Shepherdstown is one of the two earliest towns in West Virginia. On December 23, 1762, the Virginia General Assembly established Mecklenburg, as it was first called, and Romney. Shepherdstown claims primacy because Germans from Pennsylvania had established a settlement on...
Harpers Ferry, at the easternmost point of West Virginia, is the state's most famous town, thanks to a short-lived but seminal event, John Brown's October 1859 raid to capture the United States Armory. Although Brown's attempt failed, the armory was destroyed early in the...
Harpers Ferry's steep, picturesque site precluded any sort of grid plan. The Lower Town, at the tip of the peninsula, consists of Shenandoah and Potomac streets, paralleling the river for which each is named, and High, or Washington, Street. Washington intersects...
The Upper Town is also known as Camp Hill, for an encampment of army troops in 1799. Reached via High Street, it contains a cluster of mid-nineteenth-century houses erected for the upper echelons of the armory hierarchy. After the Civil War, Congress exempted these...
When one thinks of Wyoming, buildings are not the first images that come to mind. The state is known more for its majestic mountain ranges and seemingly endless expanses of sagebrush prairie than for its architectural monuments. With less than 600,000 residents occupying an area of 97,000 square miles...
