A half century on the ice, Hill skating club looks back on years of success
by JAMES STURDIVANT
In the 1950s, Chestnut Hill was a neighborhood of skating enthusiasts. There were the figure skaters, who learned their skills on local lakes and streams, Ivy Leaguers who had played ice hockey at Princeton and Yale — and, of course, their children, who clamored for a chance to take to the ice when the Wissahickon wasn’t frozen over.
But Chestnut Hill had no permanent place to skate. The closest rink, the Philadelphia Skating Club, was seven miles away in Ardmore.
John Fearey, founding president of the Wissahickon Skating Club, would recall in the Local’s predecessor, the Chestnut Hill Cymbal, that “A good head of steam in the form of Mother Irritation had been building up north of the Schuylkill River because of the arduous ferrying job demanded by their children,” to get to the Ardmore rink. “And, furthermore, no hockey was offered there.”
Never fond of being outdone by the Main Line, a group of prominent Chestnut Hill citizens decided to marshal their resources to bring ice skating to the Hill. The culmination of their efforts came 50 years ago this week, when ground was broken for the Wissahickon Skating Club.
The event was the result of an extraordinary, entirely homegrown fund-raising effort.
To finance the project, Fearey, local lawyer Henry T. Reath and others came up with the idea of selling bonds. To gauge community interest, $5 donations were solicited toward the cost of drawing up preliminary plans. Names were gleaned from the membership lists of a number of local schools, clubs and business organizations, and wives got together to prepare nearly a thousand letters and brochures for mailing.
“The response was electrifying,” Fearey wrote. Over 600 families sent in money. These original members of the “5 Dollar Club” were promised first priority in club membership.
An agreement was struck with Chestnut Hill Academy to build the proposed rink on CHA land at the corner of Willow Grove Avenue and Cherokee Street through a 100-year lease offered by the school for $1 a year. It was agreed that if the rink ever ceased to operate as a private club, ownership of the building would revert to CHA.
Community bonding
The bond selling effort was characterized by forthrightness. In an informational packet, the plan’s backers answered the question of whether the rink could make sufficient money to pay off the bonds: “We think so or we wouldn’t be putting our own money in. But, seriously, we can’t guarantee it — for if we could, a mortgage and bank loan for almost the full amount could be secured.”
“A lot of people don’t realize that Jack Fearey was a broker, and at one time he took a year or two off from his job to coalesce the community interest and to get the bonds,” long-time club member Jerry Quill told the Local at a round table with former club board members last week. “He was an ice hockey player at Yale … Reath and he were just driven.”
To decrease costs, a second floor lounge was dropped from the plans, though the design allowed for it to be added later (it was built in 1969) and seating capacity was reduced from 1,380 to 600, reducing the total construction bill to $325,000. A July 1955 letter to subscribers announced that enough pledges had been secured to authorize the bonds.
The groundbreaking itself was a festive occasion despite pouring rain and a few other hiccups, reported the Evening Bulletin’s Ruth Seltzer in her “Philadelphia Scene “column.
“To dramatize the coming of the ice age to Chestnut Hill, an ice man was supposed to arrive with a large block of ice. But the ice man failed to cometh. After a short wait in the downpour, Mrs. Henry T. Reath hurried off to a self-service station with Charles E. Ingersoll. They fetched enough ice to pose 11-year old Robin Reath (in robin blue figure skating costume) upon it,” she wrote.
The festivities surrounding the groundbreaking were nothing compared to the opening ceremony in October 1956. Attended by over 1,000 people, honored guests included world figure skating champion Hayes Alan Jenkins, fresh from a gold medal performance at that year’s Winter Olympics in Italy, and Princess Grace and Prince Rainier of Monaco, there to see the princess’ niece, East Falls resident Meg Davis, in a skating exhibition.
Growth and change
It was only the beginning of what would prove to be a hugely successful community venture. By the end of 1957, Chestnut Hill would surpass Ardmore as the largest indoor rink of its kind in the United States. As demand continued to grow, summer skating was instituted in 1958.
“When the club opened up [to public skating, on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays] … there was standing room only out there. You’d have 600 people out there [at once],” former club president J. Wayne Lee said.
Figure skating and ice hockey thrived in tandem until, in the 1960s, the demand began to shift strongly toward hockey, creating some inevitable tension between the two camps.
“Figure skating was bigger in the beginning,” explained Lee. “You have figure skaters and hockey players who want to be on prime ice time. Well, obviously you can’t have two [on the same ice at once] … so they were always vying for position to get their share.”
“Hockey in this area did not really take off, except among a few people, until the Flyers got here in 1967,” Bill Whiteside, former chair of the junior hockey program, added. Once it did, and ice hockey became the club’s prime revenue source, figure skating had to yield the ice, although it remained an important part of the club’s operations.
“The overriding philosophy throughout the history of the club has been fairness, and we’ve always tried to keep it even between the two sides. And primarily it is a family club,” figure skater Hannah Harberg said.
Changing times have brought new challenges. According to Quill, today there are 15 rinks in this area bigger than Wissahickon, most with multiple ice surfaces. Wissahickon has one rink, a bit shorter than those built today, with no room to expand, he said. All of the long-time members agreed, however, that the club’s strength comes from the same source as it did in the beginning: a family-friendly atmosphere and strong community support.
“It was a very active, close knit group that got together off the ice as well. We were the envy of all the clubs around here — the family, the spirit,” said figure skater Charlotte Betancourt. And that spirit remains strong, all agreed, in a variety of programs for kids, a thriving senior hockey team, championship ice hockey program and very healthy membership base.
The club’s practice of awarding ribbons to young skaters is a much-loved tradition, Harberg said. And synchronized skating is becoming increasingly popular
“There have been these swings through the history of the club,” she said. “I remember well when I was on the board, senior hockey was weak. You just wait it out [and] eventually the pendulum will swing. Now we have a growing movement with synchronized skating, and I think that’s an important part of our future.”
It doesn’t hurt, according to this group, that the rink has a reputation for high quality, both in its well-maintained ice surface (“we are known for that,” Lee said) and skate instruction.
“Hockey teams have always known that, if you go to Wissahickon, you’re going to be playing good skaters,” Quill said.
Valerie Ashley and Gump Whiteside, co-chairs of the Wissahickon Skating Club’s historical committee, provided
