Butler Pennsylvania Historic District
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The Butler Historic District comprises 46 acres with 130 buildings in the center of Butler – what would be Butler’s downtown if it wasn’t on a rise above the Connoquenessing Creek. Butler was established in 1803 and became a borough in 1817. It was a quiet county seat until the discovery of Butler county’s oil fields in the second half of the 19th century. That’s when the railroads came and industrial development of the town began.
Main Street, from the 1910 Beaux-Arts Masonic Temple on the south to the 1920 neo-classical T.W. Phillips Company Office Building on the north, was on ce Butler’s primary retail corridor. Small independently-owned shops and restaurants have slowly been filling the historic storefronts that had been left vacant by major retailers since the 1970s. If you’re walking down Main Street, checking out the shops, don’t miss the 1898 Rockenstein Building, with its mail-order storefront from the Mesker Brothers; the 1910 Koch Building, designed by Butler architect F.J. Porter, who also designed the City Hall Building and First Methodist Episcopal Church; and the mischievous sculptures of shady-looking characters ringing Butler’s tallest building, the 1925 Art Deco Butler Savings and Trust Building.
The “High Victorian Gothic with Romanesque accents Butler County Courthouse, designed by Pittsburgh architect James P. Bailey in 1885, rises towards the middle of the Main Street retail corridor. Come here if you want a primer on the differences between Gothic Revival and Romanesque Revival architecture. You’ll see plenty of both if you go looking at the district’s churches. The courthouse faces The Diamond, a nicely landscaped town square full of markers and memorials, including a marker commemorating the Jeep, the first one of which was manufactured in Butler, and a pretty cool World War II Memorial.
Around the Diamond are the Romanesque/Dutch Colonial 1895 Butler YMCA, probably designed by regional architect S.W. Foulke, and the 1902 Romanesque Revival Second Presbyterian Church. Like the other churches in the district, thick heavy stone was used to build a bulky structure decorated with beautiful stained glass.
Opposite the south side of the courthouse is the 1903 Butler County National Bank Building, a gorgeous French Renaissance Revival structure and Butler’s first skyscraper. The building’s primary claim-to-fame is that the Marquis de Lafayette dined here in 1825. Opposite the north side of the courthouse is the Butler Eagle Building, with terra cotta eagles providing a graceful flourish to its 1924 Beaux-Arts edifice.
Most of the buildings in the district are commercial and institutional, but there are three early mansions, two of which are behind the county courthouse. The earliest is the Senator Lowrie House, built by U.S. Senator Walter Lowrie in 1828. It is the last remaining example of a Vernacular Greek Revival home in the Butler area. The neighboring John Quincy Adams Kennedy House, an extravagant French Second Empire mansion, was built for an oil driller in 1884. The third home in the district hasn’t been used as a house in over seventy years. The Beaux-Arts 1909 Butler City Hall was originally the home of merchant George A. Troutman. In 1930 it was converted into the Butler City Hall ("The City Building"), an early example of adaptive reuse of historic structures.
 
Other interestingly historic government buildings scattered about the district include the very different Schoolhouse No. 1 and Butler High School. Schoolhouse No. 1 is a small, simple, red brick building – the first public school built in Butler, in 1836. The 1917 Butler High School, a Beaux-Arts building designed by New Castle architect W. George Eckles, is much, much larger. The school is very similar in design to the Beaux-Arts YMCA of 1913 around the corner. On the other side of Main Street is the only Federal building in the district, the 1913 Beaux-Arts U.S. Post Office, typical of post offices built at the time throughout Western Pennsylvania.
In addition to the Second Presbyterian Church, ten other churches grace the district with their Romanesque and Gothic designs. Some have intricately detailed trim; all feature beautifully artistic stained glass. Interestingly, all three of the district’s Presbyterian churches are in the Romanesque Revival style; the other denominations built Gothic Revival churches.
On the west side of Main Street is the 1904 First Methodist Episcopal Church, a collaboration between Butler architect F.J. Porter and Uniontown architect J.C. Fulton; Butler’s oldest church building, the 1862 Butler Presbyterian Church, with its chambers for the Underground Railroad; the city’s only Episcopalian church, the 1896 St. Peter’s; the squat 1891 St. Andrew’s United Presbyterian Church; and the 1909 St. Paul Roman Catholic Church, with its towering steeple and intricately detailed trim.
Butler County Courthouse
On the east side of Main Street, connected by the aptly-named Church Street, are the 1927 St. Mark’s Sunday School Building, designed by the Boston firm of Cram and Ferguson; the 1914 First Baptist Church; the 1913 Grace Lutheran Church; the 1911 Bethany Reformed Church, whose congregation consisted of members of the St. Paul’s Reformed Church that didn’t want to move across the Connoquenessing; and the 1924 Church of Christ, with its beautifully carved entrance doors.
Butler Pennsylvania....rich in historic architecture.
  
St. Peter's Episcopal Church, The Historic LaFayette Building, T.W. Phillips Gas & Oil
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