Shop, dine, and go back in time at the Seneca Center.
written by jennifer skinner
Shoppers and store owners know the Seneca Center by its current variety of vendors and office spaces, but the building’s iconic brick chimney, giant red water tank, and creaky wooden floors record the history of one of the nation’s largest producers of drinking glasses. Seneca Glass Company manufactured crystal tumblers and hand-blown glass in Morgantown from 1896 until the company closed in 1985, when the Seneca Glass factory was listed on the National Register of Historical Places.
Today, two dozen local businesses call the Seneca Center home, including Country Roads Quilt Shop, The Finery, The Tea Shoppe, and Morgantown Running. “Almost all of them are like me. They like antiques,” says Jerry Hall, who has co-owned the building for 15 years.
Shoppers are taken back in time with one lap around the Seneca Center, adorned with wall paintings of parents and children working in the factory and preserved artifacts such as a glass scale and a phone booth on the ground floor. Since Jerry has owned the building, the Seneca Center has gotten all new roofs, a new walking bridge, new drains, and updated patios. “We’re constantly remodeling and maintaining to keep it up,” he says.
Why put so much work into an old building when some may suggest rebuilding the whole place? “It’s very, very rare,” Jerry says. “It’s not something that most people like to invest in. You’ve got to like this type of structure, this building, this history.” The charming 100-foot chimney was built in the mid 1890s, and was the last in the country of its size—until a malevolent lightning burst struck its top section down as this magazine was going to press.
Carol Ramsburg, owner and founder of The Finery, opened in 1986, credits the building’s comfortable atmosphere to its high ceilings and the natural light that shines into her store from windows in the front and the back. “There’s this openness that gives you a sense of freedom, and yet it’s warm and cozy,” Carol says. “I’ve often thought that if we were anywhere else, we might not have survived.”
Recently, Michelle Eichelberger opened her new shop and project studio, Rust and Junk Rehab, in the Seneca Center. “It has an artist’s feel to it,” Michelle says. “The atmosphere of the Seneca Center reflects what I do—repurposing or refurbishing something old and making it new and current for others to enjoy without losing its original appeal.” But Michelle’s connection to the building is strengthened from the knowledge that her great-grandfather was a Seneca glassworker in the 1920s and ’30s. “It’s a bond with a man I never knew,” she says. “I walk the same hallways of a building that he came to work in every day.”
The Seneca Center will continue to be exactly what it is now—“ancient,” according to Jerry, although it will see the addition of a restaurant and more renovations in its future.
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