The Wilson Kistler House
The house at 302 West Church Street Lock Haven, known as the Wilson Kistler house, was originally built in 1864 by J. Welliver. The land the house was built on was originally owned by Phillip M. Price, a Lock Haven business man who also donated 18.37 acres of land to create the campus for the Central Normal School, which later became Lock Haven University.
The house that J. Welliver built was a much smaller Italianate two-storey villa. Wilson Kistler, who had arrived in Lock Haven in the 1870s to oversee his family's tannery operations in Pennsylvania, acquired the house in the 1880s. In 1887, he began extensive renovations. Mr. Kistler hired craftsman from Italy to work on his new home, which he wanted to be the grandest home in Lock Haven. The workman lived in the house at 302 West Church Street for two years, and when they were finished, the grand Queen Anne Victorian with the two towers and a signature slate roof with bronze ridge caps was complete.
From the early 1890s through the 1920s, the house was one of the social hubs of Lock Haven. The house was also a first in many ways. It was the first house in Lock Haven to have electricity. It was also the first to use steam heat (Wilson Kistler ran a large pipe from his tannery operations located over a ¼ mile away to his brick Carriage house - where his servants slept - to his house. He heated his house with the runoff steam from his factory.)
In 1915, Wislon Kistler died of a heart attack on the sidewalk in front of his house. His wife lived there until 1927, where she died in bed. The house passed on to the Grugan family, who retained ownership until the 1970s, and then several other owners - including the Arcadipane's, the Tedescos, the Lock Haven University Foundation - and finally to us. But no matter how many owners, the house at 302 West Church Street is and always will be known as The Wislon Kistler house.