Braemar Cottage

Third Street, Cresson Township, Cambria County, Pennsylvania

Built 1887, for The Hon. Benjamin Franklin Jones Sr. (1824-1903) and his wife Mary McMasters (1829-1911). Also referred to today as the Benjamin Franklin Jones Cottage it is listed on the National Registry of Historic Places. Braemar Cottage is one of only two relics of the once fashionable Cresson Springs Mountain Resort, once a retreat for Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919), Charles Michael Schwab (1862-1939) and William Thaw Sr. (1818-1889) etc. It is often confused with Carnegie’s Braemar built for Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919).

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Somewhat confusingly, in the 1870s Carnegie built a cottage (a real cottage) for his mother, “Peggy” Margaret Morrison (1810-1886), which she named Braemar for a village in her native Scotland. Though somewhat dwarfed by the Jones House - built the year after Peggy died - it still stands directly next door.

B.F. Jones was the Chairman of the Republican National Committee who co-founded the Jones & Laughlin Steel Company at Pittsburgh - the only other steel company capable of rivalling the Carnegie Steel Co. In the summer, Mr and Mrs Jones would take their private rail car “Cleopatra” to Cresson where they spent $18,000 building their eclectic 14-room summer “cottage”. Their son, Benjamin Franklin Jones Jr. (1863-1928) lived at the B.F. Jones House at Pittsburgh.

Various rumours exist as to the notable guests who stayed at the Jones cottage over the years: Two are ruled out by dates, being Presidents Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) and James Buchanan (1791-1868); one by geography, being the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894); and, though “America’s Agatha Christie” Mary Rinehart Roberts (1876-1958) might have visited Cresson, there’s nothing to say she stayed at the house. Even the staircase at the Jones house is only “rumoured” to have been designed by McKim, Mead & White.

In 1910, adding to the bequest that Carnegie had made with his cottage, the now widowed Mrs Jones donated the house and grounds to the State Department of Health for use as a Tuberculosis Sanitorium. In 1923, the State returned the property to private ownership, selling it for $2,201 to the pioneer aviator, “the first man to loop-the-loop,” DeLloyd Thompson (1888-1949), also known as David Lloyd “Dutch” Thompson. He summered here with his wife, “the well-regarded” tennis champion, Naomi Jean Parkinson, and their children.

Its story for the next forty years is still shrouded in mystery. In 1990, a group purchased the old mansion with a view to restoring it, but this never came to fruition and in 2009 a judge ordered its demolition. The owners launched an appeal and though the town supervisors turned down a request for a $150,000 grant, they held the demolition off for a further a year. In 2011, Andrew and Carrie Dziabo of Cresson purchased the historic home in order to restore it.