The Boggs Mansion was built in 1888 by H.H. Richardson, who designed the Allegheny County Courthouse. The mansion was built for Russell Boggs in 1888, and the primary mansion is home to eight guest rooms, nine bathrooms, and countless more spaces filled with character.

Built as the 19th Century came to a close, the house has outlived the department store established by Boggs and his partner, Henry Buhl, in Allegheny City in 1869. Boggs & Buhl was demolished in 1960 for Allegheny Center Mall, now Nova Place. The store served the “carriage trade” — the well-to-do of old Allegheny City — and appropriately, the proprietors saw to it that their delivery wagons were drawn by handsome steeds.

Boggs also was integral to the suburb development of the North Hills. The electric trolley line he built, called the “Harmony Route,” stretched from Pittsburgh to his hometown of Evans City and onward to New Castle. When it began service in 1908, at each stop along the tracks — Ingomar, Wexford, Bradford Woods — Boggs’ North Pittsburgh Realty Co. offered suburban lots for sale.

Boggs’ daughter also preferred the countryside, especially the family’s summer home in Sewickley Heights. When her father died in 1922 from injuries suffered in a fall, she sold the North Side townhouse to a seminary next door.