Greersburg Academy

Built shortly after 1806 as a two-story stone academy, the building was founded when the Pennsylvania legislature granted a charter that year, following a plan proposed to the Presbytery of Erie in 1802 by the Rev. Thomas Hughes, who became the school's first instructor and principal fundraiser. Its students included William McGuffy, author of the McGuffy readers; John Brown, the abolitionist; Walter Forward, former United States Secretary of the Treasury; and John W. Geary, later Governor of Pennsylvania and a Major General in Sherman's army. The original Georgian design features three bays across the front and rear, arched door and window openings, and dressed stone walls with large quoins. In the mid-nineteenth century Italianate window and door frames and cornice brackets were added. Late in the century the building became a railroad station, gaining a bay window, a porch roof, a ticket window, and a freight room with a heavy plank floor. Its stone walls and corner quoins are regarded as the work of a skilled mason.