One Museum, two experiences

The building and grounds of Smith Hall are so named for our founder Charles Knox Smith (1845-1916). Born of humble means, Smith eventually built a successful mining company and served on Philadelphia’s Common Council (the precursor to today’s City Council). In 1898, Smith purchased the estate known as Woodmere and began transforming it into a showcase for his art. With the belief that the experience of art and nature together offer a path to spiritual beauty, Smith welcomed his first visitors to Woodmere in 1910. For almost forty years, from the early 1940s through 1978, Woodmere thrived under the leadership of Edith Emerson, who, along with her life partner, the artist Violet Oakley, brought women artists into the collection.

Named for artist, Woodmere trustee, and philanthropist Frances M. Maguire, Maguire Hall houses galleries that showcase work by twentieth-century artists and those living and working in Philadelphia today. Built in 1852 as a Gilded Age summer retreat, the house served many needs over the next decades: as Fontbonne Academy for Girls, a student residence for Chestnut Hill College, and, by 1980, a convent for fifteen Sisters of Saint Joseph. In renovating this nineteenth-century residential mansion, Woodmere sought to retain the spirit of welcome in the house. Many of the galleries are installed “salon style,” with art hung floor to ceiling, as it would have been displayed in an opulent Victorian home. The works on view will change from time to time, but the intent is to showcase the particular strengths of Woodmere’s collection. Learn more about the renovation project.

Want to learn more about the history and renovation of these two Victorian mansions of Chestnut Hill? Read Woodmere: Telling the Story of Philadelphia's Art and Artists.