History & local legend
Solitude House stands within the Philadelphia Zoo, but began as an eighteenth-century country retreat for John Penn on the west bank of the Schuylkill River. The zoo later used it for administrative offices, leaving an older domestic building amid the animal habitats.
The house's ghost stories center on traces of that earlier household. Billy Penn recounts a woman in a long dress appearing near the staircase, along with unexplained footsteps and music. In these accounts, someone seems to be moving through the rooms or making music without a visible source.
