At a time when many arts institutions are reeling from federal funding cuts and patron numbers still below pre-pandemic levels, the Woodmere Art Museum in Chestnut Hill has just completed an audacious project that will double its gallery size. This month it celebrated the opening of Frances M. Maguire Hall for Art & Education, which had been known as St. Michael’s Hall when it was owned by the Sisters of Saint Joseph, the founders of Chestnut Hill College.

The museum is named after Frances M. Maguire, an artist and benefactor to Woodmere and other arts institutions. The former location of the Barnes Foundation in Merion was also named after her when it was acquired by St. Joseph’s University.

The house, located at the corner of Germantown and Sunset Avenues in Chestnut Hill, was built in 1853 for William Henry Trotter, a partner in the metal importing and manufacturing firm of Nathan Trotter & Company. It was founded by his father in 1817 and today is thought to be the oldest continuously operated metals company in the United States. In 1868, Trotter sold the property to Henry Latimer Norris, also an industrialist in his family’s firm, the Norris Locomotive Works.

The third owner, Alfred Craven Harrison, bought the estate from Norris in 1884 and owned it for the next 40 years. Harrison was one of the richest men in Philadelphia in the late 19th century from the sale of his family’s Franklin Sugar Refining Company.

A brief ownership by a developer saw some its acreage subdivided to build houses. In 1927, the house and remaining four acres of land were purchased by the Convent of the Sisters of Saint Joseph. It was first used as a school, later for student housing, and most recently as a residence hall for nuns.

The stone house, the work of an unknown architect, was built in the Gothic Revival style. Alfred C. Harrison commissioned Cope & Stewardson to add two large Italianate style wings in 1899. Among other features, an elaborately carved staircase was the work of Edward Maene, a woodworker and stone carver who contributed to many Philadelphia churches, as well as the University of Pennsylvania’s Quadrangle dormitories and the Washington Memorial Chapel at Valley Forge.

When the Sisters of Saint Joseph announced their intent to sell the property in early 2021, alarms were raised in Chestnut Hill about its future. The property had been included as a “significant” property in the Chestnut Hill National Register Historic District, but it is not listed on the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places. The former does not protect a property from demolition, while the latter requires oversight by the Philadelphia Historical Commission.

Community concerns were replaced by hopes when the next-door neighbor, the Woodmere began talks with the Sisters about their interest in acquiring the property. “We engaged in a quiet campaign and people stepped forward,” said William Valerio, the director and CEO of Woodmere. “A $10 million gift from the Maguire Foundation made the project a reality.” After a $2.2 million purchase in October 2021, renovations began in the spring of 2023.

Local architect Jeff Krieger assisted the lead architects, New York firm Matthew Baird Architects and Philly-based Andropogon Associates were enlisted as the landscape architects. Much of the work involved the removal of interior walls that had been added to create numerous smaller bedrooms where salons had originally been. The architects reopened the front porch, which had been closed in, and commissioned new window grillwork to harmonize with the originals on the front door.

When finished, the project yielded an additional 17,000 square feet of space, with 14 new galleries, a dedicated children’s art and education space, event spaces, as well as four acres of preserved greenspace.

“Our overall vision for Maguire Hall is to showcase Woodmere’s permanent collection,” explained Valerio. With a large portion of their holdings in storage, it wasn’t difficult to fill the new galleries.

The center front hall is staged as a tribute to Frances M. Maguire, with her portrait and some of her work hung alongside paintings by some of her teachers and classmates at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. An Art Deco chandelier that originally hung in the mezzanine of the Boyd Theater now graces the front hall gallery. “The Friends of the Boyd salvaged anything they could,” said Valerio. “They gifted the chandelier, a painted mirror, and 12 Saturn lights to us.”

Another gallery on the first floor serves as a bit of a reality check. “Here we have art that depicts some of the harder aspects of living in Philadelphia and also some pieces about healing,” noted Valerio, gesturing towards paintings by Charles Searles, Bo Bartlett, Marta Sanchez, and others.

“For each gallery we picked a main piece and then added related works, such as by the artist’s colleagues, students, or with similar themes,” said Amy Ferracci, Woodmere’s director of marketing and communications.

A second-floor gallery is dedicated to the work of American Impressionists from Philadelphia. The paintings are complemented by a patterned wallpaper in rich colors. “When renovating this room we found fragments of the original wallpaper,” explained Valerio. “From it, we created a kaleidoscopic pattern to design a new wallpaper.”

The former breakfast room, in the Cope and Stewardson addition, serves as a sculpture gallery. Edward Maene’s original carved wooden paneling remained, but the ceiling and upper portions of the walls had been painted over. “We were able to recreate the original deep red paint, which is actually now available at Kilian’s Hardware Store here in Chestnut Hill, as ‘Woodmere Red,’” Ferracci said.

The basement level had been used by the Harrisons for the safe keeping of silver and jewels, so the Woodmere staff decided to continue that use by exhibiting contemporary jewelry artists.

In the midst of the thoughtful renovations and compelling thematic galleries, is the crown jewel of the project, the room which houses the 18 murals comprising The Building of the House of Wisdom by Violet Oakley as they were originally staged in the mansion of Charlton Yarnall on the northeast corner of 17th and Locust Streets, which was built in 1908 and designed by architect Frank Miles Day. “It had been on the third floor, looking down onto a music room on the second,” said Valerio. In building the installation, they recreated the skylight of painted glass that had been designed by D’Ascenzo Studio.

Oakley created a series of 43 murals in the Pennsylvania State Capitol building in 1902, the first American woman to receive a public mural commission. Other of her works in Philadelphia include the Great Women of the Bible murals at the First Presbyterian Church in Germantown and Life of Moses, commissioned by Samuel S. Fleisher in 1927 for the altar piece for the sanctuary of the Fleisher Art Memorial on Catharine Street in South Philadelphia.

Woodmere became the repository for the Yarnall murals in 1973 after a series of sales of the house endangered their preservation. Edith Emerson, an artist, Woodmere’s director, and Oakley’s life partner, stepped in and brought the murals to Chestnut Hill.

With the museum’s expansion into a second building, the original site next door at 9201 Germantown Avenue has been christened Charles Knox Smith Hall, after its founder who transformed his home, Woodmere, into a showcase for his art collection.

The acquisition of an additional four acres has also enabled Woodmere to expand its sculpture garden. In addition to a couple dozen artworks, the grounds include a pollinator garden, an outdoor amphitheater, hundred-year-old trees, and native plants.

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