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| Tenement building circa 1905 lower 100 block of Merchant St., west side courtesy Good Samaritan Parish Archives |
I assume that not many photos were taken of early Ambridge and of those, precious few have survived. So I was very excited to see this absolute treasure of a photo, recently donated to the Good Samaritan Parish Archives by Diane Crevar Petcash. Diane is the great-granddaughter of Ambridge department store owner Stephen P. Kristufek. Stephen, frequently referred to as S. P., was the younger brother of the more well-known Ambridge builder, banker, realtor, insurance broker, and councilman Charles Kristufek.
The photo's most prominent building is a large three-story wooden tenement. There's a two-story dwelling to its right, and on the far right side, there's a market that sold groceries and meat. Merchant St. is unpaved. And of course, you can't miss the horse that may be pulling a wagon. None of the people in the photo have been identified.
Diane provided the 1905 date of the photo, but didn't know the location of the buildings. Amazingly, Maria Notarianni, who heads the Good Samaritan Archive committee, was able to locate where the buildings had been, on the 1911 Sanborn Insurance map of Ambridge:
The map shows S.P.'s store was across Merchant from the small apartment building and the market in the photo. On the snip of the map below, the tenement is the large yellow building marked "Tenements" just above the three rows of pink Marshall Alley dwellings. S. P.'s store is the triangular building at the intersection of Merchant and "Duss" on the map.
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| lower part of 100 block of Merchant St. Sanborn Insurance map of Ambridge 1911 |
The tenement is gone, probably long before the First St. area was cleared for redevelopment in the early 1970s, but I can't say that with certainty. So if you remember the tenement--or a different building in the tenement's location (115 Merchant St.)--please let me know when that was.
Diane believes that the tenement had some connection to S. P. Kristufek, since the photo of it was passed down to her along with other family photos, but didn't know what that connection was. I'm doubtful that a relatively wealthy family like S.P.'s would live in a tenement. Except for the time between S.P.'s first store's destruction by fire and his building a second store at the same location, he probably lived above his store, as is mentioned in a newspaper article about an attempted burglary of his second store.
So, what was the connection between S. P. and the tenement? Did S. P. Kristufek build and then perhaps later rent out the tenement when more people moved to Ambridge than he could provide with room and board in his store's building? Was the building occupied by some of S. P.'s more distant family members? Is it possible that S.P.'s family just wanted a photo of the buildings across the street from their store--and because the family was relatively wealthy, could afford to have one taken? I hope more research into Ambridge's earliest years will provide the answer.
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Before writing this, I contacted another of S. P. Kristufek's great-grandchildren, Josh Selley, to see if he had any information about the tenement and its connection to S. P. He did not.
