Lt. Governor-elect John Fetterman will not be taking the “State House” residence in Fort Indiantown Gap, home to state lieutenant governors since 1971.
Fetterman’s family will remain in Braddock, where he is currently mayor, and Fetterman may find a residence closer to Harrisburg, like in York perhaps. Wait ’til he learns Rotunda is just down the road from the Gap (Fetterman knows that craft breweries can really shape your community).
As the Lebanon Daily News reported last year, the residence cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to maintain and staff the residence. The workforce included an as-needed cook and housekeeping personnel.
Lt. Gov Fetterman told one news outlet that, “symbolically, I believe it’s inappropriate, for lack of a better phrase, to have a public servant … living in a home that has housekeeping – and I mean, all these other things – when we’ve worked to eliminate people (having) their gas and heat shut off.”
See pictures of the building at Penn Live. It’s super nice and now that it’s not a residence, it will probably be put to some kind of public use. While it could probably do great on Airbnb, it seems most likely that the house will be an occasional setting for formal functions (so the pool in the backyard will probably not be used very often).
The building was previously the governor’s summer home and served briefly as the main residence.
Lt. Governor Ernest P. Kline was the first to occupy the building in its new dedicated use. Many Lebanon County residents are familiar with Lt. Governor Kline’s son, Judge Samuel Kline, who once recalled to the Daily News that “the tape the Gap used for reveille stuck on a loop and continued to blast just-woken ears for eight minutes.”
The house is located behind a gated entrance within Fort Indiantown Gap. It was built in the early 1940’s. The last person to occupy the building was Lt. Governor Mike Stack, whose Pennsylvania State Police protection was stripped for considerations that he and his wife had verbally abused state employees while living there.
More Top Stories
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
