Philly-area holiday house tours resume with a slightly altered format

Lionel trains circling a miniature village and vintage crèches in Chestnut Hill; a collection of 275 Santas in Ambler; a Hansel and Gretel gingerbread house on a Moorestown lawn; a Victorian tree decorated with lace ribbon, flocks of origami birds, and snowflakes in Blue Bell; a 1950s-themed tree with bubble lights and tinsel in Burlington City.

Every December for decades, visitors have flocked to beautifully decorated private homes around the region for holiday tours benefiting area nonprofits. Crowds came in the rain, snow, sleet, and freezing cold year in and year out — until 2020.

As with so many other activities last December, the danger of spreading coronavirus forced the cancellation of the beloved holiday tours.

» READ MORE: 2021 Philadelphia holiday events calendar

What about this year?

To prepare for the tours, sponsors have to line up houses months in advance, so this year, decisions had to be made while people were still getting their first vaccinations and then as the delta variant raged. Even with social distancing and masking, would owners be willing to open their homes? Would visitors come?

It was hard to know, so a number of tour sponsors came up with creative alternatives to showcase the beauty of the season. Other groups canceled tours again, including the Cumberland County Historical Society, Chadds Ford Historical Society, Historic Yorkshire Alliance in Burlington City, and Cooks Tour in Moorestown.

“This year, we did not want to lose the holiday tradition, but we did not want to diminish it by not having enough homes,” said Anne McNiff, director of the Chestnut Hill Community Association, which has sponsored 26 previous holiday tours. “We wanted to come back strong.”

Instead of opening a half-dozen houses to visitors, the association decided to host “A Twilight Toast to the Holidays” at just one grand house: the Norwood mansion, now part of the campus of Norwood-Fontbonne Academy on Germantown Avenue in Philadelphia.

The mansion was built in 1852 as a private residence but is now part of the Catholic school sponsored by the Sisters of St. Joseph in Chestnut Hill for preschool through eighth grade. The building is used for school offices and classrooms, and the former ballroom is now the school chapel.

For “A Twilight Toast,” the original dining room, used by students at lunchtime, will be filled with trees decorated by the children and local businesses, and lights will be strung on a two-story holly tree next to the porch.

Outside, wine and hors d’oeuvres will be served on the wraparound porch, and visitors can relax on Adirondack chairs near fire pits on the lawn. There will be musical entertainment.

The Chestnut Hill Community Association event is 4 to 6 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 11. Tickets: $40, $30 for association members at chestnuthill.org or call 215-248-8810. Masks and social distancing are required inside Norwood mansion.

For its 71st annual tour, the Norristown Garden Club also opted out of engaging private homes and instead lined up five historic public buildings in northern Montgomery County to decorate. Visitors can peek inside the Hope Lodge, built in the 1740s by Samuel Morris, a Quaker entrepreneur; the Peter Wentz Farmstead and Pennypacker Mills, both used as headquarters by Gen. George Washington in the fall of 1777; Bethel Hill United Methodist Church, which celebrated its 250th anniversary in 2020; and Highlands Mansion, built in the late 1790s.

Garden club members typically spend weeks handcrafting holiday decorations from natural materials for participating homes. This year at Highlands Mansion, they will re-create a holiday wedding, a child’s Christmas, and more. The state-owned structure is rented out for weddings and social events. Also at Highlands, vendors will be selling an assortment of items, including botanical prints, jewelry, honey, and Christmas ornaments.

In past years, the tour has sold out in advance to over 1,000 visitors, said Jill Evans, a garden club board member. Proceeds fund scholarships for students who plan to study horticulture or related fields. This year, the tour has been extended over two days, instead of the typical second Friday in December, to account for social distancing and the lack of electrical lighting in some of the historic buildings.

The Norristown Garden Club tour is 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 9, and Friday, Dec. 10. Tickets: $25 at norristowngardenclub.org. CDC guidelines on masks and social distancing will be enforced.

In 2019, Elfreth’s Alley Association’s “Deck the Alley” hosted 1,500 guests who walked through 10 rowhouses on Philadelphia’s most historic street and peered into 17 more from ribboned-off doorways.

This year, the association decided to keep everyone outside; all houses on the tour will be ribboned-off. Window boxes will be filled with lights and greenery and lampposts will have garlands of lights. Alley festivities will include carolers and refreshments, and the Elfreth’s Alley Museum will be open.

Visitors to the alley, where the 32 buildings date from the early 18th to the early 19th century, “often feel immersed in a different time” said association director Ted Maust. It could be Ben Franklin’s Philadelphia, Charles Dickens’ England, or Christmas morning with Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, he said.

To encourage social distancing, Deck the Alley on Saturday, Dec. 4, will have two time slots, 3 to 5 p.m. and 5 to 7 p.m. Tickets: $25 at elfrethsalley.org. Masks are required inside the museum.

In Newtown, Bucks County, the historical association decided to include four private houses — three dating from the late 1800s and one dating from the late 1700s — as well as seven public buildings in this year’s tour. The association’s first house tour was in 1963 when visitors paid $1.50 to visit seven houses.

The public buildings participating this year are the 1769 Old Presbyterian Church and Sessions House; the Newtown Fire Association; the Newtown Library; the Newtown Historic Association Research Center; the Stocking Works, a former hosiery mill converted to an office complex; the newly renovated Newtown Theater, built in 1831; and the 18th-century Half Moon Inn, which Newtown Historic Association owns and maintains. Visitors to the inn will be entertained with music and colonial cooking demonstrations.

All sites are within easy walking distance of the town center.

Planning ahead, said Mary Jo Garner, the association’s recording secretary, “we already have homeowners booked for 2022, and we are looking to 2023.”

The Newtown Historical Association tour is 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 4. Tickets: $30 at newtownhistoric.org. Tour groups will be small to maintain social distancing. Masks are required.

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Sponsors of the tours that were canceled in 2021 hope to be up and running again next year.

Members of the Virtua Memorial Hospital Auxiliaries, which sponsors the Cooks Tour in Moorestown, printed up “Save the Date” fliers and distributed them at Autumn in Moorestown, a community event in October, and a banner announcing the 2022 event is hanging over Main Street this holiday season.

The Cooks Tour name originated in the 1960s when wives of physicians at what was then Mount Holly Hospital decorated their kitchens for the holidays and sold gingerbread cookies to visitors, according to auxiliaries board president Althea Penncock. Eventually tours included other rooms in the homes.

Every year, Pennock said, “visitors marvel at the homeowners’ creativity.”

The 2022 Cooks Tour in Moorestown will be Wednesday, Dec. 7. Proceeds from the $25 tickets go to patient care. And as always, gingerbread cookies will be for sale.

Before the Historic Yorkshire Alliance tour was canceled in Burlington, N.J., the group’s president Harry Heck was looking forward to sharing his house again with visitors.

In the past, they have loved his toy soldiers and other antique toys, he said. He has trimmed trees with Victorian ornaments but found his 1950s-themed tree to be especially popular. Apparently many visitors share Heck’s childhood memories of trees decorated with bubble lights and tinsel.

He’s looking forward to resuming the tour in 2022.

“Being on the tour,” he said, “encourages me to do projects I have been putting off.”