By Serge Bielanko
The other day, as the skies were that weird spring combo of sunshine and tsunami at the exact same time, my wife and I decided to do the Victorian House Crawl thing in Bellefonte. I mean, I don’t know what the exact name of the walking tour is, to be honest.
As I watch my wife begin to take photos of the special places spread throughout Bellefonte, I realize that there is so much more to these structures than most visitors understand. Heck, there is much more to these places than even many of the people who live across the street from them even realize!A
Standing there on early May Allegheny Street, sleet slashing my face like falling bird shot, I dove into this Bellefonte Victorian House Home Architecture Structure Blah Blah Blah Tour with, shall we say, minimal expectations. Using this link from Bellefonte.com (there are other links to the tour out there as well), I was prepared for a semi-deep dive into a world that, quite honestly, I’m personally not all that riveted by. Sure, I like ornate and decorative facades, asymmetrical designs, and tall, narrow shapes as much as the next NASCAR fan, I guess, but when it comes to walking around just staring at other people’s porches… well, where I come from that can get you chased down the block by a crazy person.A
Which is why I suspect that maybe a lot of folks, tourists and Centre Countians themselves, haven’t really paid so much attention to this free activity with deep local roots. And that, amigos, is a damn shame. Because what I ultimately figured out during our sloppy hike across town is that this isn’t just another self-guided Looky Lou bore fest about old rich people’s ornate homes. No, no, no. This whole tour, brilliantly put together (and updated periodically) by your deeply dedicated neighbors at theA Bellefonte Historical and Cultural Association (BHCA), serves as a remarkable introduction to the Victorian Era people as much as the buildings they lived in!A
“It all hit me like a ton of antique Milesburg bricks as I began to delve into the drop-down links built right into the virtual tour”
– Serge Bielanko
It all hit me like a ton of antique Milesburg bricks as I began to delve into the drop-down links built right into the virtual tour. I noticed that the links promised stuff like Learn more about Valentine Ironmaster’s Mansion.
Hmph, I thought to myself. I’ll bite.A
And that’s exactly the moment when everything about this whole tour idea changed for me.A
The link reads like this:
The imposing structure that sits at the top of the hill on North Allegheny was one of the many mansions built for the Valentine and Thomas families, likely the two most successful ironmaster dynasties in the Bellefonte area. Follow-up companies to the very successful Valentine and Thomas organization are still extant today. Before the land was purchased by George Valentine, Charles McCafferty, a building contractor who built many of the structures in Bellefonte, constructed a home on the lot that he lost with the turn of his fortunes. Like many historic homes in Bellefonte, the current building incorporates a variety of styles, featuring a Gothic Revival pitched roof, windows, and eave brackets, and a Second Empire square tower. The Queen Anne porch was likely added later.
Like all of the little tidbits of info offered in the tour’s links, this one is clear and concise and seems to cough up just enough history dipped in architecture to offer potential tour-takers a wee glimpse into the past. A past that unfolded precisely where you are standing, if in fact, you are the one taking the tour. It was the third sentence up there that did it for me. Out of nowhere, out of some ghost’s sharp whisper blowing into my chilled ear, I heard these words being sung (in my own creepy gothic ghost voice, but still!).A
Charles McCafferty, a building contractor who built many of the structures in Bellefonte, constructed a home on the lot that he lost with the turn of his fortunes!!!!!!!!
Boom.A
That was all it took. As someone with a passing curiosity about local historical construction styles but a monumental obsession with local history tales of bad luck and misfortune, I was immediately sucked into this whole Victorian internet portal like some tiny Talleyrand Park dog food pellet inhaled by a freakishly fat Old Testament Brook Trout!!!A
I looked up at this 19th Century stone house again/ squinting through its formidable walls/ peering straight into its private home confines with a fresh detective’s eyes! I couldn’t actually see a thing, of course, except the lovely Victorian porch decorated with symmetrical support poles (there’s a much better more official name for that!) and little mini poles at the top (there’s a better name!) right below the beautifully handmade pieces of painted wood (there’s a better name!) that reach out towards the street as if they are supporting the whole porch roof. But in my mind, you see, I was watching old Charles McCafferty.
Can you dig it? Can you squish your own eyes shut and imagine the man, this man who, ostensibly merely once lived in TOUR STOP #10, but who also… when you stop to think about it for a sec… is more than likely an ancestor to someone you pass by every day in Sheetz or in the Weis? Imagine the mental chaos of a Victorian success story suddenly crumbling to the ground in a heap of sadness and loss. In the dank blast of a melancholy Wednesday, there I was: plugging my modern self into the currents of a long-ago character who lived, loved, dreamed, and suffered (immensely) right smack dab here on this very stretch of Earth.A
I felt moved to wonder. How did a successful Victorian man (who actually BUILT a lot of the very buildings in Bellefonte that started this whole tour!) end up losing the very roof over his head? What kind of antiquated tragedy had befallen him and his family? Was he ever able to regain his wealth… or his status… or his pride?A
“I felt moved to wonder. How did a successful Victorian man (who actually BUILT a lot of the very buildings in Bellefonte that started this whole tour!) end up losing the very roof over his head? What kind of antiquated tragedy had befallen him and his family?”
– Serge Bielanko
And also: ahem: did he fight in the Civil War????!!! Because that is my true obsession and I ask that about basically everyone. Even people I went to high school with that I only see on Facebook.A
How did it all happen?, I mumbled out loud.A
How did WHAT happen?, my wife was asking me. It brought me back to Earth. She was standing there at the curb of this place, her big expensive camera in her fingers, a look of annoyed inquisition on her face. I was talking to myself again. And I was making no sense. Again.A
So I explained what was up and how I had stumbled into a treasure trove of human curiosities within the confines of these big old houses.A
Listen!, I sputtered at her. Listen to some of these anecdotes about the actual Bellefonte people who once lived in these joints!A
She was intrigued, She raised her eyebrow and smirked her little smirk and that always means that she is willing to indulge my historical whimsies. My imagination was running wild.A
“His (John R. Ardell Jr.’s) Starr Mill, staffed by as many as 300 men, located in what is now Black Moshannon State Park, had the capacity to produce 4 million board feet of lumber a year.”A
“Even though this home was built by Ed Garman, who also built the Garman Opera House, Edgefont and other prominent Bellefonte buildings, it is usually referred to as the Judge Walker House.”
“The house was also the setting for a The House on Curtin Street,a a fictionalized account of the construction of the house written by Millie Ragosta, who lived in the house between 1976 and 1983, and published by Doubleday.”
Lumber camps! Opera houses! Judges who probably sent a boatload of outlaws to the slammer!A
Who WERE all these people??A
As it goes, the Victorian House Home Architecture Walking Tour wasn’t really created or designed to pour the stories of all of the people who once lived in these places right into your lap. That’s not the purpose of any of this on the surface of things. But my vantage on the subject pulls a bit away from the intended focus on gable trim and facades and sash window horns because I can’t help myself. And maybe that’s an angle that we all ought to consider here as well. There is much to be celebrated when considering the overt beauty of these wonderful buildings that populate Bellefonte. There is a lot to be grateful for when we consider all of the owners across the years who have painstakingly spent a lot of loot to restore these houses to their former glory. And I raise a glass to them all.A
“Every one of these fairy tale porches on every one of these magical homes, they each whisper a thousand secrets…If we want to hear them, we just have to show up”
– Serge Bielanko
But for me, walking through Bellefonte on a rainy spring day with the woman I love, I was swept up in the potential majesty of all the human drama that surely played out in each of these places. Babies were born in a lot of those bedrooms. And quite a few people died in them too. What were their days like? Their experiences, their accomplishments, and their broken hearts. Every one of these fairy tale porches on every one of these magical homes, they each whisper a thousand secrets.
If we want to hear them, we just have to show up.
Stand there on the street outside.A
Look up at an old window.A
Imagine the horse’s hooves coming up the lane behind you.
Imagine the young people laughing on their way back from school.A
Imagine the lights from the parlors in the middle of the night, a night so long ago, when something was going on in there. Something big. Something these people would never forget. Something good or something really bad.A
It’s all there.
The houses, these glorious abodes from another time, they’re just the beginning of the story.A
Serge Bielanko is a Centre County writer, husband, and dad.A
Check out more of his writing on Thunder Pie.A
