The Hyde-Murphy Company

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The Ridgway Historic District’s significance is enhanced by its long and close association with the Hyde-Murphy Company, established in 1884 by Walter P. Murphy and J. S. Hyde. Walter Murphy was an Armstrong County, Pennsylvania, native who became a carpenter in adjacent Butler County and eventually worked as a building contractor in the Pittsburgh area. In 1862, he relocated to Freeport, Butler County and ran a planing mill until 1884 when he came to Ridgway and entered business with the existing firm of J. S. Hyde & Son. The new company bore the names of Hyde and Murphy and soon became leading manufacturers of architectural millwork, including trim, mantles, stairs, paneling, grillwork, and art glass, and were “recognized as one of the best known manufacturers of architectural woodwork and millwork construction in the eastern United States with sales offices in several cities”[1] including Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and New York. The company was responsible for to countless projects in the north-central Pennsylvania region, and also supplied building materials for the construction of the Pentagon, for embassies in Washington, D. C., and for the Tripoli Hospital in Honolulu. In addition to spacious and grand public and private architecture, Hyde-Murphy’s work represented far less pretentious projects as well including the construction of fifty workers’ homes for the DuBois Iron Works and one hundred fifty-six homes in Ernest. The Hyde-Murphy operation occupied a fifteen-building campus just north of the historic district along Race Street. Walter Murphy died in 1920 and the operation was taken over by his son, Samuel. The firm was described in a 1924 publication as on one occasion having erected 180 homes in the same number of days. At the time of that publication Hyde-Murphy had completed a total of 378 houses, office buildings, power plants, schools, churches, and public buildings in a variety of locations and had in one eleven-month span erected fifteen homes in Ridgway alone.

The company ceased operation in 1961 and the manufacturing buildings were raised in the early 1970s. Their corporate office building is extant in the district at 222 Race Street.

It is no exaggeration to state that the vast majority of the substantial buildings erected in the historic district after 1890 were the work of the Hyde-Murphy Company. Identified examples of the company’s work include, the 1899-1900 Ridgway High School at 225 South Street, the 1904 Y. W. C. A., the Ridgway Armory, the 1906 Strand Theater at 209 Main Street, the 1920s Centennial High School at 300 Center Street, the 1894 home of Samuel P. Murphy at 111 East Avenue, the 1903 John Lund House at 301 Metoxet Street, the 1903 R. McClain House at 112 South Street, the 1910 home of Hyde Hotel owner Milton Wood at 130 Metoxet Street, the c. 1905 Harry Hyde House at 344 Main Street, and the 1893 home of butcher B. P. Mercer at 122 Center Street.

The work of the Hyde-Murphy Company is characterized by an unusually high level of skill and craftsmanship for such a rural area, reflected in a diversity of architectural ornament, including carving, turning, scroll-sawn detailing, and art glass, both stained and beveled plate glass, all of which is seen throughout the district in porches, mantles, multi-stage windows, parquet flooring, doors and trim, stairways, mass-produced railings and balusters, newel posts, wall finishes including paneling, chair and plate rails, crown molding and wainscot, beamed ceilings, and cabinetry. The firm used a wide variety of high-quality hardwoods native to north-central Pennsylvania, including white oak, red, white, curly, and tiger maple, chestnut, black walnut, and black cherry, which was typically finished naturally.

Hyde-Murphy was also engaged to remodel interiors of existing, older homes in the district. Identified examples of this type of work include their treatment of the 1870s house at 121 Center Street, and the c. 1865 Jerome Powell House at 330 South Street. Clearly, this single firm had a greater role in shaping the appearance of the Ridgway Historic District than did any other builder in any other historic district in the region and beyond.

Other builders represented in the district include contractor W. H. Minor, who was responsible for the 1903 Methodist Episcopal Church at 21 South Broad Street, and M. V. VanEtten, of Warren, who built the Elk County Jail appended to the Court House and the 1901-1902 Ridgway National Bank Building.

[1]Wessman, Alice, and Faust, Harriet. Sesquicentennial History of Ridgway (Ridgway: 1974), p. 42.