William Penn Snyder House
You are here
Wilpen Hall (William Penn Snyder House)
1898, George S. Orth. Bounded by Blackburn and Waterworks rds., Sewickley Heights
A steelmaker with excellent architectural taste, William Snyder hired George S. Orth (1843–1918) to build this brownstone and shingle Queen Anne–style home first, then a Beaux-Arts town house that still stands at the corner of Ridge and Galveston avenues in North Side. By the 1920s, automobile roads were improved, and the North Side had decayed so much that the family turned this summer retreat into their permanent home. This was the pattern as well for their neighbors, the Benjamin Franklin Jones family, whose adjacent Fairacres estate was even more lavish. Today, all that survives of Fairacres are a half-dozen servants' houses visible from Blackburn Road and a summary notion of the once lavish gardens.
Writing Credits
×
Data
-
Location: Sewickley, PennsylvaniaRegional Overviews:Architect:Types:Materials:
What's Nearby
Citation
Lu Donnelly et al., "Wilpen Hall (William Penn Snyder House)", [Sewickley, Pennsylvania], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/PA-01-AL65.
Print Source
Buildings of Pennsylvania: Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania, Lu Donnelly, H. David Brumble IV, and Franklin Toker. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010, 87-87.
If SAH Archipedia has been useful to you, please consider supporting it.
SAH Archipedia tells the story of the United States through its buildings, landscapes, and cities. This freely available resource empowers the public with authoritative knowledge that deepens their understanding and appreciation of the built environment. But the Society of Architectural Historians, which created SAH Archipedia with University of Virginia Press, needs your support to maintain the high-caliber research, writing, photography, cartography, editing, design, and programming that make SAH Archipedia a trusted online resource available to all who value the history of place, heritage tourism, and learning.