The original mansion was designed by Longfellow, Alden & Harlow as a sandstone Richardsonian Romanesque mansion in 1884. The mansion was commissioned by Carrie T. Holland, youngest daughter of pioneer Pittsburgh iron manufacturer James K. Moorehead, as a gift for her husband William Jacob Holland, pastor of Bellefield Presbyterian Church at Fifth and Bellefield avenues in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh. William Jacob Holland was also a nationally recognized zoologist, paleontologist, and entomologist and went on to become a trustee (1886) and then chancellor (1891–1901) of the University of Pittsburgh, then called the Western University of Pennsylvania.