Montrose Historic District

Montrose, the county seat of Susquehanna County, grew around a courthouse square on a hill in the early nineteenth century, after the town was laid out in 1812 and named county seat in 1811. Its streets form a partial grid, with Public Avenue sloping down from the courthouse to a commercial core of two- and three-story brick buildings. Greek Revival, Italianate, Italian Villa, Gothic Revival and Queen Anne houses and churches line the residential streets. The courthouse, built in 1854-55, was the work of local builder Avery Frink. William Hamilton Boyd, a local builder, erected churches, the academy and many dwellings from about 1840. Commercial blocks were rebuilt after fires in 1886 and 1888. The district is locally important for its unusually complete collection of mid- to late-nineteenth-century architecture and for its surviving streetscapes.