Mount Union borough

The Couple Who Would Not Change Their House

15. VIEW OF NOS. 96 AND 96 CEDAR STREET LOOKING NORTH, EXAMPLES OF NORMAN COTTAGES. - Town of KistlerLibrary of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey / Historic American Engineering Record. No known copyright restrictions. pa2824.photos.038914p

A Norman Cottage sits gable end to the street, one and a half stories, with one roof slope run out long to cover a side porch and a three window bay pushed out of the front. Twenty three were built at Kistler and twenty one were still there when the federal survey counted them.

Kenneth and Edna Cox kept theirs exactly as it was built. No additions, no alterations to the outside. The survey noticed something quiet and human in that. For most of the century it was a mark of getting ahead to modernize a company house. By 1991 the neighbors were asking the Coxes not to touch theirs.

Nothing further from the county histories. The six histories held here end in 1913 and this story belongs to 1991, so there is no passage in them that bears on it. Rather than attach an unrelated page and let it look like corroboration, this story stands on the sources listed below.

Sources

Shedd 1991, company town of Kistler (Norman Cottage description, 23 built, 21 survive)
HABS PA-5973 pp.39-40 (Kenneth and Edna Cox, interview 10 June 1991)
LOC caption pa2824.photos.038914p

Checked 2026-09-08 · Historic Mount Union collection

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