Eckles leaves New Castle after 124 years
Jul. 25—A noted architectural firm that has been firmly planted in New Castle for 124 years has pulled up roots and left town.
Eckles Architecture & Engineering, located in a Victorian-style house at 301 N. Mercer St., closed its doors last week after merging with DRAW Collective, a Pittsburgh-based architectural-engineering firm.
The Eckles staff has two offices in Cranberry, Butler County, as a result of the merge, and hereafter will go under the name of DRAW Collective.
The merger took effect July 1 with DRAW, which has its main office in Mount Lebanon, Allegheny County.
Since the heyday of New Castle in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Eckles has always been a place where loyal staff would work for their entire careers, reflected longtime employee, architect and former owner, David Esposito.
And through the century, the firm has contributed to the designs of many significant buildings in New Castle, some of which have since been razed.
Esposito worked for Eckles four months shy of 40 years, alongside longtime employee Robert Naugle, who retired in 2013.
"I was the fifth president, and Dave was the sixth," Naugle said.
Esposito retired in January and sold his part of the business to Mark Scheller and Jeremy Beatty. He said he learned a few months later that they had entered the merger.
"When I retired, I told them it was my desire that the company continue to run here, because the cost of living is low and it's a good place," he said. "I was surprised to find out about the merger. I understand it's more opportunity, but I feel bad, because it was my intent to let this continue. We were one of the 50 oldest practicing firms in the country. We've had a lot of employees who came and never left."
Although he regrets seeing the firm leave, he acknowledged that Cranberry is a growing place and presents a lot of opportunity.
Scheller added that one reason for the relocation is to attract top talent to the company.
"In the recent years, we have been challenged with attracting young professionals to the New Castle location," he said. "We have interviewed our young architect interns and asked them if they will be living in New Castle following their graduation from local colleges. The general response is that they will not be living in New Castle after graduation.
"They have expressed the desire to be in a thriving community with young professionals similar to themselves. The Cranberry (Township) location will allow us to attract the young professionals who are critical to the future of our firm."
Scheller had become the 11th or 12th principal of the Eckles firm, at the helm with Esposito, who had become a principal in 1991 with Naugle. Naugle had 40 years with the firm.
Longtime architect and former president R. Kay Thompson previously had retired in 2002.
For many years, the ownership had been shared by two or three individuals.
Thompson, who lives out of state now, had been with the firm 52 years and became president when William George Eckles of the Eckles family line retired.
Eckles' grandfather, William George Eckles, started the firm in 1898. His son, Robert, took over in the 1920s, and William George took over in the 1950s.
"We tried to keep this a great place to work," Esposito said. "We were able to attract talented people who moved here from Pittsburgh."
One of the first buildings the company designed in the late 1800s was the Almira Home on East Washington Street, as a senior home. It now is owned by Lawrence County government and houses Children and Youth Services.
"We've done a lot of public school work, and churches," Esposito said, noting that Eckles designed more than 2,000 public school construction and renovation projects.
"I tried to count them once," he said.
They have included work at Laurel, Wilmington Area, Grove City, Sharon, Burgettstown, Chestnut Ridge, Pine Richland, South Fayette, Chestnut Ridge, Moon Area, Southmoreland and other school districts.
Eckles was the architect for the stately, stone buildings that went up on the Grove City College campus between 1912 and 1952, including Crawford Hall, one of its early projects, and the historic Harbison Chapel.
"We also did a lot of buildings at Westminster College (and its Burry Stadium), Thiel and Geneva colleges and Slippery Rock," Esposito said. The company's work also has reached as far away as Mansfield University in Tioga County.
"Education was kind of a niche for us," he explained. The firm designed the New Castle High School building, and more recently, renovations to the Lockley Early Learning Center and the renovations to the district's Taggart Stadium.
"We did a lot of buildings downtown around the turn of the 1900s, when New Castle was a growing place," he pointed out. He said he found drawings in the basement of the North Mercer Street building of structures that have since been demolished.
Other that are still standing include the former post office building on Kennedy Square, built in 1932, Washington Centre, the Castleton hotel, the Towne Mall, the YMCA, the newer section of the county courthouse, and more recently, the renovation of the Treloar & Heisel building downtown.
The firm also did design and engineering work for St. Francis and Jameson hospitals.
"At one time this was a hopping place," Esposito reflected. "There used to be a lot of work in town when New Castle was flourishing, but for a number of years, we've been taking our work out of Lawrence County, as far away as a four-hour drive.
"After awhile, if we didn't go out and get work in other parts of the state, there just wasn't enough work locally," he explained.
The firm's designs can be found in buildings throughout Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, New York, North Carolina and Florida.
Scheller said those designs will not be lost.
"Our archived drawings will be maintained by Andrew Henley, the president of Pleasant Hill Historians," he said. "He will be maintaining our many historic drawings that have been accumulated over the 124 years of our firm.
"The drawings are a treasure, and we are proud to have them maintained by such a dedicated historian within the New Castle Community."
The company was one of four architectural firms in New Castle at one time, and in its prime had employed about 50 people. When it closed this week, there were eight left.
The company in early years was housed in the Johnson Building, then moved to the Lawrence Savings and Trust Building. When that was torn down for urban renewal in 1970, the firm moved into the Victorian House on Mercer Street, which had ownership in the Eckles lineage.
"We think the house was built in the 1860s," Esposito said, noting the original deed had been signed in 1863. It had been owned by someone named Robert Wallace Clendenin, who ran a dry goods store in New Castle in the mid-1800s. An addition was built onto the house in 1893.
Esposito noted that despite the merger, there still remains an Eckles company. The company has always had engineers on staff. In 2005, the company Eckles Construction Services was created. and it still exists, providing construction management, clerk of works and other services.
Its sole owner is John Pappas, and Brian Fulkerson is the project manager. That company also will be located in an office in Cranberry, Esposito said, but it maintains the Eckles name.
Esposito said he does not know what will become of the stately house that graces North Mercer Street. It will likely be put up for sale, he suggested.
Scheller confirmed that the company "will be listing the building in New Castle in the coming months."
