Client: Historic Erie Restorations
Location: 502 West 6th St., Erie, Pennsylvania
Dates: Original building — c.1890; Renovation complete — 2025
National Register of Historic Places Listing: Contributing building in the West Sixth Street Historic District.
This Shingle-style house was built for $8,500 by Constable Brothers in 1890.
The renovated building will be the new home of Kidder Architects, Kidder Jefferys Engineering and Kidder Jefferys Construction. The project will involve masonry restoration and cleaning, roof repair, window replacement, painting and landscaping. Interior work includes painting, woodwork restoration and repair, updated flooring, improved accessibility, and all new electrical, HVAC, plumbing and finishes.
The home was commissioned by Frank Connell (1855–1917) and his wife, Electra Orton Connell (1854–1943), on property purchased in 1889 from David and Susan Burger. An Ohio native, Frank Connell came to Erie via Pittsburgh in 1885. He was at the time secretary and treasurer of Skinner Engine Co., as well as vice president and treasurer of Union Iron Works. He was active in local and state organizations, serving as president of The Erie Club in 1903 and 1905, and president of the Kahkwa Club in 1906 and 1908.
In 1926, Francis H. “Frank” Payne (1868–1942), an 1891 Princeton honors graduate and a leading Erie industrialist/entrepreneur, and his second wife, Nellie Mizener Payne (1869–1939), bought the house. Frank’s father, Calvin Nathaniel Payne (1844–1926), who spent his last days in this house, was an associate of John D. Rockefeller and was considered “high on the list of founders of the oil and gas industry” by his peers. Calvin Payne established Metric Metal Works in Erie at East 10th and Payne Avenue in 1891. Frank joined Metric Metal that year, becoming manager when it merged into American Meter Co. in 1896. He ended his 51-year career as president of American Meter (1936–1942). Frank and his father manufactured the only automobile made in Erie — Payne-Modern — albeit for just one year (1907–1908). Frank was also a co-founder of the Lawrence Hotel in 1911.
In 1946, Norman Douglas Wilson (1917–1948) and his wife, Jeanne Hall Wilson (1919–1992), purchased the home. A 1939 Princeton graduate and U.S. Navy WWII veteran, he was assistant purchasing agent at Erie’s Hammermill Paper Co. when a tragic 1948 train accident caused his untimely death at age 31. In 1953, his parents, Norman W. Wilson (1885-1979) and Flora Nick Wilson (1880–1969), acquired the property. Norman W., a prominent industrialist in Erie and the papermaking industry, was an Erie High School dropout at 16 who joined three-year-old Hammermill Paper Co. in 1901 as an office boy and became a protégé of Hammermill co-founder Ernst Behrend. Upon Behrend’s death, Wilson became Hammermill president in 1940, then chairman in 1953, until his retirement as chairman emeritus in 1963 — covering 62 years at Hammermill.
In 1980, the Wilson family sold the house and it subsequently served as an advertising agency, a home for at risk youth and a sorority house. The property was acquired by Historic Erie Restoration in 2020.
The house was listed as the Burger-Connell House on the National Register of Historic Places by the U.S. Department of the Interior as a significant building in the West Sixth Street Historic District in 1984.
