Biography:

George Dewey Batcheler, Jr. (1927-2009) was the oldest of three sons of George D. and Lennetta I. Batcheler. Born June 19, 1927, in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, George Jr. apparently was a handsome youth. According to his 1945 Mountaineer yearbook, it was thought that George, “With his good looks…can’t be a bachelor much longer.” Uncle Sam, however, claimed him before any young woman could as Batcheler was drafted into the army immediately after high school. He served stateside until his discharge in November 1946. Batcheler then studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, earning a B.A. in 1952. He began his career with the Philadelphia architect George Daub.
 
In the 1960s, Batcheler was commissioned to renovate house number 126 on Elfreth’s Alley in Philadelphia’s Old City. (He also restored No. 124.) The Alley is considered the country’s oldest continuously inhabited residential street. Number 126 was built as the residence of Jeremiah Elfreth, and now was to serve as the Elfreth’s Alley Association Headquarters. Also working on the project was Penelope Hartshorne, of whom George recalled, “caught my eye because she even washed windows with enthusiasm." Having joined the National Park Service as a preservation archivist in the 1960s, Penelope was the only woman to work on the restoration of Independence Hall. Her career would span nearly three decades and earn her numerous honors. The couple married in 1968, and they continued their architectural collaborations privately with the purchase of two dilapidated houses in Society Hill, at 314 and 315 American Street. They restored both—one for themselves and the other for Penelope’s parents.
 
Like that of his wife’s, Batcheler’s career flourished for thirty years. His as principal at Mirick, Pearson & Batcheler. The firm’s projects included local hospital buildings, a library at Episcopal Academy in Merion, and a mental-health facility in Northeast Philadelphia. The firm was also responsible for the 1975 and 1991 restoration and modernization of John Nottman’s mid-19th century design for the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, of which Batcheler was a member. Batcheler also belonged to the Carpenter's Company of Philadelphia, the American Swedish Historical Museum, the American Institute of Architects, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
 
George and Penelope’s last collaboration was sometime in the late 1990s when they built what one relative described as the couple’s “dream home,” a vacation house in Center Sandwich, New Hampshire, that George designed. When Penelope died in 2007, George remarked, "Ours was a marriage made in heaven. I learned that my wife could move mountains." He died on July 13, 2009.