Explore the landscapes of Chestnut Hill and Mt Airy with nationally recognized landscape architect and lifetime Chestnut Hilland Mt. Airy resident, Carol Franklin, drawing from her book Metropolitan Paradise: The Struggle for Nature in the City, a history of the Wissahickon Valley co-authored with Chestnut Hill College Social History professor David Contosta.
This virtual slideshow will illustrate the critical interconnection between the structure and architecture of the communities in Northwest Philadelphia with the adjacent Wissahickon Park, exploring these ideas in the context of their development from the end of the era of the Lenni-Lenape to the present day. It will explore in detail the distinct patterns that emerge and create the genuinely “greene country” villages that make our communities so special. Franklin calls these patterns the “Wissahickon Style” because they grow out of an imaginative and very positive response to the great natural woods that comprise our local branch of Fairmount Park.
Carol Franklin, FASLA, RLA, is a nationally recognized landscape architect, one of the founders of the local firm Andropogon Associates—a pioneer in the field of ecological and sustainable design. Now retired, she was also a professor at the University of Pennsylvania for 30 years, chairman of the Chestnut Hill Tree and Landscape Committee, and winner of the Chestnut Hill Award in 1980.
Tickets are $10 for Conservancy members and $15 for non-members, and are available for purchase
on our website.
