Centre Furnace

A small two-room log structure on this site listed in the 1798 Direct Tax records may have formed the core of a substantial, banked, five-bay brick house built a few years later by General John Patton, one of the county's first ironmasters. The mansion's symmetrical facade and the central-hall plan represented its owners' consciousness of the prevalent Georgian style. The banked, rough-cut stone basement level accommodated the kitchen used for feeding the furnace workforce. After a period of decline, local entrepreneur Moses Thompson took up residence in the mansion, and added a two-story ell with a kitchen and bedroom above. The two cross gables and a bracketed porch were added c. 1870. Now restored to its late-nineteenth-century appearance, the house accommodates the county historical society. At the intersection of College Avenue and Porter Road, the remains of the Centre Furnace (1847) include a tapering stone stack. The furnace was used in the manufacture of pig iron until the Panic of 1857 forced a halt in production. In 1855, Moses Thompson and James Irvin donated two hundred acres to open the Farmer's High School of Pennsylvania that later became Pennsylvania State University ( CE16).