Delta Historic District

Delta is a borough in York County, Pennsylvania, whose Main Street historic district follows a narrow shelf on the northern slope of a slate ridge. Most of its buildings were erected between about 1875 and 1895, when the nearby slate quarries drove rapid growth. Frame and clapboard houses and shops rest on coursed slate foundations and are topped with slate roofs, and slate was also used for sidewalks, steps, gutters and the local jail. The streetscape mixes Scots-Irish vernacular houses, Greek Revival doorways, Italianate and Queen Anne residences, a Richardson Romanesque bank of 1894, and a few Colonial Revival homes. Welsh quarrymen who settled in the area in the mid-nineteenth century shaped the community's church life, language and customs. The district is regarded as one of the clearest records of a late Victorian boom town tied to a single industry.