500 Sixth Street
The grand house at 500 Sixth Street was designed to be a small replica of the Andrew Mellon home in Pittsburgh. The house was converted into a funeral home and has remained so since 1945.
Charles A. Martin for whom the house was built, came to Ellwood City in 1899. In 1907, he was part of the group that founded Peoples National Bank in Ellwood City. The bank was a member of Mellon Bank family which would give some indication as to why Mr. Martin designed his home after the Mellon home. Construction for the house began in 1911 but Charles was not able to move in until 1912.
Peoples National Bank was the only Ellwood City bank to make it through the Great Depression without closing. However, they did not escape entirely as Mr. Martin suffered heavy personal financial losses. Charles A. Martin may have built the grand house with the large columns on Fifth Street and began Peoples National Bank and kept it running during the Depression at a great personal sacrifice, but he will always be remembered for what he gave back to Ellwood City. He was instrumental in establishing the Ellwood City Public Library and he was present at virtually every single civic function in Ellwood City over a thirty year period.
Fred and Mary Patton purchased the Martin home and converted it into a funeral home in 1945. The Patton’s operated their funeral home there until 1960 when the building was sold to the Kenneth Turner who has operated Turner Funeral Home here since.
If you have any memories you would like to share about the house, the Martins, the Pattons, or the Turners, please leave a comment below or email us your memories by CLICKING HERE. Information for this post was gathered from the book Ellwood City Houses and the People Who Lived in Them by Charles R. Moser available at the Ellwood City Historical Society.
You can view some interior pictures of the Turner Funeral Home on Facebook by clicking this LINK.
I grew up on the 2nd and 3rd floors of this magnificent house.
I was always under the impression that Mr Patton who ran the funeral home prior to my Father (Ken Turner) was named Bill Patton and not Frank (unless he went by Bill for another reason). My Dad always called him Bill.
I was also told that this home was the first in Lawrence County to have electricity – using a Edison generator in the basement. The fixtures and chandeliers had both gas and electric. The oak woodwork inside and oak wainscoting is so beautiful and too expensive today to reproduce.
The house also had something many think is a new innovation, but was there from the 1900′s……central vacuum cleaning! It worked off of a hydro-aspirator attached to a “slop” sink in the basement. This created enough vacuum that as long as you only removed one of the brass plugs on the baseboard at a time, you just hooked-up a hose and could vacuum the room. The brass plugs are still there.
There were also wood-frame servants quarters, one for female help and one for male help behind the house. One has been torn down now to make room for the FH parking lot, but the other still exists at 613 Park Ave. On the 2nd floor of the main house there are brass “buzzers” which once rang in the servants quarters behind.