Two Historic Pennsylvania Canal Towns: Alexandria and Saltsburg

Leach, Sara; Burlingame, Dorothy; Genskow, Karen; Belz, Kristin

This documentation project, undertaken by the Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record (HABS/HAER) in cooperation with the America’s Industrial Heritage Project (AIHP), both entities of the National Park Service, is part of a multi-year effort to record the architectural resources in a nine-county region of southwestern Pennsylvania related to the railroad, canal, and affiliated industrial development. This assessment of the architectural and historical significance of two towns located along the route of the Pennsylvania Main Line Canal during the nineteenth century was completed during summer 1988. Saltsburg, on the Kiskiminetas River, and Alexandria, on the Juniata River, were selected for study according to several criteria: for geographic location on flanking sides of the Allegheny Divide, for containing a building stock composed of a significant number of intact period buildings that date from the mid- to late nineteenth century, and for the existence of a group of standing structures specifically associated with the canal as well as the visibly extant canal bed itself. The individual buildings for which HABS reports were prepared were selected from previously conducted surveys of the municipalities based on construction date, architectural and historical merit, and retention of architectural integrity (i.e., original form and exterior siding with minor additions). One structure threatened by demolition was measured, and all buildings were recorded using large-format photography. This report is organized into three primary chapters: a general investigation of the region and historical events surrounding canal-town development in southwestern Pennsylvania; and individual overviews on Alexandria and Saltsburg, with respective appendices containing the HABS reports on forty-four buildings. Because the building reports contained in the appendices lack a general bibliography, sources consulted are found in the bibliography of the respective chapter; individual HABS building reports transmitted to the Library of Congress, however, contain a full list of sources consulted.

Two Historic Pennsylvania Canal Towns: Alexandria and Saltsburg

Series