Water Street District

Lock Haven's Water Street District contains a group of mid-nineteenth-century houses and commercial buildings on the banks of the West Branch of the Susquehanna River. The Federal-Tuscan Transitional L.A. Mackey House, built in 1854, is a two-story flemish bond brick dwelling with a bracketed cornice and a recessed entrance with a balustraded balcony. Nearby, the David Carskaddon Homestead of 1858 is a Y-shaped Italian Villa brick and stucco house, and the James White House of 1856 shows Greek Revival and Tuscan detailing. Lumbering began along the river after the canal reached the town in 1834, and by 1883 local mills could cut one hundred million feet of timber a year. The district is important because its houses and shops show who profited from that trade and how the town served them.