Coatesville Historic District

Coatesville's historic district covers the commercial and residential core of an iron and steel city in western Chester County, Pennsylvania, set on a narrow valley floor and up its slopes. Most of its 461 contributing buildings are two or three stories, mostly brick, and date from the mid-eighteenth century to 1937, with more than two-thirds erected between 1850 and 1924. East Lincoln Highway between First and Third Avenues holds the largest concentration of Italianate commercial blocks in western Chester County, dating from about 1850 to 1895. Industrialists built mansions on South First Avenue, including the Gothic Revival Terracina, begun in 1848 and linked to Rebecca Lukens. Worker housing in the southeast quadrant is largely Carpenter Gothic duplexes, a collection regarded as the largest of its kind in the county. Churches, municipal buildings and the Lukens Iron and Steel Company office add further architectural range.