{"nrhp_refnum":"84003482","name":"Weaver, Valentine, House","other_names":["Weaver House"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"146 S. Church St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Macungie","county":"Lehigh County","state":"PA","lat":40.51133904500006,"lon":-75.55556497399994,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1984-06-28","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Industry","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A large suburban country house on Church Street near the center of Macungie, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, built in the Gothic Cottage form with a brick octagonal outhouse, brick smokehouse, rubble-stone springhouse and a barn now in ruins. The house is dated to about 1874-1876.","why_significant":"The house is significant as the residence of Valentine Weaver, a major figure in the development of the Pennsylvania iron industry, and as a well-preserved example of a rural industrial magnate's home. The nomination stresses its largely unchanged exterior and interior, particularly its extensive original graining and early mechanical systems.","narrative":"Set on Church Street near the center of Macungie, Pennsylvania, this large suburban country house follows the Gothic Cottage form drawn from A. J. Downing's 1851 pattern book, with fancy slate roofs, carpentered Gothic verge boards and a wide three-bay wood porch. It was built for Valentine Weaver, a leading figure in the regional iron industry who had worked at the Crane and Thomas iron companies and later established the Lock Ridge Furnace at Alburtis. The 1876 county atlas singled out the house as a substantial country seat. Its interior retains a marble Second Empire fireplace, a walnut stair and one of the most complete surviving programs of wood graining in the region. The house also preserves early hot-air heating, a calcium carbide gas lighting system and an automatic coal feed, along with a smokehouse, springhouse and octagonal outhouse. Together these features show the self-sufficient rural life of an industrialist's household in the late nineteenth century.","period_of_significance":"1800-1899","architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Gothic Cottage","criteria":[],"status_note":"The Weaver family remained in the home until three years ago; the barn is in ruins.","vacant_flag":null,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-haiku-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.1-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 17:11:34.203409-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_PA/84003482.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/84003482/c2e6f8c692-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/84003482/c2e6f8c692-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"PattiParker","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Valentine_Weaver_House.JPG\" rel=\"noopener\">PattiParker</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Valentine_Weaver_House.JPG"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/71996355","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine_Weaver_House","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7911030"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/pennsylvania/lehigh-county/weaver-valentine-house-84003482/"}