Kistler, the Village that Was Designed

Most company towns were laid out by engineers with almost no thought given to how they would feel to live in. Kistler was different. In 1916 the Mount Union Refractories Company hired John Nolen of Cambridge, Massachusetts, one of the best known town planners in the country, to design a whole village across the river from the plant. The New York firm of Mann and MacNeill drew the buildings. The town was finished in 1917 with ninety four company built dwellings, seventeen of them two family houses and seventy seven single family houses, built to six different plans. Nolen thought well enough of it to write it up himself ten years later in a book called New Towns for Old.

Checked 2026-08-20 · Historic Mount Union collection

← All stories from Mount Union borough