{"nrhp_refnum":"85001157","name":"Ercildoun Historic District","other_names":[],"category":"district","location":{"address":"PA 82 and SRs T368, 15236, T371, and 182, East Fallowfield Township","address_restricted":false,"city":"Coatesville","county":"Chester County","state":"PA","lat":39.944363414000065,"lon":-75.8425471811614,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1985-05-20","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Architecture","Social History"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"Ercildoun Historic District is a hamlet of thirty-one properties at a crossroads in East Fallowfield Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania, south of Strasburg Road and southwest of Coatesville, at the intersection of Route 82 and Buck Run Road. The district includes farmhouses, a school, an academy, a meetinghouse, a church, a foundry and a store, with buildings dating from about 1798 to the 1950s.","why_significant":"The village is regarded as significant mainly for its involvement in the abolitionist movement before the Civil War, including political protest and participation in the Underground Railroad. Its buildings are also cited as the best collection of vernacular interpretations among the township's ten communities, and the village has changed little since the nineteenth century.","narrative":"Ercildoun is a crossroads hamlet in East Fallowfield Township, Chester County, containing thirty-one properties, many of them built in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Fallowfield Meetinghouse, built in 1801 on a Quaker site, anchors the village, and nearby stand the Ercildoun Academy of 1851, the Gideon Pierce House and Store of about 1818, and a Christ Disciple Church of 1894. The district is listed for its association with the anti-slavery movement. In 1835 the East Fallowfield Anti-Slavery Society was formed, and after a mob broke up its meetings in 1844, members built People's Hall, which served as a meeting place for abolitionists. Residents including James Fulton Jr. and Gideon Pierce are identified as operators on the Underground Railroad, and the village sheltered fugitives, some in groups of up to thirty-three. The vernacular buildings also reflect the village's agrarian economy.","period_of_significance":"1811-1865","architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Vernacular, with Federal, English Colonial, Greek Revival, Italianate and Gothic Revival elements; non-contributing structures are ranch style","criteria":[],"status_note":"Most of the district's buildings are in average to excellent condition; the form notes that several structures have been altered and that the hamlet has had no new construction for about twenty-five years.","vacant_flag":null,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-haiku-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.1-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 17:11:33.553406-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_PA/85001157.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/85001157/cfd2100071-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/85001157/cfd2100071-1600.webp","licence":"CC0","author":"Smallbones","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ercildoun_PA_C.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:Ercildoun_PA_C.JPG"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/71992637","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ercildoun,_Pennsylvania","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5385210"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/pennsylvania/chester-county/ercildoun-historic-district-85001157/"}