Lost and Found

Written by in the Lost and Found category and the Winter 1996 issue Topics in this article: architecture and architects, Bellefonte, Boies Penrose, Centre County, French, Harrisburg, Henry Brockerhoff, Miller Kast, Napoleon Bonaparte, National Register of Historic Places
Lost and Found features brief profiles of historic landmarks and structures, one lost and one saved.

Lost

Harrisburg’s Senate Hotel, designed by architect Miller Isaac Kast in an elegant French Beaux Arts style, was opened by hotelier James Russ in 1906. In a successful nomination to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, it was described as “the finest com­mercial … building in the City of Harrisburg.” Preservationists treasured its handsome facade for the character it lent the downtown business district. The Senate Hotel was also recognized for its social and political associations; it housed leading politicians, the most famous of which, Boies Penrose, occupied a splendid suite. Not long after a rehabilitation project converting it to commercial space, the Senate Hotel was demolished in February 1995 to erect an office tower.

 

Found

Built in 1866, the Brockerhoff House in the Centre County seat of Bellefonte-touted as home to five Pennsylvania governors – dramatically evidences the community’s nineteenth-century prosperity. Henry A. Brockerhoff, a clerk to Napoleon I (1769-1821) until the French emperor’s defeat, settled in Bellefonte in 1825. He became president of the Centre County Banking Company and opened the hotel, famous for many years for its elegant accommodations. Originally designed in the Italianate style, renovations in the 1880s and again in 1890 account for its bold, eclectic appearance. The Brockerhoff House, named to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977, has won prestigious preservation awards for adaptive reuse for combining retail space and subsidized housing for the elderly.