Emlenton
Franklin
Oil City
Tionesta
Titusville
Pleasantville
Meadville
Titioute
Endeavor
Warren
Sheffield
Bradford
Smethport
Ridgway

Styles

Adam
Greek Revival
Classical Revival
Gothic Revival
Italianate
Second Empire
Stick
Queen Anne
Shingle
Colonial Revival
Neoclassical
Tudor
English Cottage

TITUSVILLE

Well known as the birthplace of the oil industry, Titusville had a prosperous lumber industry even before Drake successfully drilled for oil in 1859.  In the  nineteenth century, fortunes in Titusville were made pursuing a  variety of pioneering industrial activities.  Lumber, tanning, chemicals, metals, as well as oil production and refining were all part of Titusville’s industrial mix.  Situated along the banks of Oil Creek, the early Titusville lumber mills could float their rough hewn logs south fifteen miles to the Allegheny River. A good road to Meadville led to the west and a road to the east went to Warren.  The Oil Creek Railroad was completed to Titusville in 1862; it connected with the Philadelphia and Erie Railroad, leased by the Pennsylvania, at Corry.  The Oil Creek Railroad was the only direct rail line out of the early Venango Oil Region until 1866.  For some four years, most of the oil moved by rail came north along Oil Creek to Titusville, and then to the world.
 
 

	213 East Main Street, Titusville, Pennsylvania

Titusville’s  great wealth  in the nineteenth century was spectacularly manifested in block after block of fine Victorian homes, many of which are still standing along Titusville’s tree-lined streets.  David Emery built a fine Italianate home at 213 E. Main.  He was a local oil producer and also active in the Bradford fields.  He was an organizer and president of the Octave Oil Company.  He became the owner of the property where Edwin Drake drilled the first successful oil well.  Eventually, Emery’s wife and family transferred the Drake Well site to the Daughters of the American Revolution and additional adjacent land to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
 
 

	602 East Main Street, Titusville, Pennsylvania

John Fertig built his Italianate style home at 602 E. Main Street in 1873.  Three months after moving in, the house was severely damaged by fire.  Fertig, undaunted, immediately rebuilt the home you see today.  A school teacher by training, Fertig early on began drilling for oil.  In 1861, he hit a 1000 barrel a day gusher at the McElheney Farm along Oil Creek, only the second flowing well discovered to that date.  Fertig invested heavily in various industrial enterprises in Titusville including the National Refining Company and the Titusville Ironworks.