The Pines, also known as the Barley Home, is now little more than a stone shell.

However, for more than a century, it was the home or summer home of members of one of Warren’s most prominent families, according to information provided by the Warren County Historical Society.

In 1835, Lansing Wetmore purchased the former Jackson farm and house, including what is now 506 S. State St. in North Warren.

He had a square, two-story stone house of “only four rooms” built on the property, according to Historic Buildings in Warren County, Volume I.

The Pines was finished in 1839. In 1842, Wetmore made it his retirement home.

According to “eminent Pennsylvania architect” Charles Stotz, “the native sandstone of western Pennsylvania… was used with marked success by the early masons. At first the stone was used just as it came from the field or quarry, with little or no attempt to dress it with the tool; but later work shows that a smooth surface was considered desirable. Tool marks were left as a definite part of the pattern. A favorite treatment was known as ‘scabbled and drafted work’, in which a field of pits made by the chisel point is surrounded by a narrow margin of closely drafted scoring.”

The oldest cemetery in Warren County, now known as Wetmore Cemetery, also lies on the former Jackson farm property.

Lansing Wetmore died in 1858 and the property passed to his son, Lansing Ditmars Wetmore.

Lansing D. Wetmore was the brother of George R. Wetmore, who was a member of the first graduating class at Penn State and, according to information from the Historical Society, was instrumental in bringing natural gas to Warren.

In the early 1900s, Lansing D. Wetmore “had the house remodeled and enlarged to its present proportions,” according to Historic Buildings I.

An earlier addition, a frame construct at the rear of the building with dormer windows and an open porch, was demolished in favor of a much larger stone renovation.

The 1900s addition included the colonnade area at the south side of the house.

Another stone addition was made at the rear – west end – of the house, leaving the sprawling structure that stands today.

The Wetmore family considered the Pines their summer home until Edward Wetmore, a grandson of Lansing, made it his full-time residence.

On his death, the property passed to Alice Wetmore Brann, who did not live in Warren. She sold the house and adjacent property to Harry and Hazel Barley in 1950. Other portions of the original Jackson farm was divided up and sold.

Several streets that extend off of State Street just north of the property – Lansing, Ditmar, Weatherbee, and Shattuck – are named after members of the Wetmore family.

The Barleys adapted the structure to become a nursing home.

The Barley Home changed hands, but not name nor purpose, in 1967, when it was sold to Dr. and Mrs. Frank Butt and Mr. and Mrs. James Valone.

Kathleen and Roger Shattuck took ownership of the property in 2001.

The Barley Home formally closed in 2011.