Ephrata, another of the German communities of Lancaster County, is made special by the remarkable Cloister ( LA34) of Johann Konrad Beissel's Seventh Day Anabaptist monastic community. The town grew up to the east, separate from the Cloister. It has the alternate Pennsylvania town plan with an elongated central square, like that of Reading. On the square are the town's banks, restaurants, and churches, and a market once occupied the widened street. A c. 1880 green serpentinite stone building with brick trim marks the arrival of worldly taste on Main Street; it was joined by the handsome brick Mentzer Building at 3 W. Main Street (1889; c. 1985 adaptive reuse, SITE architects), which provided a public hall above a first-floor general store. Opposite is the superb Moderne Royer Pharmacy; its upper-level apartments have steel casement windows from the 1930s.
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