Colonial Germantown Historic District (Boundary Increase)

Along Germantown Avenue in Mt. Airy, northwest Philadelphia, this extension of the Colonial Germantown Historic District contains 264 buildings, most of them two-story brick or stone structures. The earliest known building dates to 1740 and the most recent to 1984. The avenue began as an Indian path and became a turnpike in 1801, and its shops, inns and taverns made it a commercial center for more than two centuries. Mid-19th-century storefronts survive at 6536-6538 Germantown Avenue, built between 1857 and 1861. The area also holds a notable group of educational institutions, including the Lutheran Theological Seminary, the Lutheran Home, and the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, whose stone Victorian Gothic buildings were designed by Cope & Stewardson and the Wilson Brothers. Architects produced buildings across most major styles in America before 1930, and the Colonial Revival designs drew on local stone and side-gabled forms. The nomination treats the district's variety of styles as part of its value.