Nationally known Philadelphia architect Horace Trumbauer (1869–1938) and his senior designer Julian Francis Abele (1881–1950) created this grand two-and-one-half-story brick Colonial Revival house. Trumbauer was known to depend heavily on the architects in his firm, and Abele, the only African American member of Philadelphia's T-Square Club, became the senior designer after 1908. Edward Hay Walker's obituary states that he also worked on this house. Coal baron Daniel B. Zimmerman commissioned the house, and, after his death, his daughter lived here until 1944, when it was sold to the first of many short-term owners. By 1990, the house had fallen into disrepair. In May 1993, it opened as a luxury bed-and-breakfast. Although the restoration was carefully done, the surrounding landscape was sacrificed in the process. The original site, a gentle tree-covered hill, was scraped away to leave the maroon brick house on a bald plateau of land, now surrounded by an expanse of outlet stores and parking lots. To the east is Lake Somerset, created in 1956 by the commonwealth's game commission.