Holmes-Foster-Highlands Historic District

Southwest of the Penn State campus in State College, Pennsylvania, this residential district covers about sixty blocks developed mainly between the 1900s and the start of World War II. It contains 858 structures, 727 of them contributing, and includes vernacular Victorians, Four Squares, bungalows, Colonial and Tudor Revival houses, mansion-sized fraternity houses built in the 1920s and 1930s, two schools, three churches and Memorial Field. Development was driven by demand from faculty, staff and students for rental and owner-occupied housing. The district is regarded as an excellent example of how an early twentieth-century college town grew. Its mix of architect-designed houses, pattern book and mail-order designs, and large fraternity buildings gives it architectural significance. It also reflects the close ties between the university and the borough, including street names honoring Penn State presidents and faculty. Three surviving farmhouses link the area to the nineteenth-century Centre Furnace iron lands.