Yours to see: J.V.’s old homestead
It’s not hard to imagine the gently sloping lawn crowded with concert-goers – though it was a concert of a most peculiar kind: a telephonic one.
For on a summer’s evening at the dawn of the 20th century the mistress of the House of Thompson invited what she undoubtedly considered the “best” of Uniontown society to her splendid abode west of downtown to listen to the New York Metropolitan Opera – via telephone, as hard as that is to imagine.
On still another summer evening, Hunnie Thompson, the plump, pleasing wife of banker J.V. Thompson, secured a troupe of Shakespearean actors to perform one of the Bard’s plays from the back terrace, as audience members lounged on the lawn. By accounts, the performance of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” was a great success.
The Thompson mansion with its mammoth grounds hosted hundreds if not thousands in those years – beginning practically from the moment the Thompsons arrived back in town from their globe-trotting honeymoon in 1904, just in time for J.V. to cast a ballot for Theodore Roosevelt in that year’s presidential election. Some two months later Oak Hill formally opened with a New Year’s Eve party.
Oak Hill was a singular Uniontown landmark. The great Polish pianist Paderewski performed there; it sported a horse racing track; guests were invited to take a plunge in the estate’s domed swimming pool; J.V. himself escorted guests on pleasant walks around the grounds. It was his chance to show the place off.
The mansion and grounds are still playing host, though to events of a far different character. Since 1933, the former Thompson estate has been in the hands of the Sisters of St. Basil. This weekend’s religious pilgrimage has been an annual highlight of the summer for decades now. Like its many predecessors, it practically rings down the curtain on the season. It’s a rite of passage for both locals and out-of-town guests, for believers and nonbelievers alike.
This year’s two-day pilgrimage started yesterday and concludes today.
You might drop by, if for no other reason than to walk the grounds and just maybe peek inside the mansion house. You don’t have to be one of the faithful to get a kick from either the house or the grounds.
I recently returned to the estate for a walk. I saw two other walkers. One, a woman, was really going at it. She was wearing workout shorts and ear buds; her hair was pushed back on her head and she may even have been sweating. The other walker, a man, looked to be between 40 and 50. His gait might be described as easy-going, though he seemed to be keeping to an uninterrupted pace.
Me, I started and stopped at will. I ventured out to the edge of an adjacent corn field to take in the leafy horizon and the countryside dotted by the occasional house and green fields and trees and a ribbon of highway, the still-new (to me) turnpike extension to Brownsville and beyond.
Just past the cemetery, I turned left, encountering a thick mat of lawn; a stone wall ran down the side to a distance of 150 feet or so; at the far end was a stand of trees that appeared forest-like. I convinced myself this was the Thompson race track. If it was, it was no small track, or so it seemed to me, a person who knows next to nothing about such things.
Across the street stands a two-story building, not exactly farmerish but definitely countryfied, very casual, as if someone set out to create a cottage that grew and grew. Up the hill a few steps is a brick courtyard. Further on is a series of small grassy compartments divided by handsome stone walls.
I climbed the knoll to the Thompson house, now the Retreat Center. I walked onto the front veranda. There is a photograph of Hunnie sitting in a wicker chair on the veranda on a sunny summer day. Cupping my eyes for shade from the slanting sunlight, I looked inside the house through a window.
In the Thompson era, the grounds were huge; today, the grounds are big, real big. The house was sumptuous, and it remains so. The Sisters have performed magnificent conservation work through the years, to the point that Oak Hill and Mt. Macrina, to me at least, are one and the same.
When J.V. Thompson experienced bankruptcy in 1915, causing a panic in the lucrative world of bituminous coal (for bankers and real estate investors), a reporter for the New York Tribune ventured into town. Just off the train, he walked over to Thompson’s 11-story yellow brick bank building at the corner of Main and Pittsburgh streets. Bank president Thompson wasn’t in, the reporter was told by head cashier Edgar S. Hackney. He was at Oak Hill.
“He won’t be too busy to see you,” Hackney explained, “but I warn you, he never gives interviews.”
The reporter had nothing to lose. The house, “a good mile out the turnpike,” was ” worth seeing anyway, ” Hackney said.
The house and grounds are still worth the trip.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.