Mount Airy Historic District

Mount Airy is a residential district of large, ornately detailed houses on Prospect Avenue in Bethlehem, built mostly between 1910 and 1930, with earlier houses from 1895 to 1909. Its 27 contributing residences show a range of revival styles, including Colonial, Tudor, French Renaissance and Spanish Revival, built in brick, stone, shingle and stucco. The lots were laid out in the late 1890s and early 1900s on a high ridge west of the city center, and the district developed as a suburban setting with deep setbacks, plantings and circular drives. Its importance rests on its link to the executives of Bethlehem Steel, the city's major industry, who bought and built here after Charles Schwab took over the company in 1904. The district is also regarded as the city's only large collection of early 20th-century high-style houses. Most of the houses remain largely unaltered, and the district is valued for its architecture and its role in the city's industrial history.