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4072 Spruce Creek Road
Spruce Creek, PA 16683
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Colerain Mansion was placed on the National Register of Historic Places by the United States Department of the Interior. This is the highest distinction given to Historic Properties. Colerain Mansion has also been included in the Historic Building Survey and the detailed drawings of all aspects of the mansion are on file at the Library of Congress. (A complete set will be given to the new owner.)
As noted by the National Register, the Federal period architecture of the Mansion remains “virtually unchanged” over time. While the National Register emphasizes the Federal Period of the house, circa 1820-30, the actual history of Colerain begins much earlier.
The first recorded owner of the property was Richard Ricketts, a frontiersman and leader of the local Americans in the Revolutionary War. For his services as an “officer” in the militia on the Pennsylvania frontier, the new American government rewarded him with a vast tract of land of which Colerain was part.
Ricketts is possibly the builder of the stone house which stands on the Mansion property. This two-story stone structure is generally believed to be the oldest in the area. Construction of this building likely predates the Revolution and may date to the French and Indian War period of the 1760’s.
Ricketts quite likely built the oldest part of the Mansion as well, a two-story brick house. The room which served as a kitchen at that time has been restored to the period, including a large fireplace for cooking, typical of houses from the 1780s.
The front part of the house dates to the time of the Ironmasters in the early 1800s. In its golden era, Colerain Mansion functioned as a great plantation. It was the heart of a self-sufficient community with sixty-five families of workers on its vast acreage. The oldest residents in the area recall the tradition of being given oranges every year at Christmas by the last of the Ironmasters’ daughters, Miss Maggie and Miss Kate Stewart in a room at Colerain Mansion still known to this day as the “the orange room.” This locally cherished memory is the last echo of a time of horses and carriages, lovely long gowns and dancing in the "great room” and feasts of all kinds. For almost 100 years, the Stewart family lived and prospered at Colerain.
The first Ironmaster at Colerain was William McDermott. He enlarged the original c.1780s structure. By 1813, however, the Stewarts had begun their move to dominate the local iron industry acquiring Pennsylvania Furnace, Colerain Forges and other iron producing sites by 1818, and in 1831, Huntingdon Furnace. At this same time, David Stewart replaced McDermott as Ironmaster of Colerain Mansion. He then expanded the house further, adding the magnificent Federal style front, featuring beautiful woodwork, a grand staircase, and imposing pillared front porch. This section of the house includes the “great room”, almost 30 feet long, with 11 foot ceiling, and the great gilt-framed 8-foot high mirror original to the house.
Across the wide front hall from the great room is today’s library, originally Stewart’s office. A ledger from his time, as well as several other Stewart family books, remain in the bookcase.
Next to the library and opening off the central hall is the fondly remembered “Orange Room.” Like almost all of the rooms at Colerain Mansion, it has a fireplace, but with a difference. Where the mantels and surrounds of the others are marble or wood, this is made of stone and has a Pennsylvania “keystone” at its center.
Beyond this room, one enters the dining room, stepping back in time to the 1780 brick portion of the house. The tall windows added to this room by Stewart extend to the floor and open at the bottom. Windows such as these are never seen in this region, but are like those in Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and other grand mansions of Virginia. Stewart also added the elaborate crown moldings to the windows and doors in this room, again similar to those seen in the dining room at Monticello.
Off the dining room is a large butler’s pantry with massive floor-to-ceiling cupboards and shelves. On the other side the dining room looks out onto a two-story porch and the gardens and lawns beyond.
From the dining room one moves on to the “old kitchen” which has been restored by the present owner to look as it did in 1780. A large fireplace with an iron crane for cooking pots, a beautiful cupboard door with hand forged hinges and hardware and a wide board pine floor and other authentic features. In fact, throughout the house much of the original window glass, flooring and hardware remains.
Beyond the “old kitchen” is the “country kitchen” — a large room approximately 17’x17’ with a bay window over the sink area. This room is in the section added by the Stewarts in 1845. The room features one wall of exposed brick, original to the exterior of the 1780 brick house. To one side of this room is an attached greenhouse facing east and on the other a lovely alcove room with bay windows with window seats on two sides looking out at charming colonial style gardens, stone walls, and then beyond that, the creek.
Between the Stewarts ownership and the present owners, there have been only two other owners. After the deaths of Miss Maggie and Miss Kate in great old age, the property was acquired in 1920 by Ben Eberhart, their property manager. It was next acquired in 1943 by the McMahon family, a Pittsburgh banking family. The ornate canopy bed in one of the upstairs front bedrooms was made for Mrs. McMahon’s cousin, a chairman of U.S. Steel.
With so few owners in its history, Colerain Mansion has received good care and little alteration. It is in remarkably good condition and is very well-built. In the full cellar, one can see the beams supporting the house are actually tree trunks. The 1780’s portion is three-brick thick.
Upstairs there are five large bedrooms and a sitting room. There is also a sewing room over the butler’s pantry with more large cabinets for storage. The third flight of the turning front staircase takes one to the front attic. There are three rooms here, originally servants’ quarters, with penciled names and bits of old wallpaper still on the walls.
Across a lawn on the east side of the Mansion is the Stone House. On the floor of the Stone House attic is a layer of plaster about four inches thick. In the colonial period, settlers on the frontier were often burnt out, either by English soldiers because the Crown did not want the expense of protecting settlers or by the French and Indians during the war of that name. The only way they could burn out a stone house was through its shake roof. If there were, however, a layer of plaster on the attic floor, the fire could go no further and the main house would be saved.
The Stone House has one large room downstairs with a big fireplace that still has its original crane for cooking. The walls are plastered, and the original beams and wood ceiling are exposed. The upstairs is a studio apartment.
The grounds of Colerain Mansion reflect its long history as a grand estate, including a magnificent Irish yew, a boxwood maze, and a spruce “allee” running parallel to the creek. A row of towering spruce trees across the front of the property insure privacy and quiet. Other notable features of the grounds are the holly “allee” pruned in the European manner, leading to “rooms” walled by hemlock hedges and holly. In the center of one holly “room” is an enormous antique apple tree. To all of this 20th century owners have added thousands of daffodils, along with rhododendrons, flowering cherry, dogwood, lilacs and crabapples. There are patterned beds of tulips, a hundred foot long perennial garden, and plantings of prize winning day lilies and award-winning iris.
Colerain’s story is a long one. Its roots lie in the name of the world class trout stream which runs for a thousand feet along its western edge — Warrior’s Mark Run. This stream is the main tributary of the internationally famed Spruce Creek and flows into Spruce Creek immediately across the road from the Mansion grounds. The Run is designated by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as a “high quality cold water fishery.”
Yes, Colerain Mansion and its beautiful setting have many stories to tell. Hopefully its owners will preserve its old stories and add their own happy ones.
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Greg Copenhaver / RE/MAX Centre Realty / 1375 Martin St. / State College, PA 16803
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