Newport Historic District

Newport is a river-town grid of about six by seven blocks in Perry County, Pennsylvania, with its commercial core at Center Square, where three-storey brick buildings occupy each corner. Its origins lie in a gristmill that David English built on Little Buffalo Creek around 1765, and the town grew as flour and feed were shipped by flatboat to Harrisburg and Baltimore. The Juniata Division of the Pennsylvania Canal reached it in 1830 and the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1849. The district is regarded as significant for its long-term commercial and industrial role, with tanneries, forges, garment factories and mills operating over more than a century. Most of the roughly 361 residences are two-storey I-houses built between 1865 and 1920, reflecting the town's late nineteenth-century prosperity. The 1871 Graham Hotel, the 1875 Butz Building and the 1876 Centennial Building anchor the square, and the Jones Warehouse on Front Street dates from about 1817.