Bellefonte, PA Historic Sites

A photo from my hometown of Bellefonte, PA (home to 7 PA Governors by the way!). This photo is doubly historical, as it shows the Pennsylvania Match Factory, as well as our historic Bellefonte Central Railroad passing through town (at Talleyrand Park).

The Pennsylvania Match Company, known locally as the Match Factory, was founded in 1899 by Col. W. Fred Reynolds, Joseph L. Montgomery and S. A. Donachy with $200,000 of their own money.

Mr. Donachy owned several patents for match-making machinery and worked as superintendent for the match company Hanover & York prior to their sale.

A 31,000 square feet (2,900 m2) brick building was constructed in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania and production began in 1900. By 1911, the company was one of the eight largest producers of wooden matches in the US. At its peak during World War II, the factory employed almost 400 and merged with Universal Match Corporation. According to the Bellefonte Historical and Cultural Association, the business "closed in 1947 due to competition from book matches and cigarette lighters."

The red brick buildings were then purchased by lumber and building supply company M. L. Claster & Sons for their General Offices and Bellefonte storage, adding to adjacent land they already owned.

After Clasters was sold to YBC in 1997, the site stood vacant for several years until the American Philatelic Society, looking for more space at lower cost, purchased the complex in 2002, renovated the largest building and relocated from State College. The society then refurbished the adjacent structure, making space available for other commercial tenants, and stated their intention to eventually rehabilitate the remaining buildings.

The Bellefonte Railroad Passenger Station was built in 1889. It was renovated in 1975-1976 by the Borough of Bellefonte, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Historical Site Commission. Today it houses the Bellefonte Intervalley Area Chamber of Commerce and the Bellefonte Historical Railroad.

The Bellefonte Central Railroad played a decisive role in both the economic development of the Centre County region and the rise of The Pennsylvania State University. The short line began rail transport in 1886 as the Buffalo Run, Bellefonte, and Bald Eagle Railroad hauling iron ore from deposits near Struble, west of State College, to Bellefonte. As Centre County's iron furnace industry declined and local supplies of ore proved insufficient, the Bellefonte Furnace Company closed. The loss of furnace traffic in February 1891 proved fatal to the BR&BE and, on December 1, 1891, the railroad was sold at foreclosure to a group of its Philadelphia bondholders - represented by Henry Whelen, R. Dale Benson and Francis F. Milne. Under a plan subsequently approved by the bondholders, the BR&BE was reorganized as the Bellefonte Central (BFC) on May 9, 1892. Dependency on ore traffic was immediately reduced by building a branch extending from a wye at Struble to State College where the BFC established new sources of revenue in handling passengers and coal for the Penn State power plant. By connecting Bellefonte and State College, the short line railroad and its spurs linked formerly isolated central Pennsylvania communities to larger cities via the Pennsylvania Railroad system. This created the transportation infrastructure necessary to sustain several core Centre County industries-iron ore extraction, coke-based iron manufacturing, limestone production, lumbering, and coal mining-well into the twentieth century.
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