Minersville Historic District is a national

historic district A historic district or heritage district is a section of a city which contains older buildings considered valuable for historical or architectural reasons. In some countries or jurisdictions, historic districts receive legal protection from c ...

located at Johnstown in

Cambria County, Pennsylvania Cambria County is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 133,472. Its county seat is Ebensburg. The county was created on March 26, 1804, from parts of Bedford, Huntingdon, and Somerset Countie ...

. The district is a working-class neighborhood of privately and company built housing running along the north side of the Conemaugh River. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1995.

History

The district is one of several in the Johnstown area, all are typical nineteenth century

western Pennsylvania Western Pennsylvania is a region in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, covering the western third of the state. Pittsburgh is the region's principal city, with a metropolitan area population of about 2.4 million people, and serves as its economic ...

industrial communities, including Cambria City, Moxham, and Old Conemaugh. ''Note:'' This includes Minersville was primarily associated with the former Cambria Iron Lower Works. The Minersville Historic District consists of 92 residences and one fraternal club, all built between 1880 and 1945, though the strongest growth came in the early 1900s. Due to its hillside location, Minersville survived the 1889

Johnstown Flood The Johnstown Flood (locally, the Great Flood of 1889) occurred on Friday, May 31, 1889, after the catastrophic failure of the South Fork Dam, located on the south fork of the Little Conemaugh River, upstream of the town of Johnstown, Pennsylv ...

. This district was listed on the

in 1995. That same year, the district was selected as a training site for undergraduate researchers by the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the universit ...

at Johnstown.Alexander, James R.
Documenting and Interpreting Immigrant Communities: Johnstown, Pennsylvania, 1840-1920: An Undergraduate Research Training Module
" Johnstown, Pennsylvania: University of Pittsburgh, 1996.

References

{{National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania Historic districts in Cambria County, Pennsylvania National Register of Historic Places in Cambria County, Pennsylvania