St. Peters Village Historic District
Why it's listed
Along St. Peters Road at the Falls of French Creek in Warwick Township, a narrow ravine village grew around an 1845 iron mine and an 1880 granite quarry opened by Davis Knauer. Company-built frame and stone houses, a general store, a bakery, and a hotel called Excursion House line the road within a short walk of the mines and quarry. The village is regarded as an intact example of a rural industrial workplace with housing arranged around it, with few alterations to its buildings. Knauer's French Creek Black Granite was first sold for curbstone and Belgian paving blocks in Philadelphia, and later for memorial stones. During the 1940s the stone was used to make precision surface plates for measuring instruments. The district is significant for its industrial history and for its late Victorian domestic architecture, which shows a unified design across its workers' houses.
Significance in brief: The nomination argues the district is a singular example of company-provided housing within walking distance of the workplace, tied to rural extractive industry. It also argues the village is an intact collection of plain late Victorian domestic architecture closely arranged with industrial buildings, and that its granite was used in notable 20th-century surface plates and buildings.
Machine-generated summary. This summary was generated by a language model from the official nomination document and has not been reviewed line by line by an editor. It may contain errors. Check the source document before relying on any detail. Source: nomination document (PDF) · National Archives catalog entry. NRHP reference 03001189, listed November 21, 2003. Summary generated October 2026 (model claude-haiku-5-5, prompt v1.1-2026-10-29, confidence medium).
Key facts
| Address | E. & W. sides of St. Peters Rd. between School Rd. and Rock Run Rd. (Warwick Township), St Peters |
|---|---|
| County | Chester County |
| Listed | November 21, 2003 |
| Reference number | 03001189 |
| Resource type | District |
| Period of significance | 1845-1953 |
| Architect / builder | KNAUER, Davis (listed as architect/builder on the form, as the developer) |
| Architectural style | LATE VICTORIAN |
| Criteria |
|
| Areas of significance | Industry, Architecture |
| Level of significance | State |
| Status (as stated in the nomination) | Quarry activity ended in 1970 and the village has been put to adaptive reuse, with residential and industrial buildings occupied variously today. |
| Acreage | 70 |
| Coordinates | 40.18071, -75.72906 (NPS GIS) |
What listing means for this property
This is a historic district. Buildings within its boundary are either contributing (they add to the district's significance) or non-contributing. Owners of contributing income-producing buildings can claim the 20% federal rehabilitation tax credit; homeowners should look at state credits. National Register districts impose no design review by themselves; a local historic district ordinance, if one exists, does (the difference explained).
General information, not legal or tax advice. Rules change; confirm with your State Historic Preservation Office or a qualified adviser.
Sources and further reading
- National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places database (snapshot May 2026), reference 03001189.
- Nomination form (PDF, National Archives) — catalog entry
- Wikipedia article (used for cross-checking only; text not reproduced here)
- Wikidata Q7402074
- This listing as JSON
Last updated October 2026. Found an error? See the editorial policy for how to report it.