Morris Arboretum & Gardens of the University of Pennsylvania

This guide to the Morris Arboretum in Philadelphia turns on a private letter left behind by Lydia Morris when she died in 1932, willing her whole Victorian estate to the University of Pennsylvania along with one blunt instruction for her own mansion, Compton. The university had other plans, moving faculty and botany labs into its grand rooms while her attorney appealed to the school's advisory board year after year to honor her wishes. Meanwhile the building rotted around the people using it, basements going moldy and boilers exploding, and one department chair shrugged it off simply because the trees screened the house from view.