Lancaster County PA Realty Check: Pennsylvania: Marietta

Back in the 1980s, I was restoring two homes in Marietta, PA.  One was an 18th century log & stone home, and the other was a Federal mansion that had been cut into apartments, sustained a fire, lost its roof and been condemned.  As the Christmas season approached, I thought it would be good publicity to put them both on the annual Marietta Candlelight Tour of historic homes, even though they were far from finished.

As rough as they still were inside at the time of the tour, I decorated them with greenery and a tree.  I had a display inside the stone & log house showing some of the things I had dug up under the floor, which had needed to be replaced.  There were hand-blown bottles, shards of crockery, and even a rusty Derringer pistol!

We received many positive comments from the visitors who had bought tickets to the Candlelight Tour!

I have written a number of posts about Historic Marietta, PA, including the Christmas Candlelight Tour and the scenic Breezy View Overlook.  One of the reasons Marietta is such a treasure is its remarkably diverse historic architecture.

This is a log and stone home I restored in the early 1980s.  The upper log portion of the home is dated 1801.  The earlier stone part of the house was originally a one story building dating from the 1700s, before records were kept in the borough.

The restored Old Town Hall Museum with its working clock tower.  The original jail is underneath the first floor.

                                               The restored Union Meeting Hall, built in 1818.

Marietta's Center Square.  Formerly the home of Mary Creswell, a member of the Marietta Restoration Association.

                                     A fine example of the Victorian period of architecture. 

Copyright2008BrianSchulman©

On Sunday, December 2, 2007, the 42nd Annual Marietta Candlelight Tour of Homes took place. All week the Borough of Marietta held its breath for the weather report, which had for the previous four or five days been predicting a wintry mix of snow, sleet, ice and and rain.

The advance purchase tickets were probably not affected too much, but the on-site day of sale tickets definitely were down due to the dreary start of the day's weather.  As it  turned out, the temperature stayed just above freezing all day, so the on-and-off precipation was all rain - which failed to dampen the spirits of those who came out to appreciate the history and architecture of Marietta!

 At the Pioneer Fire Company, an antiques show was held.  Refreshments were also available.  The English Presbyterian Church held a Victorian Tea.  At the Marietta Community House, a craft show was held.  The Vesta Furnace Office Building, slated to be turned into a museum, was open to the public.  Saint John's Episcopal Church had hot lunches available.  Welcome in the cold, damp weather was excellent chicken corn chowder and a delicious pulled pork barbecue!

The Union Meeting House, built in 1818 and restored in the 1980s, had a table decorating display, including tables with themes of santas, foxes, tea for two, and children's dolls.  The Marietta Town Hall, now a museum, was on display with antique Fire Department equipment and Civil War relics.  The original town jail can also be seen under the Town Hall.

Eight private homes were open for display this year, including the original David Cook house, built circa 1760 at the top of what is now Bank Street.  Filled with period 18th century furniture, this was one of the high points of the tour.  The White Swan Tavern on Front Street, now a private home, was on display, as was the Victorian mansion built by Byrd Cassel, the grandson of lumber magnate Henry Cassel.  Buses were available to transport visitors from one location to another.

The Annual Marietta Cantlelight Tour is sponsored by the Marietta Restoration Association, formed in the 1960s to restore and preserve the architectural and historical heritage of Marietta.  The tour is held every year on the first Sunday of December.

Copyright2007BrianSchulman©

Vesta Furnace Office, Marietta, PA

Marietta, PA has a long and distinguished history going back to the earliest 1800s, when lumber from the north was floated down the Susquehanna River and sawed in its lumber mills.  A good portion of its wealth, reflected even today in its many preserved homes, derived from the iron furnaces that bought the industrial age to our area.

The Vesta Furnace, built in 1868, was the last of eight coal-fired blast iron furnaces constructed in the river floodplain between Columbia and Marietta, and the last complete blast furnace built in Lancaster County.  Ore for the furnace came from Cornwall (Lebanon County) and local mines, as well as from Maryland and West Virginia.  The iron produced was shipped to factories in Pittsburgh, Coatesville, and Youngstown, Ohio. 

It's hard to picture the vast industrial furnace complex that existed until the 1920s, when production ceased - because almost none of it is there any more.  The Iron Master's house, a beautiful home, still exists up a hill overlooking the river plain.  But of the furnace itself, only the Vesta Furnace Office still exists, in advanced disrepair.

In the 1980s I tried for a couple of years to purchase and restore the Furnace Office.  The slate roof was in ruins, the dormer had no glass and was letting the weather in.  The ceiling of the first floor, which would have been the floor of the second story, was mostly rotted away - and a tree was growing from the first floor right through the second floor!

I felt that the Vesta Furnace Office was an important part of Marietta's history, and thought it should be preserved.  The property had been acquired by Lancaster County as part of the Chickies Rock County Park.  Unfortunately, after countless meetings with the county and the state, I was unable to resolve the problem of being allowed to rebuild in a flood plain, nor were we able to agree on a price, or how to subdivide the land. 

Fortunately, the Marietta Restoration Association (MRA), working with Rivertownes, PA (a cooperative effort between Marietta, Columbia and Wrightsville) is now planning to restore the building.  The MRA has negotiated a 100-year lease with the county on the Vesta Office.  They have sealed the dormer and put a metal cover over the slate roof to preserve it until the slate can be restored.  Their plan is to eventually make it into a museum telling the story of the iron, lumber and railroad industries in Marietta.

The Linden House, Marietta PA:

In 1983 I purchased the Linden House in Marietta, PA.  Built ca. 1805 by lumber magnate Henry Cassel, the 6,000 SF mansion had fallen on hard times.  After being unceremoniously chopped up into ten low rent apartments, the roof had been burned off and the house condemned.  The mansion had 606 window panes (yes, I counted them), most of which were broken.  It also had three center halls, fifteen fireplaces including a walk-in fireplace in the summer kitchen, and an ornate fanlight over the front door.

Linden House Antiques was just one of the plans I had for the Linden House.  I envisioned an antique dealer cooperative.   My ultimate plan was to restore the mansion and live there in historic Marietta PA, but my ex-wife could not be convinced to give up her modern home and live across the street from an industrial plant which blocked the original Susquehanna River view. 

I loved that house.  I could picture the fabulous parties that must have been given in the early days, with those beautiful center halls and stairway, and the linden trees for which it was named, that lined a walk all the way down to the river.   I always felt that I  was entering another century when I went into the back kitchen door of the house, with the walk-in fireplace.  As soon as the door closed, all the modern traffic noise went away, and there was a certain serenity inside.  I actually felt like I was communicating with the original builders as I uncovered their original materials.  

Another corporation I started was Linden Realty, which I would have headquartered there.  Unfortunately, I ran out of money after I had gotten the house back to its original configuration, removed 110 tons of debris out of it, saved it from condemnation, and made it weathertight again.  I had to sell it at a loss in 1985 before I could start the actual restoration, after all the work I put into it.  The mansion was subsequently allowed to deteriorate again.

Recently the present owner, who purchased the house in 2004, found me on Localism.com and contacted me!  He was looking for early photographs of the house as he continues the restoration.  I will have to look in my archives, because I too had searched for early photographs so I could do an accurate restoration.  I also took many photos of the Linden House before and during my work on it.  I'm looking forward to seeing the progress he has made.  Don't ever believe that no one will see you on Localism.com!

Copyright2007BrianSchulman©

Historic Marietta, PA

Marietta, PA started out in colonial days as Anderson's Ferry after a service established in the late 1720s by James Anderson, crossing the Susquehanna river to York County.  Marietta got its name from Anderson's two daughters, Mary and Henrietta.  After the Erie Canal was built between 1825 and 1830 along the river, a thriving lumber trade from the virgin forests of north central Pennsylvania brought wealth to Marietta, and many fine architectural specimens of the homes built during that period still remain.

A combination of lumber, lumber mills, and iron furnaces fueled the Marietta economy through the Victorian era, aided by the golden age of the railroad that went along the river.  Until the 1930s, the town thrived.  After the depression of 1929, Marietta was affected as was the rest of the country.  The final blow to the economy was the great flood of 1936, during which the Susquehanna overflowed its banks and devastated the community.

This building on East Market Street, taken in the 1930s, still exists.  It is typical of the Federal style of the first decade of the 1800s in Marietta.

Like Williamsburg in Virginia, a long recession had the silver lining of preserving many of the historically significant homes, ironically because no one had the money to "remodel" them or tear them down for new houses.  Today Marietta is going through a renaissance.  Together with Columbia and Wrightsville, restoration, cultural, and artistic events are bring in tourists and businesses.

I was privileged in the early 1980s to personally restore three Marietta homes, including saving both an eighteenth-century log and stone house on East Market Street and the magnificent Linden House built in 1805 by lumber tycoon Henry Cassel, from condemnation and demolition.  As a member of the Marietta Restoration Association at that time, I became fascinated with the town, its history and architecture.