Bear Creek Village Historic District

Bear Creek Village is a cluster of houses, workers' cottages, churches, a dam and lake, and industrial remains in a narrow valley in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. Its development grew out of the lumber and ice businesses of Albert Lewis, who began building his mansion in 1895. After a fire in 1922, the house was rebuilt in 1922 and 1923 to designs by Wilkes-Barre architects Innes and Levy in the Tudor Revival style. Grace Chapel, completed in 1884, is a shingled Queen Anne building with a T-shaped plan, and the Lewis family cemetery holds monuments designed by Tiffany Studios. The timber-crib dam created Bear Creek Lake, which anchored a company town and later a summer colony along Bear Creek Boulevard. Workers' housing includes early company boarding houses and later houses modeled on Pennsylvania miners' houses. The district is important for documenting regional ice harvesting, lumbering, and the shift from company town to resort and suburban community.