
Spruce Creek and its excellent fly fishing have lured two United States presidents (Dwight D. Eisenhower and Jimmy Carter) and numerous Pennsylvania businessmen to the Spruce Creek valley between Bald Eagle and Tussey mountains. At the turn of the twentieth century, the members of the Spruce Creek Rod and Gun Club bought ten acres of land to accommodate their hunting and fishing pursuits. They commissioned Hersh and Shollar, who had opened their Altoona office just two years earlier, to design the Shingle Style clubhouse. The clubhouse must have struck a chord, because the firm went on to design residences and commercial buildings for many of the club's original members. The clubhouse's northeast facade has a stone round-arched entrance that opens into a capacious porch. Above the arch is a band of windows topped by a pediment and lunette. This combination of rough stone and shingling with a refined colonial feature is typical of the Shingle Style. And it suited the members' desire for luxurious rusticity, since the building had indoor plumbing, electric lighting, and one of the first telephones in the valley. Three additional stone buildings, constructed around 1908, lie to the southeast: a generator building, ice house, and carriage house.