Chestnut Hill Historic District

Chestnut Hill is a residential neighborhood in northwest Philadelphia with more than 2,600 buildings, most of them single-family houses of two or three stories. Settlement began in the early 1700s along Germantown Pike and Bethlehem Pike, and the arrival of the Philadelphia, Germantown and Norristown Railroad in 1854 turned the village into a summer retreat. Later, the Pennsylvania Railroad extension in 1884 prompted Henry Howard Houston's planned western section, and Dr. George Woodward's work from 1904 added courtyard housing and landscaped streets. Local Wissahickon schist stone is the common material throughout, and many houses are set into the land along the Wissahickon and Cresheim valleys. The district is listed for its architecture, its wide range of styles by leading Philadelphia architects, and its planning, which followed the natural contours of the land. Much of the surrounding valley was later preserved as parkland.