Gregory Scott says he has spent 15 years obsessing over Lancaster’s preeminent historic architect, C. Emlen Urban. On Friday morning, he formally agreed to buy an endangered piece of Urban’s local legacy.
Scott and his wife, Terri, signed a purchase agreement and paid a 10% deposit to acquire the historic 1894 Roslyn mansion carriage house from current owners Scott and Heather Bowser. The private deal, which is set for an early June settlement, closes the loop on a public auction Wednesday where the Scotts’ bid topped one other bidder but didn’t meet the undisclosed reserve price.
The parties declined to disclose the negotiated purchase price but confirmed it was more than the Scott’s $425,000 high bid from Wednesday’s auction.
“Heather and I are very excited for Gregg Scott and his wife,” Scott Bowser wrote in a text about the planned final sale. “Who better than Gregg – the premier expert on C. Emlen Urban – to finish this restoration. We can’t wait to see Gregg’s vision.”
For the 77-year-old retired architect, who authored “Urban Legend: The Life & Legacy of C. Emlen Urban,” the acquisition represents a poetic alignment of his life’s work.
“This is a dream come true,” Gregory Scott said. “I’ve spent 60 years of my life in architecture. I’ve spent 15-plus years of that life studying C. Emlen Urban. At some level, this is a swan song. This is it.”
Urban designed the Roslyn mansion and its carriage house for Peter Watt, co-founder of Watt & Shand department store in Lancaster. Built in the same Châteauesque style as the neighboring Roslyn mansion, the carriage house features a distinctive bell-shaped roof, arched carriage doors and Romanesque battlements.
Gregory and Terri Scott outside the Roslyn mansion carriage house on Friday, May 22, the day they signed an agreement to buy the building designed by C. Emlen Urban.
CHAD UMBLE | Staff
Scheduling conflict
An almost unbelievable scheduling conflict complicated the Scotts’ efforts to buy the property.
The carriage house’s public auction at the 321 N. President Ave. property Wednesday began at 6 p.m., the same time as the Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County’s annual C. Emlen Urban Awards Dinner, where Gregory Scott was emcee and keynote speaker.
“I wanted to be at the bidding, personally, but I couldn’t because I had to be at the awards ceremony named for the person I was trying to buy a house from,” Gregory Scott said.
Worrying that his digital bids were not registering properly through the online portal, Scott texted the auctioneer shortly after the auction began and then briefly slipped away from the event being held at the Hamilton Club in Lancaster. He arrived at the carriage house after bidding had ended, confirmed his status as the high bidder, then headed back to the banquet.
The serendipity matches what Scott describes as a pattern of mysterious occurrences surrounding his research into Urban.
During research for his book, Scott documented 18 distinct “points of intersection” between his life and Urban’s. Both were the second of five children who struggled in school, married their high school sweethearts, raised two children in Lancaster and routinely underestimated project costs. Gregory Scott even owns a formal tuxedo coat originally belonging to Urban, found randomly by a stranger in a Denver thrift store.
“These weird things keep happening around Urban,” Gregory Scott said. “I think he’s pulling some strings, that’s what I think.”
Quick decision to buy
While the Scotts had some previous interest in the carriage house property, they say their decision to buy it now was spontaneous.
The Scotts, who said they were not looking to move from their condominium in downtown Lancaster, saw the May 8 LNP | LancasterOnline article about the auction that mentioned an open house the next day. They attended the open house, quickly deciding they wanted to make it their new home.
“We were just there bouncing things off of each other and we kind of had things figured out” said Terri Scott, who is an interior designer. “As far as having a plan, we were able to do that pretty quickly.”
Hours after signing the paperwork Friday morning, the couple toured the property with an LNP | LancasterOnline reporter, describing more about their plans as they discussed other details, including exactly where the driveway could come in, which windows were original and how much living space there actually is.
“Terri, the real interior is 3,100 square feet. It’s not 4,000. I measured it this morning,” Gregory Scott said.
The Scotts said they had looked at other Urban-designed homes in the past but resisted buying them because updating them would have required tearing apart intact historic interiors.
The Roslyn Mansion carriage house offered a unique alternative: the interior had been completely gutted by the Bowsers before a catastrophic rear-wall collapse on Christmas Day 2020 halted their own residential plans for the property they bought in 2019 for $325,000. The wall was rebuilt and the entire building stabilized, but the interior remained a shell.
“The fact that this carriage house is empty is good because I’d feel bad about tearing the carriage house apart. And now we don’t have to,” Gregory Scott said. “It is a canvas to be painted.”
Design decisions
Gregory Scott said he plans to design the entire renovation, which he expects will cost more than $1 million.
The couple plan to live on the second floor and install a staircase that would wrap around a personal elevator. The first floor will include a garage, a home office and a laundry room.
There wouldn’t be any additions to the building which the Scotts would work to physically separate from the main Roslyn Mansion from which it was legally subdivided in 2016. They would remove the shared paving and build a new driveway on the north side of the property, opposite the mansion.
The Scotts said they plan to begin work as soon as possible after settlement, focusing immediately on stabilizing the exterior—making the roof watertight, updating flashing, clearing gutters and treating the masonry. The Scotts say they are looking forward to working together on the project they expect to take up to two years.
“I want this to be fun,” said Gregory Scott, who is retired from RLPS Architects, the Lancaster-based firm he co-founded. “There’s no gun to our head, no time constraint.”
In 2024, The Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County put the Roslyn carriage house on its most endangered list. In the wake of the planned sale to the Scotts, the group’s executive director, Danielle Keperling, cheered the result.
“I am pleased with this development and know that it is now in good hands with both Gregg’s professional expertise and his passion for C. Emlen Urban. His stewardship is a welcome development,” Keperling wrote in a text
Gregory Scott, who has an architectural practice in Maine where the couple has a second home, views his new Lancaster Township project at the Roslyn carriage house as the defining capstone of a career during which he has become an advocate of historic preservation and an expert on Urban.
“This is going to be an experience that we want to enjoy, not just for ourselves, but we want the community to feel really good about saving this jewel,” he said.
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