A few times a month, Cranaleith has the privilege of welcoming clients from CATCH, Inc., a behavioral health program in Philadelphia, who participate in days of guided reflection or eco-therapy in our garden. We are gifted by the presence of an enormously talented artist, Mary Kay Eichman, RSM, who enables our guests to respond to each day’s theme with sheer delight, freedom and spontaneity. The diverse and colorful possibilities of their imagination seem endless. Often, they break out into song, utterly present to the joy and beauty of their creative power. During the planting and growing season, these same guests...
In Somerton, Suffragists’ Vision Lives On

Hidden City, October 27, 2016 By Sarah Kennedy Editor’s Note: We travel to the Somerton neighborhood of Northeast Philadelphia where the Cranaleith Spiritual Center sits on a bucolic 10-acre property. The late-Victorian house at the center of the parcel, formerly known as Mill-Rae, was built in the late 19th century for women’s rights activist Rachel Foster Avery and was the defining commission that set in motion Nichols’ career as America’s first independent female practitioner of architecture. On Saturday, October 29, the Cranaleith Spiritual Retreat Center will host an event to celebrate its forthcoming placement on the National Register of Historic Places...
Spirit of Inclusion

Northeast Times, October 11, 2016, By William Kenny In a year when the United States may see the election of its first woman president, a Northeast Philadelphia institution is celebrating its role in achieving the right to vote for the nation’s women. Cranaleith Spiritual Center in Somerton didn’t exist in 1920 when the states ratified the 19th Amendment, but a Victorian farmhouse on the spiritual center’s 10-acre campus stood back then and once served as a vital meeting place for leading suffragists including Susan B. Anthony and its owner, Rachel Foster Avery, during a period in American history when women...