Hopewell Furnace NHS Landscape: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site
Hanna J. 2025. Hopewell Furnace NHS Landscape: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site. Cultural Landscapes Inventory Report. 300091. National Park Service. NPS Northeast Regional Office, Boston, Massachusetts / CRIS-CL Database
The Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site (NHS) occupies the timbered and agrarian hills of the Pennsylvania Piedmont along the border of Union Township, Berks County, and Warwick Township, Chester County. While the park includes less than twenty percent of the property historically associated with Hopewell Furnace during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it encompasses the furnace’s core buildings and structures, as well as outlying farm buildings and agricultural fields that were once part of the furnace community. The 848-acre park includes 140 acres of fields, pastures, and meadows, and 635 acres of woodland. At the center of the park is a hamlet called Hopewell Furnace Village, which is anchored by a furnace complex comprised of multi-story industrial resources and ruins dating to 1771 and later. The Ironmaster’s House, a prominent, L-shaped stone and stucco building, and associated outbuildings stand north of the furnace complex and are surrounded by earthen terraces and lawns dotted with mature shade trees. To the southeast of the house are three tenant houses and a boarding house, formerly the homes of furnace workers and their families, and later, park staff. Resources are linked by earthen and gravel-surfaced roads built between 1757 and 1815. Within the village are former raceways that were fed by three streams, and in turn powered the furnace. To the north and west of the village core are the park’s visitor center, maintenance buildings, and parking lots dating to the 1950s. An entrance road connects these facilities to PA Route 345 east of the village core. Forests and agricultural land surrounding the village core contains additional historic resources, including the Thomas Lloyd, Harrison Lloyd, Nathan Care, and John Church farmsteads, each of which include various support buildings and structures accessed by farm lanes and surrounded lawns, trees, and fences. There are also ruins of several other farmsteads. Historic buildings associated with the park’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp remain, as do stone fireplaces, water fountains, footbridges, and a wood and stone shelter at the Baptism Creek Picnic Area, built in the late 1930s in the woods northeast of the village core. Lastly, the Bethesda Baptist Church and cemetery stand near the far eastern corner of the park. Set within lawns and a few trees, the small ca.1782 stucco and stone church is next to a walled cemetery, where the earliest gravestone dates to 1807. Hopewell Furnace NHS is surrounded on its north, west, and south sides by French Creek State Park, which is owned and operated by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The NHS also shares its southern boundary with the Pennsylvania State Game Lands and the Crow’s Nest Preserve. Many of these surrounding lands were historically owned by the furnace company.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Hanna, Jennifer
- Date of Issue
- 2025
- Publisher
- National Park Service
- Units
- HOFU
- Keywords
- And War Vehicles), Archeology, Architecture, Conservation, Conservation of Natural Resources, Creating Social Institutions and Movements, Developing the American Economy, Development of the Colonies, Expanding Science and Technology, Expressing Cultural Values, Extraction And Conversion Of Industrial Raw Materials, Extraction or Mining Industries, Federal (1780-1820), French Creek Recreation Demonstration Area, Historic Preservation, Historic Preservation Movement, Historic Site, Historic Vernacular Landscape, Historic-Non-Aboriginal, Hopewell, Hopewell Furnace, Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site, Hopewell Furnace NHS Landscape, Hopewell Village, Industrial Towns, Industry, Military, Military (Fortifications, North Warwick Historic and Archaeological District, Other Metals And Minerals, Peopling Places, Period Revivals (1870-1940), Physical Development, Shaping the Political Landscape, Social and Humanitarian Movements, Social History, Technology (Engineering and Invention), The American Revolution, The Conservation Movement Matures 1908-1941, The Federal Government Enters The Movement, Transforming the Environment, War in the North, Ways of Life, Weapons
- Subjects
- CRIS-CL: 300091: Hopewell Furnace Landscape