Starboard Light is coal magnate Charles McKenna Lynch's former secluded country estate built in the revival style popularly referred to as “stockbroker Tudor.” Lynch purchased a dairy farm in a valley near Greensburg, and hired Paul Bartholomew and his partner Brandon Smith to design his sprawling Tudor Revival house of brick, with stone trim and faux timbers in the stucco gable ends. An addition in 1929, designed by Bartholomew, included an arched stone bridge over the adjacent stream that meanders through the 104-acre site. The grounds included a pool and pool house, tennis court, and gatehouse, as well as a Colonial Revival house (1940) for his daughter.

Paul A. Bartholomew (1883–1973) was a 1909 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, who during his prolific and extended career designed such varied projects as the six-story former Troutman Department Store (c. 1921–1923; 202–226 S. Main Street), Westmoreland Hospital (532 W. Pittsburgh Street), and the New Deal community of Norvelt (see Norvelt and Vicinity, p. 230). Starboard Light was purchased in 1964 by the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg as the first part of its satellite campus. Since 1976, when the entire regional campus moved to the estate, the school has transformed itself into a four-year college with brick student residences, faculty building, library, and nearly a dozen other buildings, most designed by Bartholomew's successor firms and the Warren, Pennsylvania, firm of Creal Hyde and Lawson, Architects.