Let there be lights.
That’s what the Chestnut Hill Conservancy (formerly the Chestnut Hill Historical Society) decided in 2017 as a way to mark the organization’s 50th anniversary and the wealth of history and architecture in Northwest Philadelphia.
The idea was to use lights to illuminate architectural detail, along with video slideshows projected on Chestnut Hill storefronts to highlight stories of conservation and community, trailblazing and art making.
The Conservancy will “flip the switch” for the eighth time on Oct. 3 at 6:30 p.m., lighting its own building along with nearby facades, pediments and cornices that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Look up
“Night of Lights is when the Conservancy transforms Germantown Avenue into this streetscape exhibition of history, architecture and storytelling,” said Chrissy Clawson, programs and communications manager for the Conservancy. Buildings along Germantown Avenue will be illuminated Friday, Oct. 3 through Monday, Oct. 6.
The event dovetails with the Chestnut Hill Business District’s monthly “Arts & Eats” celebration on first Fridays; it also takes place during Archives Month Philly and is a festival partner of DesignPhiladelphia, which showcases the work of the city’s creative community.
“There’s so much amazing architectural detail in Chestnut Hill,” Clawson said, “and during the daytime, people don’t always look up. Illuminating them with various colored lights allows people to see what makes this area so precious and unique.”
Six video installations, set up between the 8300 and 8600 blocks of Germantown Avenue (including one at 2 E. Gravers Lane), will shed a different kind of light, drawing focus to the preservation initiatives of West Mt. Airy Neighbors (WMAN), the changing topography of the Wissahickon, the transformation of two former railroad passages into the Cresheim Trail, and the abundance of arts organizations that pepper the Avenue from Germantown to Chestnut Hill.
Focus on preservation
For the first time, one slideshow will explore the Conservancy itself — from its roots as an advocacy group trying to save the VFW Post at 8217-19 Germantown Ave. to its current role as a conservator, educator and keeper of archives — 66,000 items, from maps to handwritten letters to personal photographs — that tell the diverse stories of the area.
A collaborative video, called “Stories Along the Avenue,” highlights six different arts groups: the Germantown Arts District and youth theater group Yes! And…Collaborative Arts, also in Germantown; Quintessence Theatre Group and Bella Mosaic Art in Mt. Airy; The Stagecrafters Theater and NoName Gallery in Chestnut Hill. Students of Yes! And will perform on opening night of the weekend-long Night of Lights.
“We’re talking about this cultural ecosystem of art organizations across Northwest Philadelphia that are on Germantown Avenue,” Clawson said. “They’re each providing five or six slides to tell their own story.”
Another slide show, created by Allens Lane Art Center, will highlight the work and biographies of the center’s teaching artists, who guide children, teens and adults in ceramics, watercolor, collage, printmaking, and other forms of visual and performing art.
Those teaching artists — about 50-60 each year, including the ones who work at Allens Lane’s summer camp — “are working artists in their own right,” said Vita Litvak, the center’s executive director. “They are making their own work, showing their work, engaged in artistic practice. They deserve to be uplifted, highlighted and celebrated. Their work is fundamental to what we do.”
Litvak noted, at a time when President Donald Trump and federal agencies are cutting grants to arts and culture organizations, decrying “wokeness” and diversity, and trying to limit the stories museums tell about history and the present, art matters even more.
“Art is a safe haven. It is a place to recharge, to find hope, to find beauty in the world, to find a reason for going on. Art also allows us to think critically about things,” she said. “I think it’s more essential than ever.”
WMAN’s Historic Preservation Initiative slideshow tells how that group preserved the Cresheim Valley Apartments near the Allens Lane train station by advocating for the building to be added to the city’s Register of Historic Places, then successfully lobbied for the creation of the Northwest Philadelphia Apartments Thematic Historic District, which was approved by the Philadelphia Historical Commission in January.
The district includes 30 apartment buildings built between 1910 and 1940, all near stations on the Chestnut Hill West line and featuring a range of architectural styles from early 20th-century Tudor Revival to Italian Renaissance to the streamlined Art Deco contours of the 1930s.
Sherman Aronson, a retired architect and member of WMAN’s Historic Preservation Initiative, designed the slideshow. “We’re trying to show the value of preservation in Mt. Airy,” he said. Distinct, well-built and varied structures “are why so many of us choose to live here… also, [apartment buildings] provide housing to a range of people that’s naturally affordable and an alternative to owning houses.”
The slideshow will even include snapshots of preservation efforts that didn’t work, such as the campaign to save part of the Wood Norton Residence at Wayne and Johnson Streets — twin buildings whose new owner demolished them, displacing many tenants, and instead built a six-story building with units that are smaller and more expensive than the original apartments.
An interactive event
For Clawson and the Conservancy, Night of Lights is a chance to engage with the public. On opening night, creators of the slideshows will be there to answer questions and remind viewers that history isn’t only what transpired hundreds of years ago.
And the event couldn’t happen without the combined efforts of business sponsors, community partners, slideshow creators and dozens of volunteers who dug through boxes of lights in the Conservancy’s basement, she said.
“At its heart, I think Night of Lights is about connection,” Clawson said. “It’s not just connecting preservation, architecture, and archives; it also invites people to see themselves reflected in the history of this community. Preservation isn’t just about holding onto the past. It’s about stewarding our shared history in ways that are accessible to all.”
Night of Lights Opening Night “Flip the Switch” ceremony, Friday, Oct. 3, 6:30 p.m., Chestnut Hill Conservancy, 8708 Germantown Ave., Chestnut Hill. The exhibition continues through Monday, Oct. 6.
