The McKeesport Lichalk Mansion
In the late spring on 2021, the sound of Money Machine could be heard blasting in my car at 5 AM as I set out to explore Pittsburgh and McKeesport, Pennsylvania. My friends and I arrived at this house as the sun was rising behind the clouds. Walking inside we found an absolute time capsule unlike anything we had imagined we would find. Old luggage and medicine bottles filled up upper rooms, next to the already made beds, still in their places. Victorian furniture and family paintings are scattered throughout the house, the same as the day they were left there, over 20 years prior. The house had been vacant since 2001 when the former owner, a second generation Hungarian immigrant, had died, but it had appeared not much had changed in the house since the 1950’s. Her children had planned to make some restorations to the house and sell it, but the plans fell through and neglect set in. Walking through the 3 story, 9 room, victorian mansion, you couldn’t help but feel like you began to know the people who last lived here.
The house dates back to 1875 when it was first built, but very little is know about the house at that time. The next family to own is was the Lichalk’s. They immigrated into Baltimore in 1899. In 1900, they purchased this house. It is not clear how the family was able to afford this house so recently after immigrating, but perhaps they immigrated with some amount of money. The patriarch of the household, Andrew Lichalk died at the age of 50 when he was charred by the explosion of a furnace stove at his job at National Tube Works. Barbara Lichalk, or Borka Lukacsena as she was born, was a widow in 1921 at age 49, set to raise 7 children alone. She became a principal in McKeesport, something that would be a family tradition, followed by her daughter and grand daughter. She died in 1957 at the age of 82, and shares a grave with her husband. Her daughter Elizabeth moved into the house with her husband Antony Koczyasky and stayed there until Elizabeth died in 2001 at the age of 92. Since 2001, the house slowly fell into the disrepair it is in today.
