The Brick Office that Became the Red Cross

Look at the sign in the yard.

This little brick building on Market Street was the General Refractories Company office. When the company closed its Mount Union yard in the early 1950s, the brickyard and seven houses next to it were leveled. Three buildings were spared, for a reason that had nothing to do with sentiment: the office, the superintendent's house and a weigh shed happened to sit on a line with the residential streets instead of with the plant. The shed became somebody's house. The office became the local Red Cross headquarters. The plant site itself was cleared and became the town's park and athletic field.

The Red Cross goes a long way back here. Huntingdon County has had a chapter at Mount Union since the First World War, covering everything east and south of Jacks Mountain, and in the 1920s it was running classes in town in sewing and cooking for the newest families.

Checked 2026-09-09 · Historic Mount Union collection

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