The Clemuel Ricketts Mansion is a Georgian-style house made of sandstone, built in 1852 or 1855 on the shore of Ganoga Lake. Originally built as a hunting lodge, it was also a tavern and post office, and served as part of a hotel for much of the 19th century. After 1903 the house served as the Ricketts family’s summer home; they kept it even as they sold over 65,000 acres to the state of Pennsylvania from 1920 to 1950.
About Clemuel Ricketts Mansion in brief
The Clemuel Ricketts Mansion is a Georgian-style house made of sandstone, built in 1852 or 1855 on the shore of Ganoga Lake in Colley Township, Sullivan County, Pennsylvania. Originally built as a hunting lodge, it was also a tavern and post office, and served as part of a hotel for much of the 19th century. After 1903 the house served as the Ricketts family’s summer home; they kept it even as they sold over 65,000 acres to the state of Pennsylvania from 1920 to 1950. The house was included in the Historic American Buildings Survey in 1936 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. A group of investors bought the lake, surrounding land, and house in 1957 and developed them privately for housing and recreation. The mansion and lake are on a part of the Allegheny Plateau known as North Mountain; the plateau formed about 300 to 250 million years ago in the Alleghenian orogeny. The lake is in a shallow valley, 13 feet deep, which is impounded by glacial till up to 30 feet thick at the southeast end, where Kitchen Creek exits. The earliest recorded inhabitants of the region were the Susquehannocks, who left or died out by 1675. The land then came under the control of the Iroquois, who sold it to the British in the Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768, then became part of Lycoming County in 1795, and then Sullivan County in 1847.
In 1851, the Rickets brothers bought theLake and surrounding land in 1851 and began building a stone house that they called the Stone House. The year 1852 is also carved in stone on the front of the house, which faced the highway on the highway. While it was originally known as Ricketts Folly, the official name was the Stonepike House, and it was built as the brothers’ lodge and tavern for turn-of-the-century travelers. In 1913 a 2 1⁄2-story wing was added to the north side of the House and the original structure was renovated. Dormers and some windows were added in the renovation, and electrical wiring and modern plumbing have been added since. The house has seven rooms, four porches, and its original hardware and woodwork. It was built in a clearing surrounded by old-growth forest with a view to the lake 900 feet toThe lake was then known as Long Pond, and the Long Pond Tavern, just north of where the house was later built, was a lunch stop for the stagecoach on the turnpike. In the early 1850s, the brothers purchased the lake and land and land for USD 550, and had the house built from 1854 to 1855. According to the NRHP nomination form, the house is a stunning example of Georgian vernacular architecture. It is not open to the public.
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This page is based on the article Clemuel Ricketts Mansion published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 30, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
