McClelland Homestead

About this property

The McClelland Homestead is a historic farm in western Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, United States. Located along McClelland Road northeast of Bessemer, the farm complex includes buildings constructed in the middle of the 19th century. It has been designated a historic site because of its well-preserved architecture. William McClelland purchased property in what today is part of North Beaver Township in 1807 and operated it successfully; by the time that he sold it to his son Joseph in 1848, he had become a prosperous farmer. According to an 1872 map, the farm was composed of lands on the northern side of what is today McClelland Road. Joseph gave up ownership of the property in 1895, but the farm remained in the McClelland family at least into the 1980s. In 1989, the farm consisted of approximately 89 acres (36 ha). Eight buildings and structures compose the McClelland Farm complex: the barn, a silo, the farmhouse, a small square shed, a machinery shed, a chicken coop, a hog house, and a corn crib. Three of these buildings — the house, the barn, and the machinery shed — contribute to the historic nature of the farm, while the remaining structures are unoriginal or have been heavily modified. Joseph McClelland's house is the most significant building on the farm. A two-story farmhouse erected in the 1840s, it is primarily a Federal structure; its foundation is stone, the walls are brick, topped with corbelling and rising to gables, and the roof is covered with slates. Its leading architectural feature is a grand Palladian window above the main entrance; such a window is unknown in other period houses in Lawrence County. During the late 1870s, the house was extensively modified: Italianate porches were added in 1879 to bring the house up to current architectural fashions, while the rooms of the interior were completely rebuilt. The completion of that process resulted in an eight-room house, with a central hallway separating the four rooms on each floor. Among the original elements that survived this rebuilding were stone lintels and a wooden staircase in the southern part of the house. In general, the southern portion of the house was less significantly affected by the process than was the northern portion, which was further modified by the addition of rooms to the northern facade. Since the 1870s, modifications have included the expansion of the garage that was included in the 1879 addition, in-depth cleaning and repainting of the walls in the 1960s, the partition of rooms to create an apartment in the rear, and the removal of original stoves and three of the four original chimneys in 1966.

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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