Harvey was born Aug. 16, 1851, in Buffalo, then a small community on the lower Kanawha River in what is now West Virginia. Although traditionally identified with Harvey and credited to his design, the National Register nomination cautions that he may never have actually lived there. Material preserved by West Virginia Archives and History includes J.F. The National Register nomination prepared decades later still identified the pyramid as one of the defining creations of his life. The West Virginia Encyclopedia calls him “one of the most remarkable personalities to emerge from West Virginia.”