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Louis Clarke House

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1901, William L. Price. New Gulph and Avon rds.

Just east of the Church of the Redeemer ( MO10) is one of the wonderful anomalies of life in Philadelphia, the home of early automobile maker Louis Clarke, whose immense Autocar plant was a major fixture along the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks. Clarke arrived from Pittsburgh in 1899, drawn to Philadelphia by its wealth of industrial services and skills. Over the next decade, he invented the automobile spark plug, worked out how to self-lubricate engines with circulating oil, and put the American driver on the left side, while commissioning a French Gothic house in which to live. The exterior historicism belies the remarkable openness of the plan that seamlessly flows from a central hall into a parlor on the left and dining room on the right.

Writing Credits

Author: 
George E. Thomas
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Citation

George E. Thomas, "Louis Clarke House", [Haverford, Pennsylvania], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/PA-02-MO11.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of PA vol 2

Buildings of Pennsylvania: Philadelphia and Eastern Pennsylvania, George E. Thomas, with Patricia Likos Ricci, Richard J. Webster, Lawrence M. Newman, Robert Janosov, and Bruce Thomas. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012, 198-198.

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