A house of this size and detail in the small town of Emporium illustrates the growth of the turn-of-the-twentieth-century business entrepreneurial class. Henry Auchu was a self-educated French Canadian in the lumber and explosives industries. His house is very similar to a house in Meadville, Crawford County (
CR17). Both used George F. Barber's mail-order plans for “A New Colonial Design” from the 1904 Modern Dwellings catalog, varying the rooflines and materials, but little else. This house is a heavy, three-bay structure with a two-story Ionic-columned porch in the center that continues as a one-story porch across the side bays. Modillions enliven the gambrel roof and the porches on all the elevations. In 1930, the president of Sylvania Products Company, Bernard G. Erskine, bought the house as lodging for customers visiting his plant and called it the Sylvania Club.