West Park Place

Built between 1857 and 1865 in the commercial heart of Erie, Pennsylvania, West Park Place is a cluster of three-story brick business blocks arranged around the central park, along North Park Row, Peach Street and State Street. The buildings followed a fire in the winter of 1857 that destroyed the wooden structures on the site. Most were designed by John Hill, whose facades use wide bracketed cornices, dentils, arched windows with masonry hoods, and pilasters dividing the fronts into window bays. The ground floors held shops and services, upper floors offices, and the third floors entertainment halls. Farrar Hall, opened in 1860 as a theater seating about 1,500, later became the Park Opera House, which hosted touring companies and performers. The district is regarded as Erie's most intact example of a 19th-century downtown business area, and its brick construction reflects the city's effort to reduce the risk of fire.