Oil City North Side Historic District

Laid out on a hillside above Oil Creek in Oil City, Venango County, this residential neighborhood of about 250 acres grew from the early 1870s through the 1930s, with most construction between about 1880 and the 1930s. Its 1,214 resources include Italianate, Second Empire, Queen Anne, Gothic Revival, Colonial Revival and Bungalow houses alongside many modest gabled cottages built without a formal style. Most residents were workers in the oil industry, from rig and refinery hands to corporate managers, so the housing shows working-class and wealthier households side by side. Polish immigrants settled the Palace Hill area from the late 1880s, and their parish church, built in 1907 in Romanesque Revival style, anchors the community. The district is significant for its connection to the petroleum economy and for its concentrated, cohesive collection of residential architecture from the boom years onward.