NEW CASTLE, Pa. – Electric lights. Indoor plumbing. Refrigeration. A bathroom scale. Electric toasters. All are commonplace afterthoughts in households today.
Not so during the first two decades of the 20th century, as these conveniences were considered cutting-edge technology and only available to those of wealth and status.
There’s perhaps no better example of this transitional era than the Alex Crawford Hoyt Period House in New Castle – a 12,500-square-foot Tudor Revival mansion that serves as a living time capsule where visitors can step back to a period when the United States was stepping forward into modernity.
It is the subject of a new exhibition, The American Innovations Tour: The Making of the Modern Home at the Arts & Education at the Hoyt, which manages the period house. The program – in honor of America’s 250th birthday – will officially kick off Saturday, said Kimberly Koller-Jones, executive director.
Emergence of the Modern Home
“This is a house that was really built between two eras,” Koller-Jones said, as the country emerged from the Gilded Age of the late 19th century to a time when new homes for the wealthy came equipped with the latest features. Construction on the home on East Leasure Avenue began in 1914 and was completed in January 1917, just as the country inched toward war with Germany. The mansion cost $250,000 to build, a fortune for the time.
The program consists of a room-by-room tour of the mansion that tells the story of how Alex Crawford Hoyt and his wife, June, conducted their daily lives and entertained others – all with the help of the latest devices, Koller-Jones said.
“The house came with all of these new innovations, such as plumbing, electricity and central vacuuming,” she said. A period Mazda light bulb that is original to the house, for example, is on display in the dining room. After more than a century, the bulb still works. “It was one of the first homes in Lawrence County to be electrified.”
There are also homages to the region’s history. The home’s breakfast room, for example, is decorated with Shenango China, a New Castle manufacturer of dinnerware that was established in 1901 and eventually closed in 1991.
Also on the ground floor is an early phonograph, a Victrola, that was donated to the Hoyt for the program, as well as an Atwater Kent radio dating from the 1920s. The home’s Grand Hall, where guests would be greeted by the Hoyt’s butler, John Lang, also featured a “telephone room” at a time when the vast majority of Americans had to make their calls from their local general store.
“The telephone system was built with the house,” Koller-Jones said. That system was dismantled years ago, and a candlestick phone in a small cabinet sits at the far end of the hall as one enters the parlor.
Many rooms are also accessible to a central vacuum system, in which hoses are connected to baseboard portals that feed into a maze of piping throughout the house and into the basement. The system is activated by a wall switch.
Upstairs, a guest room is filled with children’s toys and games, including Crayola crayons, Lincoln Logs and an early erector set. The Hoyts had no children, but this room was often reserved for visiting friends and relatives.
Interspersed throughout the mansion is period, high-end furniture, as well as other amenities such as a television set from 1951 in Crawford (he preferred to use his middle name) Hoyt’s upstairs bedroom. His upstairs office also includes a lever-filled fountain pen – a relatively new patent – an adding machine and an Underwood typewriter. Other amenities throughout the house include an early refrigerator, commercial laundry equipment, original artwork and a freight elevator.
Wealth, Privilege and a Burglary
Koller-Jones said Hoyt was born into a wealthy family, as his father managed mining and railroad interests. According to a newspaper account, Crawford Hoyt inherited $1 million on his 21st birthday, and in 1931 he became president of The First National Bank of Lawrence County.
Hoyt’s wealth also attracted some unwanted attention too.
On the early morning of Jan. 28, 1928, Richard Cowan of Omaha, Neb., entered the Hoyt mansion -– described by newspapers as “one of the most beautiful homes in New Castle.”
He was there to rob the place.
According to an account published in the Youngstown Vindicator in 1928, Cowan broke into the Hoyt home and “after ransacking the first floor” stole $62 in cash and a wristwatch worth $250. Cowan then smashed a window in the house next door, where Hoyt’s sister, Mary Emma Hoyt, lived. Alerted, Emma screamed and awakened her cousin, Frank Hoyt, who was staying there. The armed burglar demanded the cousin surrender a diamond ring worth approximately $5,000.
Crawford Hoyt contacted the police, and together they tracked the thief’s footprints in the snow, apprehending him at a train depot later that day.
Cowan was convicted and sentenced to 10 to 16 years in prison. In 1931 he escaped but was recaptured in New Jersey the following year after attempting to break into the home of a prominent business owner.
Finding the Right Stuff
Koller-Jones said she spent months procuring some of the items now on display. “I find them all over the place,” she said. “eBay, antique shops, auction houses. I’ve been looking and buying for months.”
The exhibit will begin with a grand opening celebration from 4-8 p.m. Saturday. The evening will feature free guided tours on the half hour, a gallery talk on how dangers in the home helped drive innovation and interactive demonstrations drawn from free K-12 lesson plans with Hoyt’s education staff.
Other gallery talks are scheduled throughout the year, Koller-Jones said, as well as free admission days on April 19, June 14 and Sept. 17.
Bob Presnar, collections manager, said he did some of the research and helped create a list of those items that were new and innovative to the era. “If we didn’t have those items, we actually went out and looked for them.”
He said the Hoyt mansion is a perfect venue to display American ingenuity during the early 20th century.
“This was the smart home of its day,” he said. “This is a great place to tell this story.”
Pictured at top: Kimberly Koller-Jones, executive director of Arts & Education at the Hoyt, with a portrait of Alex Crawford Hoyt, who constructed the Hoyt Period House in 1917.