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Mount Pleasant

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Lots were laid out for Mount Pleasant in 1797 by Alexander McCready. Sited on a plain west of Chestnut Ridge along an early Indian path, Mount Pleasant became a commercial center for southern Westmoreland County and was incorporated in 1828 as the county's first borough. The commercial district flanks historic Glades Road and has a central square, or diamond. In 1924, a doughboy monument to the soldiers of World War I replaced the troughs and hitching posts at S. Diamond and W. Main streets. The two- to three-story brick commercial district includes several red brick churches along Main Street (PA 31) between Braddock Road Avenue and Hitchman Street. A few early-nineteenth-century buildings, such as the Shupe-Pritts Mill, remain along Main Street, but most of the historic commercial buildings have been modernized. Church and College avenues are composed of late-nineteenth-century houses, including the brick Second Empire Warden House (1886; 200 S. Church Street), now housing the Braddock Trail Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the brick Colonial Revival Mullin-Harmon House (c. 1910; College and Church streets). Frick Hospital is a large, orange brick complex on Eagle Street adjacent to Ramsay High School (now Elementary School) in a Spanish Mission Revival style with a red tile roof. Middle Presbyterian Church (PA 981 at PA 2007) is an eighteenth-century congregation housed in a c. 1854 church. The church, the fifth on the site, has a traditional rectangular plan, gable roof, and two entrance doors opening into a sanctuary with two side aisles. The Italianate brick parsonage south of the church was built in 1876. The nearby cemetery reinforces the relative isolation of the complex.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Lu Donnelly et al.

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