551 West 6th Street

Client: Historic Erie Preservation Trust
Location: 551 West 6th St., Erie, Pennsylvania
Dates: Original building — c. 1910; Renovation - In progress
National Register of Historic Places Listing: Contributing building in the West Sixth Street Historic District.

Listed as an American Foursquare in the National Register of Historic Places, this two and one-half story frame and stucco house was built c.1910 for Otto G. Hitchcock (1874-1944) and his wife, Henrietta Van Cleve Hitchcock (1872-1941).

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Otto G. Hitchcock was born in 1874 and married Henrietta Van Cleve in 1901. Fresh out of business school, Hitchcock joined Hays Manufacturing Co. in 1893, when it was just a small shop on W. 11th Street. First assigned to “cleaning the office, help with bookkeeping, keep an eye on shipments, and call on local plumbers,” Hitchcock spent the next fifty-one years with the company and eventually worked his way up from superintendent to general manager, vice-president, and then secretary-treasurer until his death in 1944.

Hitchcock played a leading role in raising war funds during World War I and helped establish the War Production Board branch in Erie to support local industry. He served as president of the Erie Chamber of Commerce in 1921-1922 and had served as president of the Erie Manufacturers Association during World War I. He chaired the Chamber War Production Advisory Committee at the time of his death. He was affiliated with the YMCA in Erie for a number of years and served as president of its Board of Directors, as well as president of the First Federal Savings & Loan Association; was a member of the State Board of the Chamber of Commerce; the Erie Rotary Club; and on the Board of Trustees of Pikeville, Ky., College.

After Otto Hitchcock's death, Rev. Dr. James Renwick Jackson (1905-1953) and his wife, Agnes McMullan Jackson McCallum (1903-2000), purchased 551 W. 6th. Rev. Jackson was the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church from 1944 to 1953.

This house was listed as 551 W. Sixth Street (Otto Hitchcock House) in the National Register of Historic Places by the U.S. Department of the Interior as a contributing building in the West Sixth Street Historic District in 1984.