Peter Herdic House — Williamsport's Lumber Baron Mansion

Peter Herdic arrived in Williamsport in eighteen fifty-three from New York and encountered a city on the verge of becoming the lumber capital of the world. He moved fast. Within a few years he had accumulated fifty-four thousand acres of timberland across five Pennsylvania counties.

By the time he commissioned New York architect Eber Culver to design this Victorian villa in eighteen fifty-five and fifty-six, Herdic was among the wealthiest men in Pennsylvania. The house on Millionaires Row features a winding mahogany staircase, ornate plaster moldings, bay windows, and a walk-in cupola. Williamsport, powered by Herdic and men like him, was said to have had more millionaires per person than any other American city in those years.

The lumber eventually ran out, and Herdic's own finances collapsed before his death in eighteen eighty-eight, but the house survived. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen seventy-eight and operates today as a restaurant inside the mansion walls.