Topographic Map showing location of Alverton, Donnelly and Mayfield, along with the extent coke works ca.1964, East Huntington Twp., Westmoreland Co., PA from the United States Department of the Interior, Geological Survey, Mount Pleasant Quadrangle, Pennsylvania, 7.5 Minute Series (Topographic) NE/4 Connellsville 15' Quadrangle. ca.1964.
(Map courtesy of United States Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, Washington, D.C.)

The Village of Alverton retains seven coal company-built houses.  The coal company store and other houses either burned or were demolished.  The surviving coal company-built houses are situated along a curving road on the north side of PA Rt. 981.  These residents are two-story wood-frame buildings that may date from the 1880's.  Each is a double house with a gable roof and central brick chimney, and rests on a rubble stone foundation.  These houses are considerably narrower than other double houses in the region's coal patch towns.  Each measures about 20' x 12'.  These houses have been altered with asphaltic or metal siding replacing the original clapboard siding, and many of the original two-over-two-light double-hung sash windows have been replaced.

The most architecturally impressive building in the Village of Alverton is the Alverton Hotel.  Located on PA Rt.981, it is one of the few buildings of its kind in the region's numerous small coal patches.  The two-story building measures 58' x 24' and was built ca.1900.  It has common-bond red-brick walls, a hipped roof covered with asphalt, a brick chimney,and a stone foundation.  The building appears to have had two bays added to the north of the original five bays.  A number of changes have been made to the building since it was coverted to an apartment  building in the 1930's.  The bar from the first floor was removed and the front porch was taken off, however, it retains its arched windows with double brick voussiors and stone sills; new windows have also been installed.

During the bitter coal miners strike of 1894, the inhabitants of the "tranquil little village" of Alverton were "aroused from peaceful slumber" by a middle of the night dynamite blast which blew up the pump house of the McClure Coke Company.

Coke drawers at the Donnelly Mine near Alverton were attacked by 60 Hungarian women. One man was fatally injured.

All of these properties were acquired by the H.C. Frick Coke Company in ca.1895.  Frick renamed the Donnelly operations Alverton No. 1 Mine & Coke Works and Alverton No. 2 Mine & Coke Works, and the Mayfield Mine was renamed Alverton No. 3 Mine & Coke Works.  Frick's Alverton No. 1 Mine continued as the larger of the three mines and coke works;  its production figures in 1900 amounted to more than 100,000 tons of coal extracted and 72,000 tons of coke produced from 252 bee-hive ovens.  Frick employed 224 persons at Alverton No. 1 Mine & Alverton No. 2 Mine.  

Alverton No. 3 Mine, produced only 35,000 tons of coal and 23,000 tons of coke, from 104 coke ovens, in 1900.  Alverton No. 3 Mine and coke works employed 100 men and boys.  About a decade-and-a-half later Frick Closed Alverton No. 3 Mine.  At this time there were about 400 people living in the coal company-owned houses at Alverton.

(History and description of the Alverton Mines & Coke Works, adapted from "Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania: An Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Sites, 1994,"  America's Industrial Heitage Project, National Park Service, Historic American Buildings Survey / Historic American Engineering Record, U.S. Department of the Interior, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

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