339 North Duke Street Lancaster, PA
This townhouse by architect C. Emlen Urban is often unknown. It has been hiding in plain sight behind a modern first-floor addition.
C. Emlen Urban designed and directed this townhouse when he was only 22 years old. He was working in Philadelphia at that time for architect Willis G. Hale.
Mr. Urban designed this house for the residence of Lancaster County Commissioner Samuel M. Myers and wife Anna Mary (Dysart) Myers. An 1885 Lancaster newspaper described this Queen Anne style home: “in many respects is the most complete and the most beautiful in the city of Lancaster.”
The elaborate entry hall and stairway were “certainly unequalled by anything in private residence in this city” according to that 1885 newspaper. Emlen Urban’s father provided the interior woodwork from his planing mill.
The house features Philadelphia pressed brick with Peerless ornamental bricks and Perth Amboy terra cotta trimmings. The base is of Hummelstown brownstone with Indiana bluestone sills. The exterior is laid in red mortar.
Emlen Urban’s 1888 Southern Market has usually been described as his first major commission in Lancaster. But this important commission predates that market by several years.
A modern first-floor addition apparently was constructed before Lancaster’s Heritage Conservation District was established in 1999.
