The Village of Sewickley grew to serve the traffic on the Beaver Road and the Ohio River. It was first named “Sewickleyville” in 1840, with the “ville” added to “Sewickley” to distinguish it from the less densely settled area of the Valley known as Sewickley Bottom, today’s Edgeworth and Leetsdale. Split off from Ohio Township, Sewickley Borough was incorporated in 1853. It has an area of one square mile, and its population was 3,907 in 2020. It is bordered by Edgeworth, Glen Osborne, Sewickley Heights, Aleppo and the Ohio River. The eleven municipalities of the Quaker Valley School District benefit today from the institutions, businesses and services located in Sewickley Borough, many of which were founded in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The Village’s churches include the Methodist Episcopal Church, organized in 1839, with the present church dedicated in 1884; the Presbyterian Church of Sewickley, whose 1840 sanctuary was across Beaver Street from today’s church, completed in 1861; Sewickley Baptist Church, dedicated in 1889; St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, whose first sanctuary was consecrated in 1864, with the new church dedicated in 1894; St. James Roman Catholic Church, whose 1967 building replaces an earlier structure, dedicated in 1870; and St. Matthews African American Episcopal Zion Church, constructed in 1912.
Sewickley Cemetery formally opened in 1860. The soldiers’ monument, “Fame,” was erected after the Civil War in 1866 and replaced in 2005. The Tuskegee Airmen Memorial, the largest outdoor memorial of its kind in the United States, was dedicated in 2013 and commemorates the legacy of almost 100 Tuskegee Airmen who hailed from Western Pennsylvania – eight from Sewickley. The Young Men’s Library Association was established in 1873, and the present Sewickley Public Library was dedicated in 1923. The Cochran Hose Company, Sewickley’s volunteer fire department, was organized in 1876 and has been housed in Sewickley’s Municipal Building (link to existing article on Sewickley Town Hall) since 1910. Sewickley Hospital opened its doors in 1907 and has occupied its current site since 1929. The Old Sewickley Post Office (link to existing article on OSPO) on Broad Street, now home to Sweetwater Center for the Arts and the Sewickley Valley Historical Society, was dedicated in 1910 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The borough’s newspaper, the Sewickley Herald, began publication in 1903. The Sewickley YMCA opened at its present location in 1904. The only Quaker Valley School District school in the borough is the Quaker Valley Middle School on Harbaugh Street, formerly the 1926 Sewickley High School.
Sewickley Troop Band, c. 1910
Walnut Street, near Thorn Old St. Matthews Church building in background. Courtesy of Miss Helen Hegner
Comments