Mount Union borough
The Top and the Bottom of the Same Company
This is 118 Market Street, the General Refractories superintendent's house. It is still there.
The same company owned forty one houses in Mount Union, scattered in four different places. Two rows of gambrel roofed houses along east Water Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. A row of seven, two stories, right up against the plant on Wausau Place. Six frame houses on Shirley Street. And twelve one story shanties across Hill Valley Run on the far side of the plant, in a section the town called Shantytown. Not far off was Mount Union Refractories' own row of shanties, which somebody with a sense of humor had nicknamed Little Kistler.
When the divesting came, the houses that looked like houses were sold to the families in them. The shanties were judged unfit to pass into private hands and were pulled down. One end of the company's housing survived to be photographed. The other end did not.
Sources
- LOC caption pa2850.photos.038946p (HABS PA-6003)
- HABS PA-5974 p.6 (41 houses in four areas, Shantytown)
- HABS PA-5973 p.29 (Little Kistler)
Checked 2026-09-11 · Historic Mount Union collection
More from Mount Union borough
This stone house stands on West Water Street near Division. The federal survey records it as the John Sharrar House and…
Mount Union boroughThe Brick Office that Became the Red CrossLook at the sign in the yard. This little brick building on Market Street was the General Refractories Company office.…
Mount Union boroughAetna Explosion 1916Did you know? The building that killed six men at Mount Union had been catching fire all summer, and the paper reported…