Baker Mansion: Iron Money and Greek Columns

The Baker Mansion is one of the finest examples of Greek Revival architecture in Pennsylvania, and it was built with iron money. Elias Baker arrived in this valley in eighteen thirty-six and purchased the nearby Allegheny Furnace, quickly becoming one of Blair County's wealthiest men. In eighteen forty-four he hired Baltimore architect Robert Cary Long Junior to design a home worthy of his fortune.

The three-story dressed-stone mansion, completed in eighteen forty-nine, features six fluted Ionic columns across the front, and here is the detail that rewards a close look: the bases of those columns are said to have been cast from iron at Baker's own furnace. The mansion now serves as the Blair County Historical Society museum. Inside, you can see the family's original furniture, and a large table associated with the Loyal War Governors' Conference of eighteen sixty-two, when Northern governors met nearby to debate the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation.