206 Lincoln Drive
Philadelphia, PA, USA

Historic RittenhouseTown

Historic RittenhouseTown, sometimes referred to as Rittenhouse Historic District, encompasses the remains of an early industrial community which was the site of the first paper mill in British North America. The mill was built in 1690 by William Rittenhouse and his son Nicholas on the north bank of Paper Mill Run (Monoshone Creek) near (and now within) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The district, off Lincoln Drive near Wissahickon Avenue in Fairmount Park, includes six of up to forty-five original buildings. RittenhouseTown was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was designated a National Historic Landmark District on April 27, 1992.

History
Flax was woven into linen in nearby Germantown. When the linen fabrics wore out, the rags were brought to RittenhouseTown to be made into paper. Paper produced at the Rittenhouse mill was sold to printers in Germantown, Philadelphia, and New York City. The Rittenhouse paper mill operated until about the 1850s, by which time the family was leasing its facilities out to other types of manufacturing.

Between the years 1890 and 1917, the site was acquired through donations and purchases by the City of Philadelphia's Fairmount Park Commission. A nonprofit organization called Historic RittenhouseTown, Inc. was founded in 1984 to preserve, restore, and historically interpret RittenhouseTown. The organization maintains offices within RittenhouseTown and offers historic tours, paper making workshops and special events.

Description
RittenhouseTown includes six historic buildings maintained by Historic RittenhouseTown: Abraham Rittenhouse Home (c. 1720); Rittenhouse Homestead (1707); Rittenhouse Bake House (c. 1730); Enoch Rittenhouse Home (1845); Jacob Rittenhouse Home (1810); and another unnamed 18th century Rittenhouse Home. The Rittenhouse Bake House is used for cooking demonstrations. A 20th century barn originally built for the Fairmount Park Commission is now used for paper-making workshops and demonstrations.

Most of RittenhouseTown's buildings are built of stone and finished in stucco, and generally exhibit colonial building methods. They are all that are left of a much larger industrial complex and worker village, of which more than thirty-five buildings have been demolished. The area also includes archaeological industrial remains of some of the mill buildings.

National Register of Historic Places - Historic RittenhouseTown

Statement of Significance:

Rittenhouse Town commonly stylized as Rittenhouse Town, is the industrial community that grew up around William Rittenhouse's paper mills. Two mills were constructed within the village before 1703, the first in 1690 and it's replacement by 1703. These early dates establish the site as the location of the first paper mills in British North America. Rittenhouse Town is in Philadelphia's Fairmount Park, a property listed on the National Register, in a picturesque, steep valley created by the Monotone Creek (a.k.a. Paper Mill Run) which served as the community source of water, both for powering the industrial machinery and for residential use. The eastern end of the site is marked by the confluence of two small streams which join to form the Monotone. Maps dating from as early as the 1760s, establish this area of the district to be the site of the first mills (Figure 6). the village also contains seven buildings constructed between 1690 and ca.1830 which are representative of the change from late Medieval to Colonial/Federal design. Six houses and a barn, each originally built with local field stone and a gable roof, survive to document the" domestic core of the village.

The village began with the mill on a twenty-acre parcel; with later purchases of adjacent tracts of land by members of the Rittenhouse family, the holdings grew to encompass hundreds of acres contiguous to the original site. By the 1880s, over forty buildings were associated with the village (Figure 12). Like most pioneer industrial locations, the mills and associated service buildings have long since been demolished. The construction of Lincoln Drive which destroyed a portion of the south end of the site has also altered the character of the setting. However, preliminary archaeological investigations have verified areas of potential significance including the foundations of an early mill, built in the center of the present village, possibly before 1736. Excavations have also located evidence of former buildings and areas of high potential. These preliminary investigations have also concluded that additional excavation will provide more precise dating of the construction dates, information on the relative socioeconomic status of the former inhabitants and technological data pertaining to the paper making.

By analyzing these findings and the numerous historic maps and photographs, the configurations of the eighteenth and nineteenth community can be reconstructed. It is known that the houses were clustered around the mills and other utilitarian buildings forming a typical, functionally planned community (Figure 7). These clusters of buildings were lined up along the creek and eventually stretched for a mile or more. This was likely in response to the steep hill sides as well as to the need to be close to the mill operations.

The seven surviving buildings are organized on either side of the creek and are positioned along a dirt road which runs through the village. Each structure is oriented toward the south and is constructed of local stone with a gable roof. The roof of 206 was originally a steep gable but was changed to a low-pitched roof typical row the 1820s through 1830s, Federal vocabulary. The six houses and barn were erected between 1690 and ca.1830, at which time most of the significant additions and alterations had been accomplished. Subsequent porch and shed additions, modernizations and sympathetic restorations have not dramatically affected the integrity of the buildings, for sufficient original fabric survives in all buildings to establish the domestic character of the village.

The boundaries are defined to include the original twenty acre parcel leased by William Rittenhouse and his partners with an additional small plot which was purchased in the first half of the eighteenth century on which buildings 210 and 210a are located. The Rittenhouse family was responsible for the major early additions and alterations to these buildings. In addition, the district includes a small portion of the late nineteenth century industrial village, the remains of which survive largely below ground. It also contains the sites of the first paper mills as well as the houses and barn occupied by these responsible for building and managing the papermaking operation up ~o the nineteenth century switch to manufacturing cotton and other products.