The Lancaster County Convention Center and Penn Square Marriott rise up around the 200-year-old Montgomery House on South Queen Street. Photo Courtesy Lancaster Nespapers

Spared the wrecking ball, Montgomery House on South Queen Street will be preserved as a historic focal point of the convention center/hotel lobby.

Lancaster New Era

July 10, 2008

Soon, a portion of Lancaster's historic Montgomery House will see the light of day for the first time in nearly a century.

Workers will soon begin removing a first floor facade from the Federal-era mansion at 19-21 S. Queen St., revealing part of the original doorway. Windows and a part of the front wall will have to be recreated where a storefront display window was added to the once-elegant private home.

The work on the 1804 Montgomery House is being done in conjunction with the construction of the Lancaster County Convention Center and Penn Square Marriott hotel. Most of the historic home will be incorporated into the open lobby of the joint project.

"It's going to be beautiful when you walk through the hotel lobby and look down and see that," said Tom Smithgall, vice president of hotel developer Penn Square Partners.

Lancaster was a different place when William Montgomery, a prominent attorney, commissioned architect Stephen Hills to design his mansion. Although a small, western Pennsylvania city, Lancaster was the state capital at the time and the courthouse was just a half-block north, where the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument now stands at the center of Penn Square.

The hand-carved keystones above the front windows and the partly covered stone stairs along the street hint at the original grandeur of the building.

Although Montgomery's house has been altered and adapted over the years, it has not escaped the notice of historians. As far back as the 1920s, the house was written about in publications of historic architecture.

Of particular note are the rare vaulted ceilings and curving stairway. Ornate Wellford mantels that once graced the fireplaces are now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

"It's probably the greatest Federal rowhouse in the city and it may have been the greatest in its day," said Peter Seibert, president of the Heritage Center of Lancaster County.

"It's a rare surviving example of that kind of architecture in Lancaster," said architect Ted Vedock, of Hammel & Associates.

"It's certainly been one of the more significant properties in the city over its history," said Vedock, who drafted the restoration plans for the Montgomery House.

To do so, Vedock did extensive research on the building. He looked for photographs and records to learn about its evolution.

The Montgomery House remained a residence until 1899 when it became the the first home of the Lancaster YWCA. At that time, the third floor was turned into a small gymnasium. Later, it was used as a hardware store and a barbershop. It was purchased by Watt & Shand department store in 1960.

"As you start to understand the uses of the building, you begin to understand how the building was changed and why," said Vedock.

It was during the Watt & Shand years that the unique, elliptical rear wall of the building was sheered off and replaced with flat blocks when the store constructed a warehouse against the back of the house.

That rear wall is now being restored. Plans call for the slate roof and detailed custom-carved wood cornices to be matched and recreated. Windows - which had been bricked over or changed into doorways or had simply rotted away - will also be recreated, Smithgall said.

The goal is to have the exterior restoration done in time for the planned opening of the $170 million hotel and meeting center in March.

The interior restoration will come later, in a second phase, he said. The money for that work has not yet been appropriated and no cost estimates made, said Smithgall.

Although plans are not firm, Penn Square Partners is considering renovating the interior into a pair of suites that will be used by meeting planners who bring events to the new convention center and hotel. The longer-term guests will have have living, dining and work spaces in the suites, said Smithgall.

"We're putting it back into use," he said. "It's going to be great."

Penn Square Partners consists of general partner Penn Square General Corp., a High Industries affiliate, and limited partner Penn Square Ltd., LLC, an affiliate of Lancaster Newspapers, Inc., publisher of the Lancaster New Era, Intelligencer Journal and Sunday News.