After Gideon Gilpin’s death in 1825, the 231-acre property was sold to William Painter in 1828. Painter used it as a tenant property, and converted it into an extensive dairy operation. One of the barns burned down and the business ceased in 1929 when the herd was struck with bovine tuberculosis.
The house was inherited by William’s son, Samuel Painter, in 1845. He sold it in 1870 to Joseph C. Turner, to whose widow, Eliza, the house passed in 1902. During Turner’s ownership, the farm operation had eight black workers and one head farmer who lived in the house known today as Painter’s Folly, just east of the Gilpin home. Around 1900, the Gilpin house was used by Howard Pyle, a well-known illustrator, when he conducted a summer art school. Pyle was the Director of the School of Illustration of the Drexel Institute of Art, Science, and Industry in Philadelphia. The building was used as a dormitory during the summer schools and as a setting for many paintings. Some of these images can be found in Paul Leicester Ford’s two-volume novel Janice Meredith—A Story of the American Revolution. The house was used as background in paintings by both Howard Pyle and N. C. Wyeth.
When the widow Eliza died in 1903, the property was sold to Dr. Arthur H. Cleveland and passed to his son Arthur H. Cleveland, Jr., in 1940. However, Richard Atwater had received a one-half interest in the property in 1908. Atwater deeded part of his interest to H. P. Dorman, who immediately transferred it to Arthur H. Cleveland. Ultimately, Arthur H. Cleveland, Jr., and his wife obtained full control of the property and were living there prior to 1949.
In 1949, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania purchased the house from Cleveland, but the family remained in the house during the early development of the park. The existing form of the house was created in the 1950s under the direction of architect G. Edwin Brumbaugh.
During the course of the property’s history, numerous outbuildings have come and gone. This is not unusual, considering the property’s long farm history. In Turner’s time, an earlier three-bay, stone-banked barn north of the house was enlarged. In the 1930s and 1940s, the structure was used as a garage and workshop. In 1946, the dilapidated barn was pulled down. The current stone barn is a 1950s construction that does not rest upon historic foundation walls. Sometime after 1986, a privy was removed from the property. At this time, the property also contained a corn crib. There is a foundation for some former structure slightly south and west of the current blacksmith shop. There used to be a carriage shed along the eastern edge of the property. A well located slightly west of the house was removed in 1975.