Downing Insurance Building

The Downing Insurance Building was a refined structure at 9th and Peach Street. It was built in 1883 by Jerome F. Downing for $40,000, and later demolished for the redevelopment of Downtown Erie.

The interior was in keeping with the exterior, elegantly and conveniently arranged, finished in attractive hard woods, and provided with stained glass windows. The ceilings were a lofty thirty-feet from the floors — tastefully decorated.

The office force comprised some twenty-five clerks and assistants, a number of whom were employed with Mr. Downing from ten to twenty years. The office represented the Pennsylvania Fire Insurance Company, employing over 2,000 local agents with a territory that was comprised of fourteen states and five territories. Agents render their reports under the direction and control of the manager, Mr. Downing.

Born on March 24, 1827, Jerome F. Downing was a native of Enfield, Massachusetts, and a lawyer by profession. He was reared on a farm and educated in the schools of Massachusetts. On reaching adulthood he entered journalism and subsequently was editor-in-chief of the Troy Daily Post in New York State. Having decided to abandon journalism for the law, he became principal of the high school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, studying law while occupying that position, where later he was admitted to the bar in 1855, before moving to Erie that same year.

In Erie he acquired a lucrative law practice and was district attorney of the county in 1863. In 1864 he was offered the Western management of the Insurance Company of North America, which, being disinclined to give up his profession, he accepted with hesitation, and with the stipulation that the headquarters of the department should be at Erie. The management of the Pennsylvania Fire was added in 1872. The connection of these two companies in the West under the direction of Mr. Downing continued until January 1, 1895, when the Pennsylvania Fire withdrew and established an independent western department, and the Philadelphia Underwriters, composed of the Insurance Company of North America and the Fire Association of Philadelphia, the strongest combine of the kind in the world, took the place of the Pennsylvania Fire, and he became manager of its Western Department.

Mr. Downing was also president of the Keystone National Bank; vice-president of the Erie Dime Savings and Loan Company, and a prominent member of the Board of Trade. Also an inventor, he held several patents for his inventions improving the use of chairs.

Downing Insurance Building (1940s)

This photo was taken in the early sixties, and shows the Peach Street side of the building. The entrance to the Office Bar & Restaurant hangs from the northeast corner, and a political campaign sign for Judge Lindley R. McClelland is on the north side.

The Charles M. Reed House

The Charles M. Reed House was located on the north side of West 6th Street, between Walnut and Chestnut streets.

The house was demolished in 1970 to build what was then the Erie County Motor Club. Some of the original interior paneling and molding were incorporated into the dining and bar area of the ski lodge at Peek 'n Peak, Chautauqua County, New York.

This house is not the Reed Mansion, which now is the Erie Club. This was the personal home of Charles Reed who was the grandson of the first settler of Erie, Seth Reed.

This house, among other notable structures like the Hotel Lawrence, were demolished during the Redevelopment Phase of Erie’s history in the 1960s and 70s. A lot of homes that once belonged to the Settlers of Erie, or their descendants were lost. And I don’t mean some log cabin that they first lived in when they arrived, impractical to preserve and were long gone by the 20th century, but solid brick and mortar structures.

Charles M. Reed was born, April 3, 1803, in Erie. He attended the public schools and was graduated from Washington College in Washington, Pennsylvania. He studied law, was admitted to the bar in Philadelphia in 1824, but did not practice. He was engaged in business in Erie with his father, an owner of vessels on the Great Lakes. He was appointed colonel of militia in 1831 and brigadier general at the expiration of his commission. He was a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in 1837 and 1838.

Reed was elected as a Whig to the Twenty-eighth Congress. He was an unsuccessful candidate for re-election in 1844. He resumed shipping on the Great Lakes and was also engaged in banking, mercantile pursuits, and the railroad business from 1846 to 1849. Reed died December 16, 1871, in Erie, where he is interred in Erie Cemetery.

Reed's son, Charles M. Reed, Jr., served as mayor of Erie from 1872 to 1873. His election being shortly after father's death, one newspaper described the new mayor as the son of the late General Charles M. Reed

The Charles M. Reed House on the north side of West 6th Street, between Walnut and Chestnut streets.

Janes Mansion

Constructed in 1857 by Heman Janes, the 157 year old home, at 125 West 21st Street, was the oldest house in the West 21st Street Historic District before being demolished by VL Holdings LLC on Saturday, April 12, 2014. An architectural-styled Italianate on a lot size of 11560 square feet, the house was 3883 square feet with 5 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. It was one of the first homes built within the district that includes 34 contributing middle and upper class residential buildings, built between 1857 and 1939, in a variety of popular architectural styles including Queen Anne, Italianate, and Colonial Revival.

Workers with the Lipchik Demolition company demolished the house after assurances was given by VL Holdings to the members of Preservation Erie, a Non-Profit Organization, that they were only demolishing a small building in the back yard of the property, which was not within the historic district. VL Holdings in the course of their discussions with Preservation Erie gave them the impression that the house was going to be renovated.

Herman Janes

The original owner who built the house, Heman Janes, was a land speculator in the Northeast United States and Southern Canada.

Janes was an experienced businessman. While residing in Erie in 1858 Janes bought 200 acres of timber in Lambton County, Ontario. He bought the land not only for the timber, but the oil-soaked gumbeds found on it. Shortly afterwards he leased another 400 acres of these beds soaked with sulfur-laden petroleum. However, the dramatic developments on Oil Creek turned his attention to Venango County, Pennsylvania. Oil wells were eventually drilled on Janes’ Canadian property, which he sold in 1865 for $55,000.

In 1861 Janes bought Tarr Farm on Oil Creek in Venango County for $60,000. The Tarr Farm produced the Phillips No. 2, an oil well that flowed at 4,000 barrels per day; and the Woodford well, which yielded 3,000 barrels per day, and other significant wells. Later, Janes sold half of the farm (the upper elevations) back to Tarr, but he retained the portion of the farm close by the east bank of Oil Creek; the sections that contained the Phillips lease, the Woodford lease, his own wells and other big producers.

Aside from profits, Janes was also interested in the efficient drilling and transportation of crude petroleum. He aspired to build an oil pipeline along Oil Creek, but his plans were upset by the attack on Fort Sumter and subsequent U.S. Civil War. Janes was more successful in his venture to introduce the practice of casing wells, a process of encasing small tubing in larger tubing to protect the oil in the small tubing. Casing wells protected the well from being filled with water.

Early in 1861, Janes, Josiah Oakes, and General James Wadsworth, all from Erie, raised $300,000 to buy up the producing lands for ten miles along Oil Creek. This ambitious undertaking by Pennsylvania men came to an end when Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in April of 1861; the resulting panic hindered speculative ventures of all sorts. Janes sold all the oil property he owned in western Virginia. Janes and his Erie partners attempted another grand venture along Oil Creek in late 1861. They proposed a 4 inch pipeline made of wood be laid along the bank of Oil Creek from the Tarr Farm down to the mouth of Oil Creek at Oil City. The concept was to allow gravity to do its work and slowly but inevitably drop the crude in elevation over a run of about five miles. The concept may have worked since there would have been no need for pumps; the system would have been under a steady, low pressure from the natural head only. The partners made the mistake of seeking a charter from Pennsylvania. The local State Representative, M.C. Beebe of Pleasantville, took exception saying he did not want to put 4,000 teamsters, his constituents, out of work. Beebe failed to mention the Oil Creek Railroad had begun construction, from Corry on the Philadelphia and Erie to Titusville, to capture what it could of the quickly growing crude oil market. Beebe used his influence to see to it that Heman Janes’ early pipeline project would not be built.

While residing in the Village of Tarr Farm, a small back woods oil community Janes laid out and developed, Janes introduced the practice of casing wells. Prior to March 1865 the usual procedure in the Oil Region was to drill a 4 inch diameter hole in which a section of wrought iron pipe with a 2 inch inside diameter (called tubing) was inserted. A standing ball valve and a sliding plunger with a ball valve were attached to the bottom end of this first section. Thin sucker rods that passed down the inside of the tubing actuated the plunger. The arrangement would lift, or pump, the crude to the surface. To reach the bottom of the well, sufficient sections of 2 inch tubing were added.

Below the level of invasive ground water a flaxseed bag was securely tied around the outside wall of the tubing to create a water seal. Each time the tubing was pulled the water seal was broken. The tubing was pulled often and for a variety of reasons including testing, a fouled pump, joint leaks, or a torn flaxseed bag. The best of operators would inevitably flood their wells with water. By 1864 the great Tarr Farm was shut down completely, flooded by ground water.

Throughout the balance of 1864 Heman Janes persuaded and cajoled a number of heard-headed producers with leases on the Tarr Farm to join with him and spend some money; pumping water out of their wells, pulling the tubing, and re-drilling their holes to a diameter of 5 ½ inches. The producers agreed and drilled wider holes. A flaxseed bag, or water seal, was permanently attached to the outside of a section of heavy wall wrought-iron casing with an inside diameter of 3 ¼ inches. This section, and additional sections, were inserted down into the re-drilled well to a depth sufficient to be below the infiltrating water above. The working 2 inch tubing was then inserted into the casing. The water seal (the flaxseed bag) attached to the outside wall of the casing remained fixed and undisturbed when the separate working tubing was subsequently pulled.

Heman Janes’ carefully planned program of recovery worked. After an expensive re-drilling and casing program the operators agreed to pump the wells in a synchronized fashion managed by Janes. By March 1865 the once dead Tarr Farm was pumping collectively 1,000 barrels a day.

This first use of casing was called wet-drilling. George Bissell’s Central Petroleum Company, the producing company that owned nearby Petroleum Centre, adopted this technique and synchronized pumping. The Columbia Oil Company on the neighboring Story Farm did the same. By 1868 the Columbia Oil Company superintendent reported he was drilling all new holes down to below the water infiltration level and then inserting casing with a fixed water seal. He then dry-drilled through the permanent casing down to the producing sand. Within a few short years the more enlightened producers of Oil Creek had adopted the best of these efficient, productive oil field practices. Heman Janes is the producer that early writers credit with being the man who showed them the way.

Heman Janes remained a resident of the Village of Tarr Farm until the latter 1870s. While residing at Tarr Farm he invested heavily in the Bradford Field. Janes returned to Erie in 1878. The Village of Tarr Farm vanished in subsequent decades consumed by the returning woodlands growing about it.

Photo provided by Ken McDonald

The rear side of Janes Mansion (1869)

Photos were provided by Dan Head

Janes Mansion.

Interior of Janes Mansion.

Interior of Janes Mansion.

Demolition of Janes Mansion.

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Hughes Log House

In September of 1983 Hamot Medical Center said it was protecting their property rights, when during a city council meeting, in the dark of night, they bulldozed the city's oldest building, Hughes Log House, a 176- year-old log cabin, at 136 East Third Street in Erie. "It's inconceivable to us that they would have done this," said John Claridge of the Erie County Historical Society. "For some reason or other they felt a definite threat to their right to do with their property as they saw fit."

Preservationists had hoped to move the two-story house from the land the hospital were to develop, but were left only with a possible archaeological examination of the land. Many of the house's remains were taken by scavengers.

"The reason it's such an affront is that Hamot couldn't care if this was a building built in 1 B.C. They have demonstrated absolutely no regard for the history of Erie," Patrick Cuneo, president of the Preservation Project, said at the time. "To them it's a business proposition."

The hospital, which bought the property for a development, wouldn’t discuss why they renege on an agreement made earlier to move the house to another location, stating that they demolished the house because they feared that Erie County Council would vote to condemn and take the property.

The hospital "certainly didn't want to get involved in a 10-year court battle," said Hamot spokesman Jerry Hagerty. The county obtained a court order temporarily halting work at the site. County Judge James Dwyer heard arguments on whether the restraining order should be continued until the next County Council's scheduled public hearing on the future of the land.

Two weeks earlier, when the local groups learned of Hamot’s plans to develop the property, they asked the medical center for time to move the house. Hamot agreed and offered to help pay for the move. But Cuneo said he was warned that if the agreement became public, Hamot would raze the house.

City Council learned of the plans, and at a special meeting decided to hold a public hearing on the house. No one contacted the hospital about the meeting, Hagerty said. During the night of the meeting, at about 8:00 p.m., the house was demolished. "We have indicated we would not jeopardize our ability to develop the area in question," a hospital statement said.

Hughes Log House, 136 East Third Street (1936)