Page "Roaring Spring, Pennsylvania" Paragraph 8

The Roaring Spring Historic District is located within the Borough of Roaring Spring, a paper-mill town of about 2, 600 established in the late 1860s in southern Blair County, south-central Pennsylvania.

Roaring Spring is situated within the northwest quadrant of a long bowl-like valley known as Morrisons Cove, one of dozens of long but broad valleys in Pennsylvania's Ridge and Valley region.

The town developed just southeast of a natural pass into the valley called McKee's Gap where an important iron smelting business ( Martha Furnace ) operated through the mid 19th century.

The site of Roaring Spring is moderately hilly, drained by Cabbage and Halter Creeks.

The most prominent natural feature is the Big Spring, or Roaring Spring, a large natural limestone spring so-called because of the great noise its eight-million-gallon-a-day stream once made rushing out of the hillside near the village center.

Roaring Spring is overwhelmingly residential ( 91 percent ) in scale, but also includes churches, stops, professional offices, a municipal building, parks, a cemetery, a book factory complex, and a former railroad station.

Most houses are two-story, wood-frame single-family buildings situated on lots of to.

The largest segment of the building stock between 1865 and 1944 was constructed between the 1890s and 1930s.

Architecturally, the district contains a variety of late 19th to early 20th century styles and vernacular building types, including Gothic Revival, Queen Anne, Colonial Revival, Bungalow, Foursquare, Gable Fronts, Gable Fronts & Wings, I Houses, and double-pile Georgian types.

Ninety ( 90 ) percent of the district's 643 properties is rated as contributing.

The remaining 10 percent consists of buildings less than 50 years old ( constructed after 1944 ) or older buildings whose architectural integrity has been lost through inappropriate alterations.

Overall, most alterations, such as inappropriate replacement of windows, doors and porch posts, are reversible if desired.