Clow-Schry House (James Beach Clow House)

Although Greek Revival farmhouses are not unusual in the area, intact frame versions are. James Beach Clow, scion of a prominent Allegheny County family, purchased over five hundred acres of land in Beaver County in 1821, and built this house on a 213-acre parcel called “Indian Camp.” The L-shaped, two-story house is five bays across, with interior chimneys at each gable end and a central-hall, two-room-over-two-room plan. The fireplace mantels, door locks, flooring, and the rounded cherry handrail of the stairway supported by tapered balusters are all original, as are most of the white pine windows and shutters. The house is sheathed with rabbeted-bevel siding of eastern white pine (milled at Clow's sawmill along Brush Creek) applied directly over the studs, and the foundation is of sandstone blocks, some ten feet in length. To the rear, a privy covered with weatherboard has two windows. Nearby, an operating springhouse with a stone facade is banked into the hillside. The property stayed in the Clow family until 1893, and operated as a farm until 1950, when suburbanization began in the area.