Uptown Somerset Historic District (Boundary Increase)

Commercial and residential buildings on West Main and West Union Streets, west of the public square in Somerset, form this boundary increase to the Uptown Somerset Historic District. Most of the contributing buildings date from the rebuilding that followed fires in 1872 and 1876, when the area was largely destroyed. Brick became the dominant material. Three former residences at 136, 152 and 160 West Main Street, built in the Italianate style with bracketed eaves and tall segmentally arched second-floor windows, were constructed after 1876. A Second Empire house at 127 West Main Street, built in 1873, shows a mansard roof and round-headed dormers. Early twentieth-century commercial buildings include a 1926 store of white glazed brick, now J.C. Penney, and a Newberry's store built about 1945. The area is significant for its commercial role as a county seat and railroad community, and for its surviving late nineteenth-century commercial and residential architecture.