Newington (Shields-Brooks House)

Certainly rare in the northern parts of the United States, this estate includes a chapel and a mausoleum. The house has served a single family without breaks in ownership since the 1770s. David Shields built the smaller two-story brick block in 1816 on land granted decades before to his father-in-law, surveyor Daniel Leet. The main house, two-and-one-half stories in height, followed seven years later in a more refined Greek Revival style. The gardens are the glory of the eleven-acre estate and they include an early-twentieth-century labyrinth, attributed to Bryant Fleming.

The Way family also prospered in Sewickley and Edgeworth for nearly two centuries, owning an inn and tavern (c. 1810, with later additions) located just inland from the Ohio River shore on Beaver Road at Quaker Road. At the same intersection, John Way's Federal-style brick house is three-bays wide with a central hall. Rebuilt after it burned in 1841, the house received several additions during the course of the nineteenth century. A block south, Abishai Way, an agent for the Harmonists, built his raised Greek Revival home in 1838 at 108 Beaver Road, giving it a pedimented portico supported on slender columns.