{"nrhp_refnum":"71000711","name":"Kuster Mill","other_names":["Custer's Fulling Mill and Skippack Creek Farm"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"On Skippack Creek at Mill Rd. and Water St. Rd.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Collegeville","county":"Montgomery County","state":"PA","lat":40.18825256000008,"lon":-75.40889440899997,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1971-03-24","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Industry","Commerce","European","Agriculture"],"significance_levels":["national"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"Kuster Mill is a stone house with a pegged Dutch bank barn and a fulling mill on Skippack Creek in Collegeville, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. The house and cool cellar are built of local stone quarried on the property.","why_significant":"The nomination argues the site is significant for its age, its connection with the Kuster family and the Germantown stonemason tradition, and its technological importance as an early and unusual industrial site. It is described as likely the first fulling mill in Montgomery County. The house is said to have had indoor water over a spring.","narrative":"Stone house and fulling mill on Skippack Creek in Collegeville, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. The original part of the dwelling dates to 1702 and was built of local redbrown stone quarried on the property, with dressed courses across the facade. A datestone bearing 1767 marks an enlargement by John Custer, who is recorded as a fuller in the 1756 Skippack census. The house sits over a spring that supplied water and kept milk and food cool in the cellar. The mill races are stone-lined and intact. A blue dyer's establishment operated alongside the fulling work, and many Skippack landowners of the period were weavers, with many purchasers tracing their origins to Krefeld, a major European textile center. The site's importance lies in its early age, its links to the Kuster family's Germantown stonemasonry, and its role as an early and unusual industrial site in the county.","period_of_significance":"1702 original part","architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":null,"criteria":[],"status_note":"The fulling mill addition replaced an original that burned in 1936; the form describes the mill races as intact.","vacant_flag":null,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-haiku-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.1-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 17:11:29.545497-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_PA/71000711.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/71000711/ff86134911-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/71000711/ff86134911-1600.webp","licence":"CC0","author":"Smallbones","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kuster_Mill.JPG\" rel=\"noopener\">Smallbones</a>, <a href=\"http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kuster_Mill.JPG"},"district":{"nrhp_refnum":"72001139","name":"Evansburg Historic District","url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/districts/pennsylvania/evansburg-historic-district-72001139/"},"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/71995099","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuster_Mill","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6448171"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/pennsylvania/montgomery-county/kuster-mill-71000711/"}