Paris, Rome, and. . . Oil City?
- Lydia Seaton
- Jul 16
- 6 min read
The year 2025 marks forty years since The Venango Museum of Art, Science and Industry moved into the United States Federal Building in Oil City from our first location in Franklin!
To celebrate the anniversary, this week, our staff wanted to discuss the history of the Venango Museum, the interesting background of the building where the Museum lives, the international impact the Oil Region has had on the world!
The U.S. Federal Building
From the mid-1800s until the 1940s, the Oil Region saw rapid population expansion and commercial growth. In response to such development, the United States Federal Building was built and used as the primary post office in Oil City. Prior to the building's construction in 1905, there were two post offices in Oil City – one on the North Side and another on the South Side.
The first record of mail delivery in the region dates back to 1840, when a courier would deliver weekly from Franklin. Eventually, the first post office in Oil City was constructed by A. G. Siverly in the community which was named for him, Siverly. During the 1850s,
mail deliveries began coming semi-weekly and arrived in Oil City after traveling over the Pittsburgh and Warren turnpikes. It was said that unclaimed mail was left in a large barrel in the Siverly post office where oil speculators were known to “dump the contents of the barrel on the floor to rummage through for their [mail].”
After Oil City’s incorporation as a borough in 1862, the volume of mail coming into the city began to increase immensely. Local postmasters and couriers struggled to keep up with the ever-increasing flow. It was said that the “postal routes [came] from all directions and converged at the mouth of the Oil Creek.”
To help with the extreme magnitude of mail, a second post office was constructed on the South Side. Eventually, the “odd situation” of having two postmasters and two different post offices was ended when the two locations combined into a “city system.” Soon after this, construction began on the U.S. Federal Building on the North Side, which began Oil City’s sole post office!
James Knox Taylor acted as the Supervising Architect for Oil City’s Federal Building. Knox, who served as the Supervising Architect of the United States Department of Treasury for fifteen years, had a prolific career in which he oversaw the construction of hundreds of federal buildings.
He notably worked on the Ellis Island Immigrant Hospital, The Denver Mint, and The Philadelphia Mint. Knox is widely credited with “elevating the quality” of federal buildings during his time as Supervising Architect due to his widespread utilization of the Beaux-Arts style in his work.
Emerging from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the Beaux-Arts architecture style was popular from the mid-nineteenth century until the beginning of the twentieth century.
The style combined elements of renaissance, baroque, and classical architecture with the use of modern materials like steel, glass, and iron. The style was made popular in part by Richard Morris Hunt, an American architect who attended the prestigious Parisian school in the nineteenth century and then returned to America, where the style grew to be widely appreciated.
When looking at a Beaux-Arts style building, you will usually notice symmetry, balance, and repeating elements. There are also usually columns, arches, and domes as well as ornamentation designs and elaborate plaster work. Marble is frequently used inside the buildings. The Beaux-Arts is also known for having sculpted decorations along sleek, conservative lines.
This style was seen as being the perfect combination of corporate wealth and civic pride, and thus, was mostly seen in places where turn-of-the-century wealth was concentrated - and one such place was Oil City!
These Beaux-Arts buildings are formal and monumental, while simultaneously opulent and grand.
Additions, Hallways, and Spies, Oh My!
There were two additions to The Federal Building. One took place in 1912, and another in 1928. One of the additions was to add the entire back room, which is where our 2025 “Oil Boom Spectacular! Entertainment In The Oil Region” exhibit it housed! The other was to create the loading dock, which was also in the rear of the building. Both of these additions were considered to be “less embellished” than the original construction of the building. The 1912 addition was given a tin roof, which matches the original roofing of the building; however the second 1928 addition was given five-ply composite roofing.
When the Museum moved into the building in the 1980s, the loading dock addition was closed in, and the interior of the museum was drastically redone and updated.
The original building pre-renovations was said to have a large number of secret passageways by which postal inspectors would sneak through to watch – and even spy – on postal employees!
Paris, Rome, and... Oil City?
After Colonel Edwin Drake’s success with oil, Oil City and the surrounding region began to grow rapidly. The population of Oil City blossomed to 13,264 in 1900 and by 1910, the population had surpassed 15,000 and continued to climb. The figure peaked in 1930 when it reached 22,075. To accommodate this fast and unceasing growth, the U.S. The Federal Building was constructed.
Oil City was widely recognized as the center of the petroleum industry in the 1860s and onward. While oil had been known to exist in the region for centuries before Edwin Drake's success in 1859, Drake’s drilling was the first to be a deliberate extraction of oil for the purpose of commercial use and sale as an energy and lubrication source. When Drake first arrived in the Oil Region, only six families lived in Oil City. However, within ten years, the once vacant area blossomed into a bustling metropolis of quick money and black gold.
The oil industry provided employment for workers not just in drilling and refining, but also in barrel manufacturing, tool production, and transportation. While Pithole was far gone by 1900, Oil City was described as entering her “Second Renaissance.”
Though Oil City had repeatedly been the victim of fires and floods, the community was said to have taken those setbacks as “opportunities to build new businesses and strengthen old ones.”
Headquarters for corporations like Pennzoil, Quaker State, and Wolf’s Head were all
housed within Venango County, and Oil City continued to, broadly speaking, thrive throughout the twentieth century. When the East End of Oil City underwent a redevelopment project in the early 1960s, the post office was moved back to the south side. After the post office left the Federal Building, other governmental agencies took residence, such as the Selective Service and the Internal Revenue Service. In 1985, the Venango Museum moved into the building and has been serving the community in this location ever since.
At the end of the twentieth century, most oil operations left the area. While a handful of wells continued to produce a steady supply of oil, Oil City was no longer the hub of oil-dom. The impact the Oil Region and Venango County had on the world, however, is notable and indisputable.
The Federal Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977 and remains a local landmark to this day.
This gallery includes photos from the 1985 renovation of the Museum, as well as images of the existing elements of Beaux-Arts in the building!
Thanks for reading!
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