Frontier Fort at the Forks of the Ohio

In the mid-18th century, three mighty rivers meet at a point of land in what is now downtown Pittsburgh. This strategic “Forks of the Ohio” was the prize in a global conflict between empires – the French and Indian War (1754–1763). After wresting control from the French (who had built Fort Duquesne on the site), the British erected a grand new fortification in 1759-61 named Fort Pitt, in honor of William Pitt. Fort Pitt was one of the largest and most elaborate British forts in North America, a five-bastioned stronghold guarding the gateway to the west. Its presence cemented British power on the frontier and protected settlers and traders venturing into the Ohio Country.

But peace was short-lived on this contested ground. In 1763, just months after the Treaty of Paris ended the war, Native American forces allied under Ottawa leader Pontiac rose up in resistance to British encroachment. Fort Pitt came under siege during Pontiac’s War that summer, surrounded by Delaware, Shawnee, Mingo, and Huron warriors. The garrison endured a 72-day siege in brutal conditions. Relief finally came in August 1763 when Colonel Henry Bouquet led British troops to victory over the tribes at the Battle of Bushy Run, forcing the lifting of the siege. Fort Pitt had survived, but the close call exposed vulnerabilities in its defenses – parts of the fort’s walls had been damaged by flooding and were still unrepaired. The British knew they needed to shore up Fort Pitt’s security if they were to hold this frontier outpost.

 

Construction of Bouquet’s Redoubt (1764)

In response to the scare of 1763, Colonel Henry Bouquet, now commandant at Fort Pitt, ordered the construction of several outlying defensive structures the following year. In the summer of 1764, word reached Fort Pitt that hostile tribes might attack again. Bouquet’s solution was to build five small redoubts – fortified blockhouses – outside the fort’s main walls to extend its defensive firepower. These redoubts would serve as first lines of defense, covering the approaches to Fort Pitt and guarding any weak spots in the fort’s perimeter.

One of these was Bouquet’s Redoubt, today famous as the Fort Pitt Block House. It was a two-story, five-sided brick blockhouse rising about 25 feet to the peak of its pyramidal wood roof. (In fact, four of the new redoubts were constructed of brick, and one of wood .) The little fortlet had thick masonry walls with a stone foundation, and narrow musket loopholes (gun slits) lining both the ground and second floors for defenders to fire through. Inside, wooden firing steps allowed soldiers to climb up and aim out the gun ports set at varying heights. The Block House stood just outside Fort Pitt’s moat and main ramparts, positioned to sweep the fort’s outer grounds with musket fire and protect against ambush or sappers. In essence, Bouquet’s redoubt was a guardhouse anchoring the fort’s outer defenses, ready to blunted any attack before it reached Fort Pitt’s walls .

Ironically, the anticipated renewed attack never materialized. After Pontiac’s uprising waned, Fort Pitt saw no further direct assaults in its history. Bouquet’s redoubts, though built for war, never had to fire in anger. In military terms, what Bouquet had built in 1764 was technically a redoubt – an outlying guard post. The term block house usually refers to a last-stand refuge inside a fort. Nevertheless, local tradition soon took to calling the little structure the “Old Block House,” and that name stuck. Today, Bouquet’s Redoubt and the Fort Pitt Block House are one and the same. It remains the only survivor of the five redoubts built in 1764, and indeed the only piece of Fort Pitt still standing into the present day .

From Fort Defense to Trading Post

As the frontier calmed in the late 1760s, the British military presence at Fort Pitt waned. By 1772, with colonial-Native hostilities reduced, the British decided to abandon Fort Pitt as a regular garrison. They handed over the fort to civilian authorities and pulled out the troops, in part due to the cost of maintaining such a large outpost in peacetime. At that point, the need for Bouquet’s fortified redoubts had all but evaporated. The Block House soon found a very different use: it became a frontier trading post and meeting place. British Indian Agent Alexander McKee set up shop in the Block House around 1772, using it as his base for trade with Native Americans and negotiations with local tribes. Where once muskets had pointed out of its loopholes, now furs, blankets, and trade goods moved through its doors.

This humble commercial role didn’t last long. The American Revolution broke out in 1775, and the Ohio Valley again became a contested region. McKee remained a Loyalist – he was suspected of colluding with the British – and in 1778 he fled Fort Pitt to avoid arrest by American forces. (McKee in fact defected to the British and later led raids against the American frontier.) During the Revolutionary War, Fort Pitt was reoccupied by American Patriot troops. The fort served as an American headquarters for the Western Department, organizing expeditions and defending settlers from British-allied Indian attacks. The exact use of the Block House in this period is unclear, but it likely returned to a military function as an ancillary outpost or storehouse during the war .

By war’s end, Fort Pitt’s strategic importance faded as the new United States secured the frontier. Pittsburgh was evolving from a mere fort into a budding town. In 1783, the Revolution concluded and the frontier moved further west. Fort Pitt, now obsolete, became surplus property. The federal government decided to sell off the old fort site to private buyers. In 1785, Fort Pitt – largely unused and deteriorating – was officially sold to two Pittsburgh land investors, Colonel Alexander Ross and Major Stephen Bayard. These developers saw opportunity in dividing the Point’s land into town lots. They wasted no time dismantling the old fort – its stone and bricks were valuable materials for Pittsburgh’s growth. Nearly all of Fort Pitt’s buildings and walls were torn down in the late 1780s, the materials “cannibalized” and recycled into new houses and structures for the expanding town. The once-mighty fort vanished piece by piece into Pittsburgh’s foundations.

 

A Home on the Frontier (1780s–1800s)

Amid this widespread demolition, one structure was spared: the Block House. It survived largely because it had already transitioned from military outpost to domestic dwelling. Sometime around 1785, as Fort Pitt was being sold and disassembled, Major Isaac Craig acquired the Block House and made it his home. Craig was a Revolutionary War veteran and an early Pittsburgh leader – he served as Deputy Quartermaster General in the region and later as Pittsburgh’s chief burgess (mayor). Recognizing the sturdy little fort’s utility, Craig annexed the Block House into a larger house he built on the site in 1785. He constructed an adjoining residence on the Block House’s north side, effectively enlarging it into a comfortable home while retaining the original brick redoubt as one wing of the dwelling. Within those walls, Craig’s family made their residence – in fact, his son Neville B. Craig, who would grow up to be a prominent Pittsburgh author and historian, was born in the Block House in 1787 .

During these years, the Block House was essentially a typical frontier home (if a very stout one). For the comfort of its occupants, new doors and windows were opened up in the thick brick walls, changes far removed from the structure’s martial origins. The surrounding land, once a military compound, became a neighborhood simply known as “the Point,” filled with homes and shops of the young city. Major Craig lived at the Block House for only a couple of years before moving on to other endeavors (he partnered with his father-in-law, James O’Hara, in various industries). Over the next two decades, the Block House property changed hands a few times. Finally, in 1805, James O’Hara – Pittsburgh’s wealthiest early industrialist and a former U.S. Army quartermaster general – purchased almost the entire Point, including the Block House, consolidating the land under his ownership. O’Hara was forward-thinking and entrepreneurial; he established the first glassworks in Pittsburgh (in partnership with Craig) and a brewery at the Point. There are hints that the old Block House even found a use in O’Hara’s enterprises: archaeologists suspect it may have been used as a storage building for the nearby O’Hara glass factory and brewery, perhaps warehousing bottles of O’Hara’s ale brewed in an old Fort Pitt barrack-turned-malthouse .

O’Hara’s death in 1819 eventually passed the Point lands, along with the Block House, to his heirs. After a brief tenure by O’Hara’s daughter Mary Carson (who died in 1827), the property came to O’Hara’s young granddaughter Mary Elizabeth Croghan – later Mary Schenley. Through the early and mid-1800s, the Block House remained in use as a residence for ordinary Pittsburghers. As the city grew up around it, this little relic of redcoats and frontiersmen quietly became a neighborhood house. Generations of families – at times multiple families at once – lived within its venerable walls. During this long domestic period, locals never forgot what it had been. People referred to it fondly as the “Old Blockhouse,” and residents often played host to curious visitors and dignitaries who wanted to see the last tangible remnant of Fort Pitt. In an era when Pittsburgh was transforming into an industrial powerhouse, the Block House was already an antique, a living link to the city’s frontier era.

By the late 19th century, however, time had taken a toll. The once-proud redoubt had become a dilapidated relic. The surrounding Point district devolved into a crowded, impoverished industrial slum. In the shadow of factories and railroad yards, the Block House was now subdivided into a multi-family tenement, its brick walls burdened by rickety lean-to additions and weathered by neglect. One visitor in the 1880s would have found it hard to imagine that this run-down lodging, hemmed in by grime and poverty, was the same fort that had stood sentinel in 1764. The Block House’s survival was hanging by a thread, dependent on the goodwill of its owner and the whims of progress. Fortunately, salvation was near at hand, in the form of one of Pittsburgh’s most famous benefactresses.

 

Mary Schenley to the Rescue

By 1890, Mary Croghan Schenley controlled the Block House property as part of her extensive inheritance. Mary Schenley (1826–1903) is often remembered as “Pittsburgh’s Fairy Godmother” for her philanthropy – despite living abroad, she donated land and funds to create many of Pittsburgh’s parks and institutions. It was Mary Schenley who gave the city Schenley Park, for example, and who provided the acreage for the Carnegie Library and Museum in Oakland. In the early 1890s, the members of a new historical organization – the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) – appealed to Mrs. Schenley to help them save the deteriorating Block House. The Pittsburgh Chapter of the DAR, formed in 1891, saw the Block House as a priceless relic of colonial and Revolutionary times that desperately needed preservation. Mary Schenley agreed.

In 1894, Mary Schenley deeded the Fort Pitt Block House to the DAR for the purpose of preservation. The transfer took effect March 15, 1894, when the deed was formally recorded. In a letter to the Pittsburgh DAR Chapter, Schenley charged the society with a clear duty: “You are to preserve and keep this relic of a bygone past, and to gather and preserve all obtainable history and tradition in regard to it… and to make it the receptacle of relics bearing on the Colonial and Revolutionary periods of its existence.” It was, essentially, a mission statement for the Block House’s future as a museum. Mary Schenley trusted the DAR ladies – whom she praised as having “the history of western Pennsylvania at their finger ends” – to be the guardians of this last piece of Fort Pitt. In gratitude, the DAR made Mrs. Schenley an honorary lifetime member and even presented her with a DAR badge adorned with precious stones .

To legally hold the property, the DAR chapter incorporated a special entity called the Fort Pitt Society (chartered in 1894) to serve as the Block House’s steward. The women of the DAR immediately set about rescuing the structure from ruin. They raised money through membership dues, souvenirs, and even benefit performances of an opera at the Alvin Theatre. Restoration work began in earnest. The project took 16 months of restoration and rehabilitation to return the Block House to a semblance of its 18th-century appearance. Preservationists removed the ramshackle wood-frame additions that had been attached to the old brick core. They sealed up extra doors and windows that had been cut through the walls during the 109 years of domestic use, leaving only the original door and a few key openings. Rotted timbers were repaired or replaced with sympathetic materials. Importantly, the restoration team tried to use original material wherever possible. When they demolished Isaac Craig’s 18th-century addition, they salvaged its bricks – which themselves had come from old Fort Pitt structures – and reused those 18th-century bricks to patch and rebuild parts of the Block House. Thanks to this care, virtually every brick in the Block House today dates to the 1760s, either as part of the original construction or contemporaneous Fort Pitt material used in the 1890s repairs .

When the work was finished, the Fort Pitt Block House emerged reborn. In 1896, the DAR opened it to the public as a museum of the Colonial era, proudly showcasing Pittsburgh’s earliest history. In fact, with its opening, the Block House became the oldest museum in continuous operation in Pittsburgh. Visitors could once again step inside Bouquet’s tiny fortress, now curated with exhibits of frontier artifacts and Revolutionary War relics. Pittsburgh’s civic and cultural leaders lauded the chapter’s achievement. An aging military ruin had been transformed into a celebrated historic shrine – but the DAR’s battle to protect the Block House was only just beginning.

 

The Block House Under Siege

In the early 20th century, the Fort Pitt Block House faced a new kind of siege – not by hostile warriors, but by industrial progress. Pittsburgh at 1900 was an industrial titan, and nowhere was off-limits to commerce, not even the tiny plot of land on which the Block House stood. In 1902, steel baron Henry Clay Frick purchased the jumble of real estate surrounding the Block House (Mary Schenley had recently passed away, and her heirs were selling off holdings). Frick and the Pennsylvania Railroad had grand plans to expand the railway freight yards at the Point. The only obstacle was that little patch owned by the DAR. At first Frick tried a genteel approach: he offered the DAR $25,000 – a huge sum at the time – to move the Block House to Schenley Park, farther from the industrial zone. The DAR flatly refused; the Block House was a historic site, not a gazebo to be relocated at whim.

When money didn’t sway the DAR, the railroad resorted to legal force. Thus began the “second siege of Fort Pitt,” a protracted fight pitting preservationists against powerful business interests. The Pennsylvania Railroad challenged the DAR’s ownership of the Block House land and pushed to have the property condemned for eminent domain. The tiny Block House and its lady guardians were up against one of the nation’s most formidable corporations (backed by Frick’s wealth and influence). Leading the defense was DAR Regent Edith Darlington Ammon, a formidable Pittsburgh woman whose own ancestors had lived the city’s history. In a dramatic campaign, Mrs. Ammon and her DAR colleagues marshaled public opinion and political support to save the Block House. She even took to personally guarding the site – it was said that she “spent the summer at the Point” on watch, and then the winter in Harrisburg lobbying state officials on behalf of the Block House .

After several years of uncertainty, the courts and the legislature sided with preservation. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld the DAR’s clear title to the Block House, quashing the railroad’s legal claim. And in 1907, a landmark piece of legislation authored by Regent Ammon herself was passed: a state law exempting historic sites from seizure under eminent domain. This was one of Pennsylvania’s first historic preservation laws, and it was born directly from the struggle over the Block House. Defeated, the Pennsylvania Railroad was forced to reroute its expansion. Nevertheless, progress rolled on around the Block House. Over the next decade, the Point District was completely leveled of its old buildings to make way for rail lines and warehouses – all except the Block House. To achieve a level grade for the new rail yard, the ground around the Block House was raised 15 to 20 feet with soil and fill. The stout little redoubt suddenly found itself stranded in a deep pit below track level, encircled by high retaining walls to protect it from encroachment. A long wooden stairway and walkway led curious visitors down from street level to the Block House’s front door, like a time-traveler’s journey descending into the past .

Through the first half of the 20th century, the Fort Pitt Block House persisted in this unlikely habitat. Smoke from trains and factories blackened its bricks. Towering freight warehouses cast it in shadow. And yet the DAR volunteers continued to maintain it as a museum, flying the British Union Jack flag from its flagstaff and educating visitors about Pittsburgh’s colonial days. In an industrial city that sometimes seemed to forget its history, the Block House stood alone as a tangible reminder of the 1700s. It was often described as “the only surviving element of the once mighty Fort Pitt and the last vestige of British rule in Western Pennsylvania.” Truly, by 1950 the little Block House was the last visible piece of the British Empire on Pittsburgh soil, a lone redoubt holding out against time and change.

 

Revival at Point State Park

After World War II, Pittsburgh underwent a civic renaissance. Planners and leaders dreamed of reclaiming the soot-stained, blighted Point and transforming it into a public park that would celebrate the city’s origins. This vision took shape in the 1940s and ’50s as part of Pittsburgh’s famous urban renewal (the “Renaissance”). In the late 1950s, the state and city acquired the entire Point property from the railroad, finally removing the freight station, tracks, and industrial debris that had consumed the area. They began creating Point State Park, a 36-acre green space and historical park at the scenic confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers. The park’s design included lawns, a signature fountain at the tip of the Point, and a reconstruction of one of Fort Pitt’s bastions (the Monongahela Bastion), which would house a new Fort Pitt Museum operated by the state .

At first, some planners viewed the Block House as an old anomaly that might complicate their clean slate. There was even a proposal in the early 1950s to demolish or relocate it in the course of building the park. But the DAR, as stalwart as ever, mobilized to ensure the Block House was not sacrificed. Just as in 1903, they were prepared to go to court if necessary – and once again, they prevailed. The Block House was incorporated into the park design as a centerpiece rather than an obstacle. (The adjacent caretaker’s house – a 2-story home the DAR had built next to the Block House for an on-site custodian – was removed during park construction, as a concession to modernization .) In 1960, even before the park was finished, the significance of the Block House was nationally recognized: it was designated a National Historic Landmark, formally acknowledging it as an American treasure .

Point State Park was completed and dedicated in 1974, and the once-forlorn Point was reborn as a bright, open public space celebrating Pittsburgh’s history. The Block House, at long last, found itself in a setting worthy of its importance. The ground around it was re-graded to a natural level, and the heavy retaining walls and iron rails gave way to walkways and gardens. No longer isolated or in a pit, the Block House now sits in a pleasant grassy courtyard near the gleaming Fort Pitt Museum and the iconic fountain. The DAR continues to own and care for the Block House, even as it sits within a state park. They affectionately call it the “Jewel of Point State Park,” a gem that they have safeguarded for over a century. Under their stewardship, admission to the Block House has always remained free to the public, and hundreds of thousands of visitors have toured this little building over the decades to get a glimpse of life in colonial Pittsburgh .

Legacy of the Block House

More than 260 years after its construction, the Fort Pitt Block House stands proudly as the oldest building in Pittsburgh and indeed the oldest authenticated structure west of the Allegheny Mountains. It has outlasted wars, floods, fires, and the constant pressure of urban development – no small feat for a humble brick redoubt that was intended to serve a frontier fort for a few years. Part of its remarkable survival can be credited to luck and adaptive reuse; even in the 18th and 19th centuries, people found new purposes for the Block House rather than tearing it down. But much of its survival is owed to the generations of Pittsburghers (especially determined women in the DAR) who recognized its value and fought to preserve it, quite literally brick by brick.

Today, visitors to Point State Park can walk up to this unassuming two-story structure and feel the weight of history in its walls. Much of the Block House is original, not a modern reconstruction – the bricks, timbers, and stones date back to 1764. Stepping inside, you can still climb onto the wooden firing steps along the walls and peer through the musket slits, aligning your view with that of a British soldier on watch in the 1760s. The interior is arranged with exhibits that include colonial-era artifacts, explanatory panels, and period furnishings, fulfilling Mary Schenley’s wish that the Block House serve as a “receptacle of relics” of its era. Knowledgeable guides (often DAR volunteers) are on hand to share the Block House’s stories. Close your eyes and you might imagine the crackle of musket fire outside the walls, or the chatter of an 18th-century trading session under its roof.

The Block House’s endurance has made it a symbol of Pittsburgh’s own resilience. The city grew from a raw frontier outpost to an industrial giant to a modern tech hub, and through all these transformations this small brick building – initially built for war – has quietly remained. It has been a military bastion, a pioneer home, a tenement, a historic shrine, and a museum. It has welcomed Revolutionary War veterans, immigrant families, governors, industrial magnates, schoolchildren, and countless tourists within its 18-inch-thick walls. Each layer of red paint on its door frame, each weathered stone in its foundation, has a tale to tell.

The Fort Pitt Block House is more than just an artifact; it is a storyteller. It tells of the French and Indian War and the clash of empires on the Ohio, of the day-to-day life of soldiers and settlers on a wild frontier, and of the subsequent generations who cherished their city’s heritage. Thanks to that rich legacy and the ongoing care of the Fort Pitt Society of the DAR, the Block House stands as a tangible link between Pittsburgh’s past and present. In the heart of Point State Park, amid the bustle of downtown, this little 18th-century stronghold continues to guard the Point – not with muskets anymore, but by keeping Pittsburgh’s history alive for future generations. It endures as a beloved landmark, proof that sometimes the smallest structures can have the biggest significance.

In the words of one 1890s preservationist, it is “fitting that this old landmark…should fall into the hands of those who…preserve it and perpetuate the memories of the days” gone by. The Fort Pitt Block House remains exactly that: a landmark rich in memory, lovingly preserved, and standing firm as the oldest witness to Pittsburgh’s journey from frontier to city.