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West Virginia » Lower Ohio and Kanawha Valleys » Huntington » 5th Avenue East and Marshall University » Coin Harvey House

Coin Harvey House

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1874. 1305 3rd Ave. (south side of 3rd Ave. between 13th and 14th sts.)
  • Coin Harvey House (S. Allen Chambers, Jr.)

This unusual stuccoed frame house, as important for its architecture as for its historical association, is one of Huntington's earliest, built three years after the city was founded. Essentially a raised cottage, the three-bay house has a unique serpentine roofline, emphasized by the arches of the ornate front porch. The placement of the front door in the westernmost bay, on axis with an off-center stairway, indicates the side-hall plan of the interior. Local lore has it that the supposed builder, William Hope Harvey, copied the design of a house he had admired in New Orleans. Its resemblance to several houses there gives credence to the legend.

Harvey (1851–1936), an economist known to history as “Coin,” espoused coinage of silver as a solution to the nation's 1890s economic problems. William Jennings Bryan took up his view, but William McKinley squelched it with his gold standard. Harvey's actual association with the house is somewhat cloudy, and it is unclear whether he ever lived in it. Later, nonresidential structures now surround the house, and proposals have been made for it to be relocated and restored, perhaps to Heritage Village ( HU14).

Writing Credits

Author: 
S. Allen Chambers Jr.

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