Jacob Ridgway

Early History of Ridgway

1821—1843     1843:  Elk County Established
 
1844—1872     1864:  Railroad comes to Ridgway
 
1873—1920     Industrial Boom

The Hyde-Murphy Company

The Ridgway Historic District’s significance is enhanced by its long and close association with the Hyde-Mur­phy Company, established in 1884 by Walter P. Murphy and J. S. Hyde.  Walter Murphy was an Armstrong County, Pennsylvania, native who became a carpenter in adjacent Butler County and eventually worked as a building contractor in the Pittsburgh area.  In 1862, he relocated to Freeport, Butler County and ran a planing mill until 1884 when he came to Ridgway and entered business with the existing firm of J. S. Hyde & Son.  The new company bore the names of Hyde and Murphy and soon became leading manufacturers of architectural millwork, including trim, mantles, stairs, paneling, grillwork, and art glass, and were “recognized as one of the best known manufacturers of architectural woodwork and millwork construction in the eastern United States with sales offices in several cities”[1] including Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and New York.  The company was responsible for to countless projects in the north-central Pennsylvania region, and also supplied building materials for the construction of the Pentagon, for embassies in Washington, D. C., and for the Tripoli Hospital in Honolulu.  In addition to spacious and grand public and private architecture, Hyde-Murphy’s work represented far less pretentious projects as well including the construction of fifty workers’ homes for the DuBois Iron Works and one hundred fifty-six homes in Ernest.  The Hyde-Murphy operation occupied a fifteen-building campus just north of the historic district along Race Street.  Walter Murphy died in 1920 and the operation was taken over by his son, Samuel.  The firm was described in a 1924 publication as on one occasion having erected 180 homes in the same number of days.  At the time of that publication Hyde-Murphy had completed a total of 378 houses, office buildings, power plants, schools, churches, and public buildings in a variety of locations and had in one eleven-month span erected fifteen homes in Ridgway alone. 

The company ceased operation in 1961 and the manufacturing buildings were raised in the early 1970s.  Their corporate office building is extant in the district at 222 Race Street.

It is no exaggeration to state that the vast majority of the substantial buildings erected in the historic district after 1890 were the work of the Hyde-Murphy Company.  Iden­tified examples of the company’s work include, the 1899-1900 Ridgway High School at 225 South Street, the 1904 Y. W. C. A., the Ridgway Armory, the 1906 Strand Theater at 209 Main Street, the 1920s Centennial High School at 300 Center Street, the 1894 home of Samuel P. Murphy at 111 East Avenue,  the 1903 John Lund House at 301 Metoxet Street, the 1903 R. McClain House at 112 South Street, the 1910 home of Hyde Hotel owner Milton Wood at 130 Metoxet Street, the c. 1905 Harry Hyde House at 344 Main Street, and the 1893 home of butcher B. P. Mercer at 122 Center Street.

The work of the Hyde-Murphy Company is characterized by an unusually high level of skill and craftsmanship for such a rural area, reflected  in a diversity of architectural ornament, including carving, turning, scroll-sawn detailing, and art glass, both stained and beveled plate glass, all of which is seen throughout the district in porches, mantles, multi-stage windows, parquet flooring, doors and trim, stairways, mass-produced railings and balusters, newel posts, wall finishes including paneling, chair and plate rails, crown molding and wainscot, beamed ceilings, and cabinetry.  The firm used a wide variety of high-quality hardwoods native to north-central Pennsylvania, including white oak, red, white, curly, and tiger maple, chestnut, black walnut, and black cherry, which was typically finished naturally.

Hyde-Murphy was also engaged to remodel interiors of existing, older homes in the district.  Identified examples of this type of work include their treatment of the 1870s house at 121 Center Street, and the c. 1865 Jerome Powell House at 330 South Street.  Clearly, this single firm had a greater role in shaping the appearance of the Ridgway Historic District than did any other builder in any other historic district in the region and beyond.

Other builders represented in the district include contractor W. H. Minor, who was responsible for the 1903 Methodist Episcopal Church at 21 South Broad Street, and M. V. VanEtten, of Warren, who built the Elk County Jail appended to the Court House and the 1901-1902 Ridgway National Bank Building.

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[1]Wessman, Alice, and Faust, Harriet. Sesquicentennial History of Ridgway (Ridgway: 1974),  p. 42.

Architects of Ridgway

The Ridgway Historic District is associated with several regionally-prominent architects and master builders. North-central Pennsylvania’s most prominent architect of the late-nineteenth and early twentieth century was Henry C. Park (1849-1920), who made his home in Ridgway from the early 1890s until his death nearly thirty years later and was responsible for many buildings in the district.  Born in the village of Waverly, on the New York-Pennsylvania line in south-central New York State, Park arrived in Jefferson County, Pennsylvania, about fifty miles south of Ridgway, in 1891.  He moved to Ridgway in 1894, and became the resident architect for the Hyde-Murphy Company, the prolific millwork producer and builder which had been established in the community ten years earlier.  As their architect, Park was at the center of a frenzy of activity throughout this part of Pennsylvania, while his own practice flourished and his reputation spread.  On July 19, 1900, the Ridgway Advocate re­ported that he had become a “noted and busy architect.”  He designed homes, commercial buildings, churches, and theatres, equal­ly at ease with Queen Anne residential design and more formal Georgian Revival institutional architecture such as his 1901 Elk County Hospital (destroyed).  In the region, H. C. Park designed the 1901 Jefferson County Home (destroyed), built by Hyde-Murphy, as well as the Jones House–a Clarion, Pennsylvania hotel–the F. Hohne House and the Temple Theater in St. Marys (destroyed) and the Blaisdell House in DuBois, the 1903 Methodist Episcopal Parsonage and the 1915 Jefferson County Exposition Hall, both in Brookville, and the 1904 Hon. T. M. Kurtz House (NR 1988) and the 1905 Jefferson Theater (NR 1985; destroyed), both in Punxsutawney.  At the time of his death, a local newspaper eulogized him as an architect of “beautiful homes.” In addition to the nearly exclusive use of Hyde-Murphy materials, many of Park’s beautiful homes are characterized by lavish naturally-finished interior woodwork, elaborate stairways, beamed ceilings, and intricate cabinetry, and exteriors with broad verandas with delicate balustrades and often a projecting round corner.  In the Ridgway Historic District the following properties have been identified as representing his work: the Ridgway High School of 1899-1900 at 225 South Street, the 1908 Swedish Congregational Church, the 1902 Powell House at 324 South Street, and the 1904 Nurses’ Home of the Elk County Hospital.  It is likely that nearly all of the pre-1920 homes in the district which are the work of Hyde-Murphy also reflect the design talent of H. C. Park.

Other architects represented in the district include J. C. Fulton, of Uniontown, Pennsylvania, who designed the 1903 Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church at 21 South Broad Street, and J. P. Marston (1832-1882), a Maine native who was responsible for the Elk County Court House. A nationally-known architectural figure whose work appears in the district was James A. Wetmore (1863-1940) who served for forty-five years as the Architectural Supervisor of the U. S. Treasury Department and who oversaw the design of more than two thousand federal government-owned buildings.[1]  His 1917 U. S. Post Office is located at the corner of Center and Mill Streets.

The long career of Buffalo architect W. W. Johnson is also represented in the Ridgway Historic District in his Late Gothic Revival-style 1904 Grace Episcopal Church, located at 216 Center Street.  Johnson began his working career as a pattern maker and planing mill carpenter before entering the practice of architecture in the early 1880s, first in Saginaw, Michigan, and then in Buffalo.  Johnson’s skills apparently attracted the attention of Ridgway’s Hall family, since Johnson designed a house in near-by St. Marys for J. K. P. Hall (destroyed); he also designed a Shingle-style home for George C. Simons (located in the National Register-listed St. Marys Historic District).  Mr. And Mrs. J. K. P. Hall, Mrs. Hall’s sister Esther Campbell, and Harry and George Hyde gifted the new Episcopal Church to the local congregation, built from Johnson’s designs by local contractor P. C. Ross.[2]

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[1]Withey, Henry F., A. I. A. and Withey, Elsie Rathburn Biographical Dictionary of American Architects (Deceased) (Los Angeles: Hennessey & Ingalls, Inc., 1970), p. 647.

[2]Elk County Democrat, January 19, 1905