"York House," York, York County

May the Fourth be with you! This post went up quite a bit later than I intended due to... well, it's hard to put this any other way, but due to a kitten emergency. We had a situation with abandoned two-week-old kittens at my mother's house. I'm happy to report that things have been resolved and the babies are in a good, safe home where they're being well fed and loved.

As the subscribers to the blog's monthly newsletter are aware, I'm running a giveaway over at the new Twitter account. Become a follower of the MarkerQuest Twitter by May 31st and you'll automatically be entered. One lucky winner will receive a $10 Amazon gift certificate, because that way nobody needs to give me their mailing address (which seems to have been a problem with the last giveaway). The winner will be announced in the post and newsletter on June 1st, since that's conveniently a Wednesday.

Meanwhile, let's head back to downtown York and have a look at one of their many exquisite historic houses.

The marker stands in front of the house at
225 East Market Street, York.

It's commonly known as "York House," but so are many other structures in Pennsylvania (and elsewhere). This particular York House is also known as the Billmeyer House, after Charles Billmeyer, one of the wealthiest residents of York during the mid-19th century. Billmeyer and his partner, David Etter Small, built railroad cars, providing jobs for some 600 York citizens. Their company was called Etna Car Works, later York Car Works, and it has an interesting footnote in history as having narrowly avoided being destroyed during the Civil War. General Jubal Early, during his 1863 occupation of York, threatened to demolish the car works if his demands weren't met; however, before he could make good on the threat, he was sent orders to withdraw from York and make his way west to Gettysburg, where things did not go well for the Confederates. York Car Works was therefore spared, and Charles Billmeyer continued being one of the richest men in York.

While Billmeyer did have the most to do with the house's main construction, the story of York House doesn't actually start with him. It really begins in 1814, when the First Presbyterian Church of York (which you might remember from another post as being the final resting place of James Smith) sold a small parcel of land to a man named Robert Wilson, who built himself a nice narrow three-story home. Made of brick, it now forms the rear portion of the house, and is difficult to see from Market Street. In fact, until I started researching this blog post, I didn't realize that it was even there, because I didn't get to spend much time looking around the building. The image to the left, which comes to us courtesy of the Library of Congress's Historic American Buildings Survey, shows the rear view of the house with Wilson's original home as it appeared in 1933. However, the house's application for the National Register of Historic Places says that the rear wing "appears" to have been added later, so I'm not sure whether it's still the original Wilson house back there or if that was demolished and rebuilt. I can't find any documentation to confirm either possibility, so I'm guessing it's still the same place and the application is just mistaken.

In 1860, the land was purchased by Charles Billmeyer. He wanted to build a townhouse, something that would really stand out even in historic York, and to that end he employed an exceptional architect. Who that was, nobody seems to know. It may have been Nathaniel Weigle, a local builder, who around the same time was employed by the First Presbyterian Church to construct their new church building; since he finished work on that in 1861, it's entirely possible that he next was hired to bring Billmeyer's dream to life. But there's no record which can tell us for sure.

One thing we do know is that the first-floor parlor was designed by the Italian artist Filippo Costaggini. He's most famous for having completed the frieze in the United States Capitol Rotunda after the death of the original artist, but in York he's remembered for having decorated the parlor ceiling and walls at the Billmeyer home. Unfortunately, I haven't found any pictures of the work he did inside, nor was I able to enter the building to take pictures myself, so I can't tell you exactly how his frescoes look.

The house is three stories tall, and is crowned with an eight-foot cupola on the roof. The fancy brickwork at the corners is known as quoins, which add to both the structural integrity of the building and to its aesthetic. This, along with the cupola and the elegant framework on the windows and doorway, not to mention the Costaggini artwork inside, have led York House to being identified as one of the finest surviving examples of Victorian architecture in the area.

The construction was finished in 1863, the same year that General Early left York to go to Gettysburg. After Charles Billmeyer passed away in 1875, he left the home to his son George. George and his wife lived out their lives in the house; his widow, who died in 1917, bequeathed the home to the Historical Society of York County, which was then housed in the county courthouse. Having outgrown their space by 1937, the historical society moved into the Billmeyer house and used it as a museum for their collections. It served this purpose for over 20 years; then, having once again outgrown their space, the society moved across the street to their present headquarters. The Billmeyer house was sold back to the First Presbyterian Church - the ones who had originally owned the tract of land - but they weren't quite sure what to do with it and, as it became run-down, proposed demolishing it. Fortunately, this was opposed by York's Historical Architectural Review Board, and it was instead renovated and preserved.

Today, "York House" still belongs to the First Presbyterian Church, which uses it for office space for its Caring Ministry civic outreach program. It was closed to the public when I was there last year, probably because of the lingering rules of the pandemic, but I see on their website that the food pantry is once again open and other services can be provided by appointment. So York House isn't just an architectural jewel for the city of York - it's a treasure for citizens in need as well.

Special thanks to David Etter Small Gotwald IV for a minor correction to this article.

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Sources and Further Reading:

Dolan, Douglas. "Historical Society of York County." Pennsylvania Heritage magazine, Winter 1980.

Application for York House to the National Register of Historic Places

Charles Billmeyer House at the Society of Architectural Historians

Billmeyer House at the Library of Congress

York Car Works at the Mid-Continent Railway Museum

York House at Waymarking.com

History of the First Presbyterian Church of York

Historic York works to preserve historic architecture like this in York County

"York House" at the Historical Marker Database

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Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.