Bigham House located at 655 Pennridge Road in Chatham Village, in the Mount Washington neighborhood of

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

, was built in 1849. This was the former house of

abolitionist Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the political movement to end slavery and liberate enslaved individuals around the world. The first country to fully outlaw slavery was Kingdom of France, France in 1315, but it was later used ...

lawyer Thomas James Bigham (1810–1884), and was "purportedly a station on the

Underground Railroad The Underground Railroad was an organized network of secret routes and safe houses used by freedom seekers to escape to the abolitionist Northern United States and Eastern Canada. Enslaved Africans and African Americans escaped from slavery ...

." These days, this

Classical Revival Neoclassicism, also spelled Neo-classicism, emerged as a Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. Neoclassic ...

house is part of Chatham Village and is used as a community clubhouse known as Chatham Hall. Chatham Village is on the National Register of Historic Places and is a National Landmark District, and this house was individually added to the List of Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation Historic Landmarks in 1990. Bigham, known as "the Sage of Mt. Washington," served for many years as representative and senator in the Pennsylvania legislature. Also a newspaperman, he headed for a time the ''

Commercial Journal __NOTOC__ The ''Commercial Journal'' was a mid-19th century newspaper in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Beginnings The paper was founded as the ''Spirit of the Age'' by J. Heron Foster, J. McMillin and J. B. Kennedy on 19 April 1843, wi ...

'' and helped found the '' Pittsburgh Commercial''.

References

{{Pittsburgh Houses in Pittsburgh