"Pinecrest", also known as the Richard C. Kerens House and Kerens-Spears House, is a historic home located at Elkins,

Randolph County, West Virginia Randolph County is a county located in the U.S. state of West Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 27,932. Its county seat is Elkins. The county was founded in 1787 and is named for Edmund Jennings Randolph. Randolph County com ...

. It was built in 1892 to a design by the Boston architecture firm

Peabody & Stearns Peabody & Stearns was a premier architectural firm in the Eastern United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Based in Boston, Massachusetts, the firm consisted of Robert Swain Peabody (1845–1917) and John Goddard Stearns J ...

as a summer home for

Richard C. Kerens Richard C. Kerens (1842 – September 4, 1916) was an American contractor and politician. Kerens was born in Killberry, County Meath, Ireland, and was brought to the United States, U. S. in infant, infancy. He was educated in the public schools ...

(1842–1916). It is a large

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates) ...

dwelling in a modified Shingle Style. It has an asymmetrical shape with

gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...

-fronted sections in the main portion, a

hip roof A hip roof, hip-roof or hipped roof, is a type of roof where all sides slope downwards to the walls, usually with a fairly gentle slope (although a tented roof by definition is a hipped roof with steeply pitched slopes rising to a peak). Thus, ...

on the servants wing, and two cone-shaped tops on rounded

turret Turret may refer to: * Turret (architecture), a small tower that projects above the wall of a building * Gun turret, a mechanism of a projectile-firing weapon * Objective turret, an indexable holder of multiple lenses in an optical microscope * Mi ...

s. It features a front porch that extends well beyond the exterior wall and curves along a single-story rounded projection at the east corner. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1979. File:Pinecrest at Elkins, entrance.jpg, Entrance to property File:Pinecrest stable of Richard C. Kerens, original elevation drawing.jpg, Stable elevation drawing

References

Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in West Virginia Italianate architecture in West Virginia Houses completed in 1892 Houses in Randolph County, West Virginia National Register of Historic Places in Randolph County, West Virginia Shingle Style architecture in West Virginia Peabody and Stearns buildings {{RandolphCountyWV-NRHP-stub