Morgantown Historic District

Morgantown is a small village of about nine blocks on State Route 23 at the east end of the Conestoga River Valley in Berks County, surrounded by farmland. Its core around the center square was built from about 1790 to 1850, mostly of brown or red sandstone in the Georgian style, with a few earlier log buildings that survive under later siding or stucco. A second wave of frame Victorian buildings, dating from about 1850 to 1920, flanks the core, and a third group of smaller cast stone, brick and wood buildings from about 1920 to 1945 stands at the east end. The village grew as a commercial hub serving farms and the local iron industry, with a post office established in 1805 and stage routes linking it to nearby towns. Its buildings include a tavern and hotel, a Victorian Italianate lodge and town meeting hall of 1868, and a stone house built by the builder of Reading Furnace Mansion. The district is regarded as having excellent integrity, and its streetscape still retains the look of a 19th-century rural village.