Twice a day, every day, Sister Karen Dietrich drives past St. Michael’s at 9001 Germantown Ave. on her commute to and from work. She’s spent a lot of time inside St. Michael’s, exploring its halls, the chapel, and the generous grounds. Though she hasn’t stepped inside for years, her anticipation is growing for its latest incarnation: a new annex for the Woodmere art museum’s 20th- and 21st-century art collection, set to open this fall.

St. Michael’s hasn’t always been St. Michael’s. The building has been many things to many people in the surrounding communities. Built in 1852, the same year “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was published and Franklin Pierce was elected president, it was a beautiful summer retreat during the Gilded Age, passing through the hands of some notable industrial magnates.

Metals merchant William Henry Trotter had the house built for his lovely new bride, Maria Louisa. In 1868, it was owned by steam locomotive pioneer Henry Latimer Norris, and later, in 1884, sugar baron Alfred Craven Harrison became the owner.

In 1924, real estate developer Judson Zane divided the estate, selling five acres for residential development. The remaining house and land found a new purpose when the Sisters of Saint Joseph, a kind and dedicated French religious group active in Philadelphia since 1847, acquired it. They lovingly renamed the property St. Michael’s Hall.

The exterior of the original Gothic revival mansion has remained intact, as the interior evolved to meet the needs of the space, changing it from a school to a dormitory. “There were a lot of jerry-built little rooms,” Dietrich says. “With plywood walls going up to accommodate college students.” But the beautiful original woodwork and stonework were preserved.

The final iteration of St. Michael’s as a convent was a home to faculty sisters who taught at Chestnut Hill College. When the sisters moved into St. Michael’s after its time as a student dorm, Dietrich remembers, “there was a joy that it was becoming a true convent again.”

Sister Mary Jo Larkin, a volunteer archivist now at Mt. Saint Joseph Convent, remembers some of the building’s fascinating details: hidden storage nooks behind the decorative carvings. “When you hit them, they opened,” Larkin says, speculating that they might have stored hunting rifles or booze during Prohibition.

Being a ‘dear neighbor’

Time began to wear on the grand old building and its aging occupants. The sisters living there were getting older. “The number of sisters living at St. Michael’s was dwindling,” Dietrich explains. The building’s “very uneven” layout, including steps up, corners, and a kitchen in the basement accessed by a dumbwaiter, presented safety concerns for those with limited mobility.

The decision to relocate the remaining sisters was made with great care. By autumn 2019, St. Michael’s stood empty. “And we know it’s not good to have an empty building because it knows it’s empty and it starts to deteriorate,” Dietrich says.

The question then became, what next? The Sisters of St. Joseph, as its owners, had complete discretion over this building’s destiny. They were determined to avoid turning to a generic developer. Their land ethic, a core tenet of their order, guided their thinking. “We had talks about caring for the earth, the watershed, green space, and the old trees,” explained Dietrich, who was on the leadership team overseeing the sale of St. Michael’s.

Another guiding principle for the Sisters of St. Joseph is the concept of always trying to be a “dear neighbor.” This philosophy informed their approach to the sale. The sisters asked the neighbors: “What do you think we should do?” This question led to some lively discussions among neighbors about pooling resources to purchase the property, perhaps converting it into two luxury apartments while preserving the exterior and as much of the interior as possible. However, the costs and challenges of such a conversion quickly became apparent, making it untenable.

The sisters were acutely aware of the impact on their neighbors. The sale of a large plot of land could be upsetting. “We were very concerned about their well being,” Larkin said. The motive was not simply to sell it off, but to place it in the hands of “another trusted owner, someone who would care for it for a period of time as we did.” The goal was a stewardship model, not a quick transaction.

Enter William Valerio, Woodmere’s director and CEO. Like Dietrich, Valerio drove past the convent almost daily. After all, St. Michael’s was just 72 steps from Woodmere. In 2020, with the pandemic swirling, Valerio visited the site.

Dietrich recalls the initial tour with Valerio. “He loved it. Like, there’s nothing not to love, right? But he could immediately see, well, you just take that down, and the second floor beautifully mirrors the first floor.” This architectural symmetry, characteristic of the era, meant that once the temporary walls were gone, the expansive rooms on both floors would be perfectly suited for an art museum.

Valerio was convinced St. Michael’s could be the perfect extension of Woodmere. The repurposed mansion offered a brilliant fix for the museum’s ongoing problem: how to show off its ever-expanding collection of over 11,000 artworks and make it easily available to scholars, students, and other visitors. Valerio’s idea was to keep the estate intact, protect the land, and build it into a cultural hub right in Chestnut Hill.

A $10 million donation from the Maguire Foundation, the largest in the museum’s history, will fund the renovation and programming of the building, which was renamed the Frances M. Maguire Hall for Art and Education. The foundation invests in education, arts, and humanities.

All the pieces in place

All the pieces were falling into place to transform St. Michael’s and all the memories stored within its walls into a new space pulsing with art, culture, and new memories.

Architect Jeff Krieger’s office is next to Killian’s Hardware in Chestnut Hill, and like Dietrich and Valerio, he drove by the property many times. (Are you sensing a theme here?)

Woodmere, already acquainted with Krieger + Associates Architects, enlisted the group as local architects of the project team, further strengthened by New York-based Matthew Baird Architects, who led the design. Krieger expressed the importance of the St. Michael’s acquisition. “To me, that was the most exciting thing as a local resident was to have someone like Woodmere step in with a commitment to renovate the building and keep it as a public resource, and the grounds as well,” he said.

“If architects have a superpower, it’s supposed to be imagining that which doesn’t exist in the built environment,” Krieger explained. As the local architects, Krieger + Associates used their superpowers to navigate the labyrinthine world of zoning and building-code variances, addressing everything from the property’s residential designation to a critical need for accessibility in the multilevel structure.

Reflecting on the design complexities, Krieger emphasized, “The biggest design challenge was just to make it accessible and to make it warm and inviting and an appropriate series of rooms for the artwork in Woodmere’s collection to be displayed.”

One of the spaces Krieger is most proud of is the creation of a purpose-built domed room. There, in the newly renovated Maguire Hall, you’ll find a special highlight dedicated to Violet Oakley and her murals from “The Building of the House of Wisdom.” The gallery is thoughtfully designed to echo its original Yarnall House installation, featuring a warm, glowing ceiling-light box that beautifully recalls the lost stained-glass skylight.

Additionally, a state-of-the-art jewelry vault was constructed, highlighting the museum’s commitment to safeguarding its diverse collections. The museum is now poised to become a major cultural magnet. And remember those temporary plywood partitions built to accommodate the students? “The nice thing was, they weren’t put up super well,” Krieger said, making their demolition one of the “easier” parts of the restoration.

Krieger can’t wait for the big reveal. “I think [the public is] going to be amazed at what the design team, the landscape architects, Bill Valerio, and his staff were able to do, to turn this cottage-slash-convent into an art museum for Woodmere’s display of 20th- and 21st-century regional art.”

With an opening planned for early November, you can almost picture the crew of workers scurrying around, working through a last-minute punch list, to ensure everything is perfectly in place to welcome visitors to the new Frances M. Maguire Hall for Art and Education.

The official public opening is Nov. 1, and the date is already in Sister Dietrich’s calendar. However, she said, she’d love a sneak peek. “Some of the sisters said that if we could go inside before it really opens, especially if the sisters who had lived there could go see it, that would be a thrill.”