Mount Union borough

Crum Corner Reinventions

Photograph not reproduced here. The image that goes with this story is held by huntingdoncountyhistory.com and its credit does not permit republication, so it is cited rather than copied. See the original.

One corner, many lives. The Crum building stands on the corner of Jefferson Street and Railroad Avenue, and before it there was a hotel called the Broad Top House.

James G. Doyle built it. He had come to town in 1857, and he died in the building on 28 April 1859, before it was entirely finished. Charles H. Welch names the keepers who followed him: Elijah Aultz, Bryson Shaver, Scott Wollett, the Hackadorns and Mrs. Withers.

It stood along the railroad opposite the station, and Welch says that made it “a center for much trade in its day.”

When it came down the material did not go to waste. Welch records that it was re-erected on the North Side, and was being used by Mr. Crum when he wrote.

Inside the Crum building that replaced it worked the barber James Nevell, in a room opposite the Beers Hotel. He set up for himself on 1 November 1896.

Checked against the record. SOURCED at last. Every detail this page carried — James Nevell, November 1896, the Beers Hotel, the Broad Top House — came from Welch's history and none of it was cited. The page now names the book and the pages. CORRECTED: the page called the Broad Top House an early hotel “in canal days”. It was not. Welch places it “along the railroad opposite the station” and dates its building to the late 1850s, by which time the Pennsylvania Railroad had been through for years. This is a railroad-era hotel, and the site has confused the canal era with the railroad era before. A DATE THE SOURCE WILL NOT SETTLE. Welch gives two. On page 178, in Doyle's own biography, the Broad Top House is erected “in 1859”. On page 650 it “was built by James G. Doyle in 1858”. The same book, two different years. There is no way to choose between them from the book alone, so the page says the late 1850s and gives the one date the book is consistent about: Doyle died in the unfinished building on 28 April 1859. ADDED, and it is the best thing on the page: the hotel was torn down and its material re-erected on the North Side, in use by Mr. Crum when Welch wrote. The building that replaced it on the corner carries his name, and so did the timber of the one it replaced.

Sources

Checked 2026-09-09 · Historic Mount Union collection

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