Upper Roxborough Historic District

Along the Schuylkill River in northwestern Philadelphia, extending into Montgomery County, this district preserves a landscape of eighteenth- to early twentieth-century farms, mills, quarries, estate houses and rail-related structures. Settlement began in the early 1700s, principally by people of German heritage, and paper milling was the earliest and later dominant industry, beginning with Anthony Newhouse's mill at Trout Run in the second quarter of the eighteenth century. The Riverside Mills complex grew from a front volume built in 1792 into a large nineteenth-century complex begun by Edwin R. Cope in 1856. Soapstone and schist quarries supplied stone, and the Philadelphia, Germantown and Norristown Railroad, opened through the district in 1835, brought wealthy Philadelphians who built summer estates. Its high degree of integrity distinguishes it from neighboring riverside areas. Mid-nineteenth-century Italianate and Queen Anne houses, workers' houses and barns illustrate its architectural range.