Robert Sayre Mansion

The blocks immediately south of the railroad headquarters building ( NO33) form Fountain Hill, a residential district adorned with the mansions of nineteenth-century iron and railroad executives. The elegant houses once glittered brighter even than the mansions of E. Market Street on the other side of the river. Only slightly less ostentatious were the fine houses of iron company and railroad managers. The first of Fountain Hill's great houses was the home of the Lehigh Valley Railroad's chief engineer and general superintendent, Sayre, who was responsible for extending the line throughout the northeast and creating trunk line service between the Great Lakes and New York City. His red brick Gothic Revival house features one familiar Gothic-style preference, carved bargeboards, but the windows are simple double-hung sash in rectangular, not pointed-arched, openings. The design of the house, which may have been by Sayre himself, is reserved, reclining comfortably atop its conspicuous rise rather than striving upward. Appropriately, the house has recently been adapted as a boutique hotel.