History & local legend
R&R Station was a restaurant and inn in an old railroad hotel on Main Street in Mount Pleasant. Also known during its history as the East End Hotel and Penn Francis Hotel, it stood until its demolition in 2018. One former guest, Savannah Nealon, remembered meeting a boy there who seemed to disappear without leaving the room.
Nealon was about ten when her family visited for a weekend. Downstairs, she found a boy roughly her own age sitting at a piano. He wore old-fashioned clothes and rested his hands in his lap instead of playing. When she greeted him, he did not answer. She went upstairs and told her mother about the unfriendly boy.
Her mother went down to investigate, but the room was empty. As Nealon remembered the layout, the staircase was the only way out, and no one had seen him pass. She recounted the childhood encounter to writer Ann K. Howley for Pittsburgh Parent’s October 2024 issue.
Sources
- Ann K. Howley, Real Pittsburgh Ghost Encounters, Pittsburgh Parent, October 2024, pp. 13–14, Savannah Nealon’s interview, Penn Francis Hotel photograph and 2018 demolition
- ExplorePAHistory, R&R Station’s own description, former 19 W. Main St. address and railroad trade
- Ron Ieraci, The R&R Station, January 2010, identifies the old hotel as the East End Hotel
- Sanborn Map Company, Mount Pleasant, November 1914, sheet 7, East End Hotel on the southeast corner of Main and Center Avenue by the railroad passenger depot
- Esri World Geocoding, modern Center Avenue and Main Street intersection
- Westmoreland County Land Bank parcel brochure, 29 West Main Street, explicitly identified as former R&R
- Westmoreland County parcel record 21-02-03-0-272
