Baldwin-Reynolds House

Baldwin-Reynolds House

Baldwin-Reynolds House HABS/Traub

Baldwin-Reynolds House

1841–1843, 1867. 639 Terrace St.

This large, yellow brick house was built as the second home of jurist Henry Baldwin, whose move to Pittsburgh from Philadelphia launched his career as a U.S. congressman (1816–1822). In 1830, President Andrew Jackson appointed Baldwin a justice of the Supreme Court, where he served until 1844. Said to be a copy of Jackson's home, “Hunter's Hill,” near Nashville, Baldwin's house has an open gallery on all four elevations and a hipped roof. The house was incomplete when Baldwin died penniless in 1844. In 1847, William Reynolds, a nephew of Baldwin's wife, bought the property. He renovated the house in 1866, changed the roof from hipped to mansard, added a walnut stairway, a library and a conservatory in enclosed portions of the gallery, and a first-story entrance on the west elevation. The house stayed in the Reynolds family until 1963, when the Crawford County Historical Society purchased it; the society operates it as a house museum.

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