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Abraham Overholt and Company Distillery

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1899, with additions. Youghiogheny River at Broad Ford off PA 1038, 2 miles northwest of Connellsville

Although only the remnants of the Abraham Overholt and Company Distillery remain, the buildings evoke a sense of the size and scale of the distillery, which operated here from 1855 until the Old Overholt label was transferred to the Jim Beam Company in the early 1960s. Visible today are buildings dating from 1899 to the 1940s, including the five-story brick boiler house and engine room with round and segmental arches, corbeled cornices, and pilaster strips; a 1930s yellow brick, three-story office building; a six-story grain elevator complex; and warehouses in varying states of disrepair. One year before Abraham Overholt's grandson Henry Clay Frick began work as an office boy at the distillery in 1868, he began investing in the local coke industry. Adjacent to the distillery along the western shore of Galley Run are one hundred coke ovens dating from the 1870s, built into the hillside by Frick. Barely visible even in winter when the vegetation dies back, it is one of the longest runs of coke ovens accessible by car in Fayette County. The proximity of the coke ovens and distillery tangibly encapsulates the early career of Henry Clay Frick.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Lu Donnelly et al.
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Citation

Lu Donnelly et al., "Abraham Overholt and Company Distillery", [Connellsville, Pennsylvania], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/PA-01-FA25.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of PA vol 1

Buildings of Pennsylvania: Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania, Lu Donnelly, H. David Brumble IV, and Franklin Toker. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010, 253-253.

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