Baker Mansion
Altoona, Blair County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Erected 1844-1847. Architect, Robert Cary Long, Jr. Residence of Elias Baker, Ironmaster, and his family, 1848 to 1914. Museum of the Blair County Historical Society since 1922. Entrance to mansion from street in rear.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Erected between 1844 and 1847 to a design by Baltimore architect Robert Cary Long, Jr., this Greek Revival mansion was the home of ironmaster Elias Baker and his family from 1848 until 1914. The house captures the taste and standing of the men who dominated the Juniata Valley iron trade in the mid-19th century. Since 1922 it has served as the museum of the Blair County Historical Society.
Why it matters
As the preserved seat of a prominent ironmaking family, the mansion links the region's industrial rise to a nationally fashionable architectural style and to the work of a noted American architect.
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Related people
- · Elias Baker
- · Robert Cary Long, Jr.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Alleghany Furnace
Altoona, PA · est. 1999
Raised in 1811, the Alleghany Furnace was among the earliest ironworks in what became Blair County, part of the charcoal-iron industry that spread through Pennsylvania's mountains in the early republic. Elias Baker acquired full ownership by 1844 and built a Greek Revival mansion nearby, tying the furnace to a prosperous ironmaster's household that ran it until it went cold in 1884. The surviving stone store building, erected around 1837, still marks the site of this vanished industrial world.
Baker Mansion
Altoona, PA · est. 1947
Baker Mansion is a striking Greek Revival house built in 1846 for Elias Baker, one of the region's leading ironmasters in the era when Pennsylvania's charcoal-fired furnaces helped forge the nation's iron. Its columned dignity reflected both the wealth and the ambitions of the industrialists who ran the Juniata Valley iron trade. The house now serves as the museum and home of the Blair County Historical Society.
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Altoona, PA · est. 1947
Altoona was born of the railroad, laid out in 1849 as the mountain-base terminal from which the Pennsylvania Railroad pushed its tracks westward over the daunting Allegheny front. Within a generation the town's yards and shops made it one of the great railroading centers of the nation. In 1867 it hosted a War Governors' Conference, one of several wartime and postwar gatherings that made the city a meeting ground for state leaders.
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