Snook House - 1315 National Rd

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Noted Wheeling architect Fredric F. Faris designed the house at 1315 National Road - one of the few "shingle style" homes in Wheeling - for George M. Snook and his wife Emma Truxell Snook in 1912. Snook (1854-1937) was a prominent Wheeling merchant and founder of the George M. Snook department store. A 1930 advertisement for that store shows that it ran from 1110-1114 Main Street through to 1111 to 1115 Market Street and offered "One Quality - the Best. One Price - the Lowest."

 

Snook began his business career at the age of 14 in Martinsburg, West Virginia. When he came to Wheeling in 1876, he worked first for the C. T. Brues dry goods company before becoming a partner of the George E. Stifel Company and then founding his own company in 1884. 

 

The house was later the home of Nellie H. Gilleland, the widow of Robert McClinton Gilleland (1848-1919), founder of the South Side Bank of Wheeling and president of the U.S. Stamping Company of Moundsville, the Bellaire Bottling Company, and the Benwood-Bellaire and Wheeling Ferry Companies.

 

The two and one-half story home was designed with clapboard siding and a recessed porch on the first level, wood shingled second floor with a curved facade on the right corner, and an eyebrow dormer on the hip roof.

 

The house was demolished in 2006 to make way for the Bertha Welty highrise.

 

Text adapted from Walking Pleasant Valley ​by Jeanne Finstein and Judi Hendrickson.