Charleroi Historic District

Charleroi's historic district covers about 80 percent of the borough, laid out in 1890 on a generally orthogonal street grid that climbs from the riverside flats to a steep hillside west of the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks. Most of its roughly 1,693 contributing buildings date from 1890 to World War I. They include small two-story frame houses, many of them front-gabled, and brick storefronts with pressed metal cornices. The core business area follows about five blocks of McKean and Fallowfield Avenues between Third and Seventh Streets. Larger Classical Revival and Colonial Revival buildings from 1917 to 1927 anchor the business district. The district is significant for architecture, reflecting the Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles in scaled-down form, and for commerce and community planning. Charleroi grew from a speculative real estate venture, founded in 1890, into the main retail and wholesale center of the Middle Monongahela Valley.