8765 Montgomery Avenue

 

click on image for larger version

(photograph from Chestnut Hill Historical Society-John Naylor Collection: 1970.103)

 

MAP NUMBER: 49
DATE: 1880s
ORIGINAL OWNER: John Lowber Welsh
ARCHITECT: Frank Furness
CONTRACTOR: Unknown
DEMOLISHED:  1916

"Images of America: Springfield Township, Montgomery County" notes
on p. 55: " This English-looking house, named "Hillbrow," was the residence
of John Lowber Welsh.  Built in the late 1800s, the home was located on
on Montgomery Avenue at the end of Birch Lane.  Research of township maps
from 1893 shows Welsh owning 155 acres of land that bordered Paper Mill
Road and Montgomery Avenue. Welsh was a Philadelphia merchant
and married Maria Newbold and died in 1904."

"Hillbrow" actually was Welsh's summer home.  Frank Furness, architect,
and he had trained for the Civil War in the volunteer Calvary Troop Company
on the present site of Chestnut Hill Academy.  Welsh, who lived at 1420
Spruce Street, was a financier and a director of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad.  

According to the Borie family list (created c. 1965 and given to CHHS
by the donor) concerning the Naylor photographs, this home was listed as
owned by John Morgan. 

See Jarvis, "Chestnut Hill Revisited," p. 100.
See Michael J. Lewis, "Frank Furness Architecture and Violent Mind,"
pps. 30 and 151.
See Zwicker and Zwicker, "Springfield Township, Montgomery County," p. 55.