, close to the banks of Neshaminy Creek. On six acres sits two houses (one capped by a Spanish-tile roof), five-car garage, tennis court, a gazebo and, in the center of the huge expanse of lawn, a fantasy-castle structure with high metal slides sloping into the remains of a pond, complete with a concrete "bridge to nowhere". These are the ruins of the Martin Moister Estate, one of America’s last privately owned amusement parks!
The estate was built by one Martin Moister, a wealthy Philadelphia electrical contractor from America’s Gilded Age of the 1920s. Martin Moister owned Moister Steel Company and in 1929, he bought decorative tiles from Henry Mercer's Moravian Tile Works in Doylestown for his castle-themed water park. Today, the property has more than 2000 Mercer tiles.
Moister expanded his original estate by adding a masonry tower and, for his children, the front lawn playground including a pool with a sliding board and a bridge. The tiled pool is now just a "grassy hole", but the twin water slides and bridge still stand for all to see. Mr. Moister later sold the estate to owners who partitioned the estate and sold the front house separately from the larger property in the rear. The present owner of the larger property, another Philadelphia businessman, remarked to me: "I'm the only guy who mows my pool."
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