Chestnut Hill: A Digital Story

Chestnut Hill is a quaint and richly historic neighborhood located in the northwest corner of Philadelphia. Flanked on both sides by the Cresheim Valley & the Wissahickon Gorge sections of Fairmount Park, the nation’s largest urban park system, Chestnut Hill has long embraced its natural surroundings and today is one of the most environmentally friendly areas of Philadelphia.

The region proudly boasts a notable surplus of cultural capital by offering its residents and visitors access to public institutions such as the Chestnut Hill branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia, The Woodmere Art Museum, along with a number of prestigious art galleries, and Morris Arboretum, the 92-acre non-profit arboretum operated by the University of Pennsylvania. The area also offers a number of educational options with three local public schools, four private school options, and Chestnut Hill College, a current liberal arts college and local historical staple.

Chestnut Hill got its official start right here, at the intersection of Germantown Avenue & Bethlehem Pike, at the start of the 18th century around 1704. In its early stages, Chestnut Hill was originally a fairly rural farming and mill based community during the early 1700s, no doubt due to the region’s pre-existing Native American inhabitants and their influence on the land. Both Germantown Ave and Bethlehem Pike were actually Native American trails long before they became the cobble-stone and cement arteries that pump traffic through the heart of the neighborhood.

Chestnut Hill didn’t officially become a part of the city of Philadelphia until February 2, 1854, when the Pennsylvania General Assembly enacted the Act of Consolidation, one of the city’s earliest and most substantial pieces of zoning legislature to this date.

The Act of Consolidation expanded the city limits of Philadelphia so that many of the city’s surrounding districts, townships, & boroughs were incorporated into perimeters of the city, including the German Township on the fringes of the city in which Chestnut Hill was located at the time. This expansion of Philadelphian territory led to a city unified under one central law enforcement agency, as opposed to many within a small distance of each other, and connected by one central form of transportation, the railroad.

In 1854, soon after the approval of the Act of Consolidation, Philadelphian business man & philanthropist, Henry H. Houston spearheaded the crucial railroad construction project that connected Chestnut Hill directly to Philadelphia’s Center City, making inter city travel a convenient & capable reality and laying the groundwork for Chestnut Hill’s first major housing boom.

At first Chestnut Hill was inhabited mostly by local families & laborers during the greater part of the year and then by fairly well-off Philadelphians wishing to avoid the oppressive heat of the city during the summer. This all changed with the arrival of the Chestnut Hill Train Station, however, which, in turn, brought on the arrival of an entirely new demographic of year-round occupational commuters. Those commuters would earn their money in the city and return to Chestnut Hill where they invested their earnings heavily in the unique architectural and infrastructural facets of the neighborhood still in existence today.

Over time, a second railway was built connecting the hustle & bustle of center city to the eastern portion of Chestnut hill and the increased accessibility of the neighborhood led to its opportune evolution into the culturally diverse and economically fortunate place that it still is today.