LOCATION:  South east of where Rowes Run flows into Redstone Creek,
about 4 miles E of Brownsville, Redstone Twp    Construction Dates: 1907, 1914 to 1922 

DESCRIPTION The company town, Rowes Run, has about 133 houses, which comprise approximately 95 percent of its original housing stock. The town was laid out in a modified grid, east of the  mine and coke works, along seven parallel streets with alleys. Adjustments to the grid were made to accommodate the hilly terrain. Unlike most company towns in the region, apparently a deliberate effort was made to vary the appearance of houses in Rowes Run. While most of the streets contain identical two-family dwellings, many have alternating styles -- either hipped or gable-roofed with the ends perpendicular to the road, and either shed or hipped-roof front porches. In the western corner of town there are several larger double houses, which may have originally been single-family management dwellings. Of wood-frame construction, they are front-gabled with intersecting gable roofs. An unusually large number of outhouses -- now used  as storage  remain standing in the town. 

The Rowes Run school stands at the north end of town; it is a stretcher-bond red brick one-and-one-half story structure that is roughly square in plan, has intersecting hipped-roofs, and large six­ over-six-light double-hung sash windows. Immediately south of the school, surrounded by streets of  houses, is a large, triangular-shaped ball field and play area. 

The Union Supply company store was built around 1907 and is in fair condition. Two stories high, of stretcher-bond brick, the structure is rectangular in plan and has a flat roof with a parapet. The  front has three sections of multiple double-hung wood sash windows and is eleven bays wide. The entrance has been in-filled with brick. A 1950s wood-frame, tile-block, and green- and yellow­ enameled metal gas station is in fairly poor condition just east of the store. Another, earlier, company store stands about one-quarter mile northeast of town. A three-bay, two-and-one-half story wood-frame gable-roofed building, it may have been associated with Rowes Run.

HISTORY:   Rowes Run was built by the Pittsburgh Coal Company to house the employees
working at Colonial No. 3 mine and coke works. The mine facility was placed into operation in 1906.
The Pittsburgh Coal Company constructed twenty double houses and seven single houses the following year.

In 1911 the H. C. Frick Coke Company acquired the town and mine with 1,041 acres of assigned coal which was accessed by a 308’-shaft. The plant had one battery of 156 bank beehive coke ovens at this time. In 1912 Frick had 233 employees at the plant, one-third of  whom were engaged in  coke manufacture; the plant produced 98,920 tons of coke that year.

 Five double houses and ten single houses were added in 1914, and seventy-one double houses were built in 1922. In 1923, the company built a thirty-room boarding house.   The town had two company stores; the first store was frame and was built in 1907, while the second store was brick and built in 1922.  ...end