Discovering Chestnut Hill

Sustaining Main Street: Chestnut Hill in the 21st Century Walking Tour by George McNeely
Sunday, April 23, 2023 at 1:30pm
In-person at Chestnut Hill Conservancy, 8708 Germantown Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19118

George McNeely will lead a walk around the commercial core of Chestnut Hill. During this tour, he will explore the subsidiary buildings and yards along and near Germantown Avenue that have evolved in different ways to support our Main Street. From the few early farm-related barns and sheds to the many structures and spaces specifically created to accommodate the car to 20th-Century manufacturing buildings, these vernacular utilitarian buildings scattered along the Avenue and its side streets have survived by being repurposed for newer functions. These often overlooked humble structures are a key part of the healthy commercial fabric of Chestnut Hill and deserve greater recognition of the vital supporting role they play. George McNeely is a local architectural historian and writer whose insights into our history and surroundings appear frequently in the “Our Town” column of the Chestnut Hill Local.

In addition to our generous sponsors and supportive businesses, Discovering Chestnut Hill Tour and Lecture Series: Sustaining Main Street: Chestnut Hill in the 21st Century is sponsored by John B. Ward & Co. Arborists.

Tickets: $15 for Members, $25 for Non-Members

2023 DISCOVERING CHESTNUT HILL SPONSOR

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Here’s a look back at our successful recent tours and lectures:

The Stories of Grace Hill, 8410 Prospect Avenue by Dr. Joseph Pizzano, Historian
Dr. Pizzano’s interest in Grace Hill began with the original blueprints and other archival information gifted to him by Ned Wood, a prior owner, and grew from there over the decades. Grace Hill was built for publisher and railroad manager Cephas Childs in 1855, a year before the Chestnut Hill Railroad began operations. It was subsequently named Grace Hill and substantially altered by the Patterson and Woods families with plans by several notable architects. These prominent families were directly involved in the thoughtful evolution of Chestnut Hill from a summer retreat to a residential community, which directly affected this home. The property was subdivided in 1975, with Grace Hill remaining a single-family home and its outbuildings also converted to single-family homes.

Innovative Urban Housing in South Chestnut Hill Walking Tour
Retired architect and city planner, Conservancy Board Member, and Chestnut Hill local Richard Bartholomew will lead this tour through the most unique and surprising houses in the lower section of Chestnut Hill. To learn more about this topic, you can read Richard Bartholomew’s essay.

The Frances M. Maguire Hall Project Tour and Lecture
The Frances M. Maguire Hall Project aims to renovate many of St. Michael’s Hall spaces, a 19th-century mansion that acts as an adjunct building for Woodmere. With a special focus on sustainability, the project will repurpose existing buildings and rooms, and implement energy conservation measures during the rehab. These works will turn the mansion’s parlors and bedrooms into art galleries, a hands-on space for children’s art & education center, a museum café, and public programming spaces.

 Living Among Landmarks: The Olmsted Legacy in Chestnut Hill
A Conversation and Exhibit
2022 is the bicentennial of Frederick Law Olmsted—a leading cultural figure of his time and founder of the profession of landscape architecture as we know it and as it is practiced today. Olmsted’s personal career and the practice that was his legacy flourished for more than one hundred years. He and his successors worked in virtually every state and large city in America. In Philadelphia and surrounding communities the firm secured commissions for nearly two hundred projects. At least forty of these were for clients in Chestnut Hill. Beginning in 1897, this work spanned forty years.

April 26, 2022 is Olmsted’s 200th birthday. As part of the national celebration, Chestnut Hill Conservancy will host an evening symposium, “Living among Landmarks: The Olmsted Legacy in Chestnut Hill,” featuring a conversation among current-day owners of homesteads and gardens designed by his successors in the firm of Olmsted Brothers, Landscape Architects. Olmsted biographer Witold Rybczynski will introduce the program. Before and after his remarks and the panel discussion, the audience will have access to a pin-up display of photos and plans of all the known projects from the Olmsted Brothers’ decades of involvement in Chestnut Hill.

Recasting the Victorian Suburb: Two Young Architects at Work in Germantown and Chestnut Hill in the 1880s
Virtual Lecture with Jeffrey Cohen
This illustrated talk by Jeffrey Cohen will illuminate recent research exploring Wilson Eyre’s beginnings with the architect James Peacock Sims. Cohen teaches architectural history at Bryn Mawr College. His previous research has focused on 19th century streetscapes and on architects with significant contributions to Philadelphia’s legacy including Benjamin Latrobe, Frank Furness, and Wilson Eyre, architect of several beloved Chestnut Hill houses including The Anglecot.

Monument Lab: Civic ReImagination
Virtual Lecture with Dr. Paul Farber
Monument Lab’s Director and Cofounder, Dr. Paul M. Farber shared insights from the non-profit public art and history studio’s work on public memory in Philadelphia and beyond. Monument Lab began as a university classroom project in 2012 and has grown into an internationally renowned civic studio grounded in the vision that “monuments must change.” Dr. Farber’s lecture was followed by a brief Q&A.

Farber earned a PhD and MA in American Culture from the University of Michigan and a BA in Urban Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. He holds several academic appointments and has contributed to numerous art and history publications.

WPA Structures in the Wissahickon Walking Tour
In-Person Walking Tour with Bob Thomas
Robert Thomas, AIA, was our guide for our sold out, in-person walking tour in Wissahickon Park as a sequel to Kate Cowing’s fascinating talk on “WPA Structures in the Wissahickon” sponsored by the Conservancy in collaboration with Friends of the Wissahickon.  The 2.3-mile trail walk kicked off at Historic Rittenhouse Town, followed trails along the east side of the Creek to Blue Bell Hill and the Kitchens Lane bridge, and returned via Forbidden Drive.  Along the way, participants were treated to seeing exemplary buildings of this New Deal initiative, including guard boxes, a picnic shelter, and a comfort station.

WPA Structures in the Wissahickon
Virtual Lecture by Kate Cowing, AIA.
During the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) funded a three-phase project to improve the Wissahickon Valley. One of many WPA projects in Fairmount Park, this particular work included the construction of outbuildings along the Wissahickon Creek including shelters, guardboxes, comfort stations, and concession stands. Architect Kate Cowing presented a lively lecture about the history, restoration, and reuse of these structures and the WPA’s legacy in the Wissahickon Valley Park. This virtual lecture was co-sponsored by Friends of the Wissahickon.

Pastorius Park and Its Neighborhood: An Unlikely and Serendipitous Gift of the Automobile Age
In-Person Walking Tour with Rob Fleming
Early in the 20th Century, the City of Philadelphia made region-wide plans that included a large intersection of three parkways in the heart of Chestnut Hill. Condemnation and clearing opened the ground for the grand intersection—a traffic circle. But World War I interrupted the work. At that point, the community was not yet settled in its final form; if the project had continued, Chestnut Hill would have lost its village character. Pastorius Park, a jewel of American landscape design, is one of many uncoordinated but fortuitous developments that as a whole give Chestnut Hill the character of a well-planned community. Join Landscape Architect Rob Fleming as we explore Pastorius Park and the remaining traces of what might have been.

Accidental Master Plan: The Fortuitous Open Spaces of Chestnut Hill
Virtual Lecture by Rob Fleming. Chestnut Hill is not a planned community, but it reads as one. It has legible boundaries, a central core of commercial services, accessible transportation links, and housing types affordable across a range of income levels. Its character varies and its density ranges from tight-packed urban to near-wilderness. Between lies a network of open spaces—forested streets, parklands, and borrowed views of private landscapes and gardens—all knit together as a pleasing whole. In this illustrated lecture, Landscape Architect Rob Fleming showed how even while Chestnut Hill’s gradual growth may have been unplanned, a principled aesthetic worldview informed the key land-use and design decisions that would give the community its unique character.

The Wissahickon Style of Landscaping
Virtual Lecture by Carol Franklin. This Discovering Chestnut Hill Virtual lecture explored the landscapes of Chestnut Hill and Mt Airy with nationally recognized landscape architect and life-time Chestnut Hill-Mt Airy resident, Carol Franklin, drawing from her book Metropolitan Paradise: The Struggle for Nature in the City. The book is a history of the Wissahickon Valley, co-authored with David Contosta, professor of Social History at Chestnut Hill College and author of a number of books on Chestnut Hill. This virtual slideshow illustrated the critical interconnection between the structure and architecture of the communities in Northwest Philadelphia with the adjacent Wissahickon Park—exploring these ideas in the context of their development from the end of the era of the Lenni-Lenape to the present day.  It explored in detail the distinct patterns that emerge and create the genuinely “greene country” villages that make our communities so special.  She calls these patterns the “Wissahickon Style” because they grow out of an imaginative and very positive response to the great natural woods that is our local branch of Fairmount Park

Driving Tour of the Chestnut Hill West Line
Beginning at the terminus of the Chestnut Hill West railroad at Germantown Avenue, the tour route follows the line to Mount Airy, with stops at Chestnut Hill West, St. Martins, Allen Lane, and more.  Tour guides will explain each station’s architectural history and – in some cases – adaptive reuse.

Railroads of Chestnut Hill: Lecture
Ted Xaras, railroad history aficionado and professional artist, will continue this year’s “Railroad Resources” program series with an illustrated lecture on the history of Chestnut Hill’s two railroad lines and how they shaped the communities they serve. Vintage and contemporary photographs of our local stations and train operations on the former Reading line (Chestnut Hill East) and the former Pennsylvania Railroad (Chestnut Hill West) will highlight the contrasting architectural styles between the two lines: Frank Furness’ individual designs for each station on the East line, and the West’s more standardized stations designed by W. Bleddyn Powell.

Railroads of Chestnut Hill: Lecture
2019 marks the 150^th anniversary of the driving of the Golden Spike and the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad. In celebration, railroad historian Joel Spivak will tell the story of the railroad in Philadelphia and how it came to Chestnut Hill. Spivak is the author of Philadelphia Railroads and Philadelphia Trolleys.

Railroads of Chestnut Hill Tour
Discover the hidden landscape of the Reading Railroad with archivist Alex Bartlett and architect Jean McCoubrey. Now SEPTA’s Chestnut Hill East Regional Rail line transporting commuters, the Reading was a working train line, making use of a network of now-defunct sidings to carry freight—from ice, to coal, to grapes—to local businesses. Up until the late-1920s, trains operated at the street level, intermixing with automobile and pedestrian traffic. While the removal of all grade crossings resulted in the alteration and demolition of many structures and landscapes along the right of way, clues still remain as to how the line would have appeared. You may be surprised by what you find!

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