The houses of Lancaster County
Lancaster County’s building tradition begins with the Swiss and German Mennonite families who settled along the Pequea and Conestoga creeks in the early 1700s. The Hans Herr House near Willow Street, dated 1719, is among the oldest surviving examples: a steep-roofed stone house with a central chimney and an interior plan brought from Europe. Over the following decades, Pennsylvania German farmhouses gradually took on the symmetrical Georgian façades of their English neighbors while keeping Germanic details inside.
The county’s fertile valleys sit on limestone, and limestone is the characteristic building stone of many Lancaster farmhouses, often combined with sandstone or brick. Farm complexes typically include a large bank barn with a forebay overhanging the barnyard, a summer kitchen, a smokehouse, and, in much of the county, tobacco sheds with vertical siding boards hinged to open for drying. Amish and Old Order Mennonite families still farm large parts of the county, and farmland preservation programs have kept much of the agricultural landscape intact.
The towns have their own character. Lancaster city is a dense grid of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century brick rowhouses and townhouses, in Federal, Greek Revival, Italianate, and Victorian styles, many with narrow rear wings stretching back toward alleys. Lititz was founded by Moravians in the 1750s, and its Main Street and church square still show that origin in stone and brick. Ephrata grew around the Ephrata Cloister, a religious community founded in 1732 whose steep-roofed buildings are unlike anything else in the region. Strasburg, Manheim, and Mount Joy keep compact borough cores, while Marietta and Columbia along the Susquehanna preserve river-town streetscapes of brick, frame, and some early log houses.
Projects we take on in Lancaster County
In Lancaster city and the boroughs, whole-home remodeling of rowhouses and townhouses means working within narrow footprints, shared party walls, and stairs that cannot easily move. Careful planning of mechanical routes and kitchens and baths in older homes makes the most of these houses without stripping their interiors.
Home additions range from rebuilt rowhouse backbuildings to new wings on farmhouses, designed to stay subordinate to the original house and to match its stone, brick, or siding.
For families building new, we build custom homes that draw on the proportions and materials of local farmhouses. Because farmland easements and agricultural zoning cover much of the county, we confirm what a parcel allows before design begins.
On the county’s farmhouses and older borough buildings, our historic home restoration work often begins with limestone and lime: removing hard cement repointing, repointing with compatible lime mortar, and repairing original windows, doors, and plaster. We document what we find, including framing, hardware, and finishes, in a house record for future owners.
Lancaster County has a remarkable stock of bank barns, tobacco sheds, and summer kitchens, and many are candidates for barn and outbuilding conversions where zoning and any easements allow.
Rowhouses deserve a word of their own. A Lancaster city rowhouse shares its side walls with its neighbors, so structural repairs, chimney work, and even repointing can affect the house next door. Many have been divided, combined, or altered more than once, and the framing behind the plaster rarely matches the drawings, if drawings exist at all. We open small inspection areas during preconstruction, before design is final, so the plan is built around what is actually in the walls.
Historic districts and approvals
Lancaster County has some of the most established local historic review in the region, alongside rules tied to farmland.
Lancaster city. The City of Lancaster has a Historical Architectural Review Board under Pennsylvania’s Historic District Act (Act 167 of 1961) for its downtown historic district, and a separate historical commission that reviews exterior work in other designated parts of the city. Which body reviews your project depends on where the house sits.
Lititz and other boroughs. Lititz Borough has a HARB that reviews exterior changes in its historic district. Other boroughs in the county have their own local historic districts or review procedures, so check with your borough even if you are not sure a district applies.
Farmland easements. Many farms in the county are protected by agricultural conservation easements held by the county’s Agricultural Preserve Board or by private land trusts. These easements can limit new houses, subdivision, and non-farm uses of existing buildings.
Requirements vary by municipality and change over time, so homeowners should confirm current rules with their city, borough, or township and any easement holder before design begins. We help prepare applications alongside your architect, with existing-conditions photos, material samples, and construction details that show reviewers how the work will be built.