A house this size is conspicuous in a small town, even if it does not front on the main commercial street. Fortunately, when the brick two-and-one-half-story house was donated for use as the library in 1921, it had the appearance often sought in library design, with pedimented gables on three sides and two-story porches supported by fluted Ionic columns on the south and the east facades. Architect Ernest G. W. Dietrich (1857–1924) trained in Pittsburgh with Charles Bartberger and then moved to New York in 1887. Hyde-Murphy Company Contractors constructed the building. Ridgway banker Madison S. Kline commissioned the house, only to lose it when his snowplow company went under.