Lost and Found
Written by PA Heritage Staff in the Lost and Found category and the Spring 1998 issue Topics in this article: Beaver County, Edward Dempster Art Gallery Merrick, Europe, Frank Miles Day, Keystone Automobile Club, New Brighton, Philadelphia Art AllianceLost
Described as “an influential organization of artists and citizens,” the Philadelphia Art Club was housed in a building designed in 1892 by architect Frank Miles Day (1861-1918). The building was the first significant commission for Day, who had just returned from studies in Europe, which explains his use of unusual expansive arches, delicate stone window lintels, ornamental tracery, rusticated basement coursing, wrought iron window grates, third-story porch, and tile roof. The Philadelphia Art Club occupied the building until financial difficulties forced it to disband in the 1930s. From 1943 until 1968, the Keystone Automobile Club occupied the eclectic building, which was razed in the 1970s.
Found
To visitors to New Brighton, the building most likely resembles a nineteenth-century factory complex. To residents of the Beaver County community, the former railroad station – built in 1850 and expanded in 1884, 1888, and 1901 – houses an important institution, the Merrick Art Gallery. Prosperous manufacturer Edward Dempster Merrick (1832-1911) founded the gallery in 1880 to exhibit his own work, but later enlarged it to show his growing collection of works by American and European artists. Today, the Merrick Art Gallery is important as a document of eclectic nineteenth century collecting and exhibition practices, as well as a rare example of an early private museum in western Pennsylvania.
