About 60 members of the Philadelphia Fire Department, including firefighters, medics and other personnel, responded to a fire at the Keewaydin estate at 540 W. Moreland Ave. on Monday afternoon, which took about half an hour to place under control. No injuries or fatalities were reported, but the building was left visibly damaged.

The fire was one of six in the City of Philadelphia that day. 

“We were extremely busy,” said the fire department’s assistant deputy commissioner, Kathy Matheson. 

Development company Ganos LLC, which owns Keewaydin, had previously planned to build an apartment complex on the lot, then abandoned those plans after the company was unable to gain support for a variance from neighbors. Ganos later successfully lobbied the city’s zoning board to subdivide the property, but that ruling was later reversed in 2023 after the Chestnut Hill Conservancy sued.

The case’s ruling was particularly scathing of Frank DiCicco, who was the ZBA’s chairman at the time.

According to the written ruling, the hearing was “replete with evidentiary rulings by ZBA Chairman DiCicco that unfairly disallowed any reasonable inquiry into the potential impact to the community.” The ruling also said that DiCicco “excluded relevant evidence during the hearing particularly from concerned community members and neighbors.”

About a month after the decision in the Conservancy’s favor, Ganos appealed the ruling. 

The Dutch Colonial Revival estate, named for the northwest wind in “The Song of Hiawatha” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, was listed on the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places in 2020. A one-alarm fire in the kitchen and service wing in January 2019 set off the nomination process.