Trexler Historic District

The story

Written by AI from this property's National Register nomination and the record above; every sentence is checked against its sources before it appears here. Corrections: privacy@treealive.com

The Trexler Historic District is a 15-building historic district along Old Philadelphia Pike in Albany Township, Berks County, listed in the National Register in 2001. Its buildings display Georgian, Colonial Revival and Folk Victorian styles and include a stone bank barn built in the Pennsylvania Barn form.

Why it's listed

It was listed under criteria A and C, with local significance in architecture and commerce. Its period of significance runs from about 1790 to 1930, spanning the village's founding in 1863 to the railroad's arrival in 1874.

Physical character

Foundations are stone and slate, walls are log, weatherboard and shingle, and roofs are metal, gabled or gambrel. A stone bridge with a stone lower level and three circular arch spans crosses the district, and other buildings show Gothic arch windows and scalloped trim. A stone and frame kitchen wing was added to one building's rear around 1875, followed by a kitchen ell in 1929; windows were replaced and siding covered with asbestos shingles around 1950, and a wooden exterior stairway was added in 1981.

Historical context

The land was granted by the Penn brothers in 1733, and the village was founded in 1863. Joel Kistler had opened a tannery by 1857 that closed in 1892. The Reading Railroad's Lehigh and Schuylkill branch reached the district in 1874 and brought an economic boom, and Albert Trexler began a seed cutter business in the family warehouse in 1929.