11 East Chestnut Hill Avenue

Steeple of Our Mother of Consolation Church

  

(photograph from Chestnut Hill Historical Society-John Naylor Collection: 1970.128)

MAP NUMBER: 8
DATE: 1885
ORIGINAL OWNER: Unknown
ARCHITECT: Joseph Middleton
CONTRACTOR: Unknown

Joseph Middleton, a convert to the Catholic faith and a gentleman,
determined that Chestnut Hill should have a Catholic Church in the
1850s.  At that time, many of the house servants were recent
immigrants from Ireland and other Catholic countries.  When erected,
the church was known as St. Mary's Lady of Consolation Church.
The above photograph shows the tall Gothic spire, which was erected in
1885 replacing an original square campanile.  The current spire dates
from the 1950s.

Hotchkin, "Germantown, Mount Airy, and Chestnut Hill," p. 455.
See Keels and Jarvis, "Chestnut Hill," p. 86.
See Jarvis, "Chestnut Hill Revisited," pps. 61, 76, 78, 79, 83, 98, 114.
See "The Parish of Our Mother of Consolation, 1855-1955."