Historic Lancaster City

Photo Courtesy Stephen Davis

The town of Lancaster was founded in the early 1730s and developed into a regional center serving the surrounding agricultural community. Located at the intersection of major east-west and north-south roadways, Lancaster was an important eighteenth-century settlement on the primary route of westward expansion through Pennsylvania. By the second half of the eighteenth century, Lancaster was said to have been the largest inland town in America, a distinction it held until the end of the first decade of the nineteenth century.

Despite the prominent role that Lancaster played in the early settlement of Pennsylvania, the extent of the city's physical growth in its first one hundred and thirty years was relatively modest. Joshua Scott's 1824 Map of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania indicates that lots were laid out only in the central portion of the present day city, roughly extending north as far as James Street, east to Plum Street, southeast to Chester Street and southwest to Strawberry Street. Houses are shown on about three-quarters of the lots.

Architecturally, Colonial Lancaster was a town typified by small scale residences. The core of the city contained the important public buildings - a courthouse, a jail, a market, etc. - many of which were, architecturally, rather refined buildings exhibiting English designs, popular before the Revolution, and Federal designs thereafter. In addition to the public buildings, elegant Georgian and later Federal, town houses were scattered around the town, mostly close to Penn Square. Among the more notable of these houses still surviving are Jasper Yeate's house on South Queen Street and Gottlieb Sehner's house on North Prince Street (now referred to as the Sehner-Ellicott-von Hess House).

While these high style buildings of central Lancaster are what people of today often think of when they think of Colonial Lancaster, the predominant building style of the period was decidedly Germanic and of a more vernacular character. The typical house found in Lancaster, at least prior to the mid-1800s, was a one story house with a three-room, central chimney plan. These houses, of which relatively few remain today, numerically dominated the town. Of the 709 primary dwellings listed in the 1798 direct tax of Lancaster City, more than 72% were houses of this type. Only nineteen houses were listed as being three stories tall; the remainder were two stories. The predominant building materials for the smaller houses were log, half-timber and frame. By 1815, this style house was still common, accounting for 66% of all residences.

The mid to late 1800s were a period of rapid growth and expansion within Lancaster. The city's population grew by a mere 8% between 1830 and 1840. Population growth reached 30% in the two subsequent decades.3 The 1864 atlas indicates that development within the four square mile city was intense in the vicinity of Center Square and along major streets. The remainder was relatively open and sparsely settled. By the time Roe and Colby completed their map of the city in 1874, much of this open area had been infilled with new housing and industrial development. This trend continued as evidenced by an 1884 map by the Board of Trade and the 1899 Atlas of Lancaster County by Graves and Steinbarger. In addition, during that period many small scale eighteenth and early nineteenth century buildings in the city's center were demolished and replaced with taller structures or were renovated to reflect new uses and stylistic preferences.

Although the city is located at the heart of Pennsylvania's most prominent agricultural region, its late-nineteenth through early-twentieth century growth was largely a result of the city's industrial and manufacturing expansion. The historic character of Lancaster is largely defined by the building and rebuilding that took place during this period. The railroad cuts that loop across the northern half of the city and that bisects the city from north to south, defined historic industrial corridors that remain very much in evidence today. The central business district that evolved through the wealth built from these industries defines the core of the city. Surrounding these areas are neighborhoods, rich in architectural character and diversity. Rowhouses are the predominant form, interspersed with vestiges of the city's earlier periods - one story dwellings and high style town houses - and the mansions of the city's wealthy.

Since the early twentieth century, with the exception of the episode of urban renewal in the 1960s and 1970s, relatively little building replacement has occurred in Lancaster. This is particularly true in the residential areas outside of the central business district. Today, the city's neighborhoods are largely intact as they were originally developed and have a high degree of historic integrity. As a consequence, the city which we appreciate today, and the distinctive character that the city has become known for, should be recognized and respected as a product of late nineteenth and early twentieth century industrial America.

Colonial Lancaster

Title to the land now known as Pennsylvania was transferred to William Penn in 1681. Penn conceived his colony as a place of religious tolerance, where land would be held by small landowners, rather than by a privileged class as was common in other colonies. Naturally, the colony soon developed into a major receptacle for European settlers seeking economic opportunity and freedom to practice their own religious beliefs.

The land that became Lancaster County was inhabited by Native Americans, including the Susquehannock, Conestoga, Pequea and Shawnee prior to the beginning of permanent European settlement in the 1700s. Prolonged warfare between the Susquehannocks and the Five Nations of the Iroquois to gain control of the burgeoning fur trade with the Europeans, coupled with disease, resulted in the Native American population largely abandoning the area by the end of the 1600s. The nature of Native American settlement in what is now Lancaster City has not been substantially documented.

The first Europeans to arrive in this area were mostly fur traders who established trading posts along the Susquehanna River. The Proprietors made grants of land as early as 1691, yet no permanent settlement occurred until somewhat later. The "Servants' Tract," granted to Welsh servants, failed in 1702 as the first major attempt to establish a community here.

The first decades of the 1700s saw settlements take hold. Swiss Mennonites searching for economic opportunity and a relatively stable environment in which to practice their religion, began to arrive in present day Lancaster County by 1709. Located on a ten thousand acre tract immediately south of the present day Lancaster City, the first group of Mennonite settlers arrived into the wilderness of Pennsylvania and quickly carved out the beginnings of the present community. Within a few short years, a small group of French Huguenots settled in the Pequea Valley and Scotch-Irish began settlements in the western and southern portions of the area. Non-Mennonite Germans, English Quakers and others arrived in increasing numbers by the 1720s.

The area now known as Lancaster City was settled as early as 1720 or 1721 and by 1730 boasted of a population of about two hundred. According to Ellis and Evans' 1883 history:

The locality was known as the Indian Field and Gibson's Pasture. George Gibson kept a tavern here when Hamilton platted the town....His tavern was called 'the Hickory Tree,' probably from a tall hickory which stood near the public road, and which was said to have been a favorite one with the Indians, the place of their rendezvous for many years, and the centre of one of their small villages. 'A swamp lay in front of Gibson's,' we are told, 'and another to the north.' The one in front of Gibson's, nearly in the centre of the site of the present city, was the Dark Hazel Swamp, which was drained and cleared of wood in 1745.
Lancaster "townstead" was established by action of the Governor on 17 February 1730. Though at the time the land was thought to be under the ownership of the Proprietors, it was soon learned that Andrew Hamilton, prothonotary of the Provincial Supreme Court, had actually acquired title to it. The land was resurveyed for Hamilton in 1733 and conveyed to his son James Hamilton, for whom a patent was obtained from the Penns on 1 May 1735. The site on which the town was to be created carried with it no particular geographic advantages, other than to be centrally located within the newly established county of Lancaster. Neither of the nearby waterways, the Susquehanna River and the Conestoga Creek, were navigable and there were no principal roads running through the site. Prior to Hamilton's town plan, the village was referred to as Hickory. It was named Lancaster by John Wright, a prominent local, in honor of his native Lancashire, England.

The Hamiltons had actually laid out the town and began selling lots before their clear title was established. In his book Conestoga Crossroads, Lancaster, Pennsylvania 1730-1790, Jerome H. Woods, Jr. described the design of the new town of Lancaster by Andrew Hamilton, date March 1730:

Drawing upon the modern concepts of town layout evident in Philadelphia and in eighteenth-century London, Hamilton projected a gridiron pattern of street arrangement; a formalistic mode not unfamiliar to the man who had earlier designed the graceful Georgian statehouse in Philadelphia, In the center of town, he placed a square to contain the courthouse; at right angles to this were laid the two principal thoroughfares of the villages, "High Street" (called "King Street" by 1735) to the east and west, "Queen Street" to the north and south. "Prince," "Duke" and "Orange" streets also proclaimed the customary deference to royalty; and there were, in addition, "Vine" and "Water" streets, the latter taking its name from the "roaring brook" that coursed along it. All of the streets were sixty-five feet wide, with the exception of Water Street, which had a breadth of only forty feet. The standard lot was 64 feet 4 1/2 inches wide and 245 feet deep, large enough to accommodate not only the houses but also outbuildings and gardens which many of the residents would place behind their homes. To the rear of each row of lots ran alleys fourteen feet in width. In addition to the central square, reserved for the courthouse, and the lot granted for the county prison at the northeast corner of King and Prince streets, Hamilton reserved a large area adjacent to the northwest corner of the square for a market house.

The town of Lancaster grew steadily in the years after 1740 and soon became a pivotal frontier community. Benjamin Franklin reportedly obtained wagons and pack horses here during the French and Indian Wars. During this period there was considerable concern in the community about the dangers of attack and a wooden fort was built in town.

By around 1760, Lancaster had gron to become the largest inland town in America; it held that honor untill abou the end of the first decade of the 19th century, when Pittsbugh attained a larger population. America's first paved road, the Lancaster and Philadelphia Turnpike commenced in 1792, strengthened the ton's commercial importance.

Victorian Lancaster

While Lancaster is often referred to as a Colonial city, its character was dramatically reshaped in the Victorian period extending from the mid 1800s through the early 1900s.
The late 1840s and early 1850s were unusually prosperous years in Lancaster. New industries and well as new institutions, such as Fulton Hall and the recently merged Franklin and Marshall College, began to change the physical geography of the community. New governmental structures - the County Court House, designed by Samuel Sloane, and Prison, constructed from plans drawn by John Haviland - similarly attest to a vibrant economy. What in 1830 was a small community of 7,704 residents had more than doubled to 17,603 persons by 1860.

The Conestoga Stream Mills on South Prince Street produced more than 80% of the heavy materials used by the Union Army for tents, ground cloths and the like. The Lancaster Cork Works was established in 1875 on Fulton Street and was, by 1883, manufacturing twelve to fifteen thousand gross of finished corks per day. Around 1900, umbrella manufacturing became Lancaster's most important industry, employing 15% of the city's industrial workforce (1,300 workers) and producing a greater dollar amount of goods than Lancaster's then second leading industry, tobacco. By the 1920s, Lancaster was boasting the production of more umbrellas each year than any city in America.

Throughout the latter 1800s and early 1900s, Lancaster residential neighborhoods were also transformed. What had been a relatively small town in the 1840s became a densly populated city by the 1890s. The smaller scale one-story houses of Lancaster were largely torn down, or remodelled, and replaced with rowhouses and duplexes. With the exception of the central business district and pockets of industrial buildings, the remainder of the four-square mile city was fully developed with residences.

Lancaster's relative prosperity continued into the twentieth century. Increased industrialization throughout the period from 1860 to 1940 resulted in the development of housing in many areas of the city. This prosperity is in many respects symbolized by the Griest Building of 1926, the city's only skyscraper.