An ‘Exuberantly Eclectic’ New Building is Set To Open at Chestnut Hill’s Woodmere Museum
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This weekend, the Woodmere Museum in Chestnut Hill will open its second location, a 19th-century mansion two blocks away from its main building on Germantown Avenue.
The 17,000-square-foot Maguire Hall, named after the now-deceased philanthropist Frances Maguire, gives the museum 14 additional galleries to display more than 500 works of art — more than doubling its exhibition capacity.
“All of a sudden, people can know that Woodmere’s collection is one of the great collections of American art,” said CEO and director William Valerio. “I believe it’s going to be revelatory, really change the way Woodmere is able to participate in the broader conversation of American art museums.”
The collection begins before a visitor enters the building. On the spacious front lawn of Maguire Hall is Philadelphia-area artist Steve Tobin’s “Praha,” a cluster of steel monoliths resembling tombstones as a meditation on the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague.
Nearby, another sculpture has a lighter tone: A fountain in what used to be the house’s carriage turnaround has a bronze nude holding a grape bunch as its centerpiece. “Sweet Grapes” was made by the early-20th-century artist Harriet Frishmuth, a member of a group of women artists known as the Philadelphia Ten.
“One of the great artists of the Gilded Age. Studied with Rodin in Paris, came back to the United States, and was one of the great sculptors of her time,” Valerio said. “When we knew we were doing this project, we somehow had to build the right kind of setting for her.”
What links the two sculptures are their Philadelphia provenance. Woodmere is focused on local artists, amassing about 11,000 works over its 85-year history. Most of the outdoor sculptures were acquired during the renovation of Maguire Hall, including three large-scale works by Tobin.
A house steeped in history
What is now Maguire Hall was built in 1852 as a country retreat for Maria Louisa Farr, wife of Philadelphia industrialist William Henry Trotter. It was later significantly expanded by Alfred Craven Harrison, whose family made a fortune in sugar. Harrison hired local artisans to craft luxurious architectural details into his mansion.
In 1924, the building became Saint Michael’s Hall, used by the Sisters of Saint Joseph as a girls’ school, a college dormitory and ultimately a residence for nuns. The Sisters sold the building to the Woodmere Museum in 2021.
A sunroom built by the Sisters has been torn out to restore the house’s wraparound porch, its ipe wood decking facing west overlooking the Wissahickon Creek valley with a view of the hills of Whitemarsh in the distance.
Maguire Hall sits on 4 acres of land. Valerio said Woodmere’s founder, Charles Knox Smith, believed the views outside went hand in hand with the art inside.
“He wanted visitors from the gritty town from Center City, Philadelphia, to get on their horses and carriages, come up Lincoln Drive back when it was a gravel path, experience nature and approach art with the calm that nature brings,” he said. “That, together with the experience of art, would be a path to spiritual wellness. We still believe that today.”