Kistler, the Village that Was Designed

1. OVERALL VIEW OF KISTLER AND JUNIATA RIVER FROM STATE HIGHWAY BRIDGE LOOKING SOUTH. - Town of Kistler, Kistler, Mifflin County, PALibrary of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey / Historic American Engineering Record. No known copyright restrictions. pa2824.photos.038900p

Most company towns were laid out by engineers with almost no thought given to how they would feel to live in. Kistler was different. In 1916 the Mount Union Refractories Company hired John Nolen of Cambridge, Massachusetts, one of the best known town planners in the country, to design a whole village across the river from the plant. The New York firm of Mann and MacNeill drew the buildings. The town was finished in 1917 with ninety four company built dwellings, seventeen of them two family houses and seventy seven single family houses, built to six different plans. Nolen thought well enough of it to write it up himself ten years later in a book called New Towns for Old.

Sources

HABS PA-5973 pp.27-28
HABS PA-5974 p.4 (Kistler cross-reference)
Shedd 1991, Mount Union Refractories: Company town of Kistler
LOC caption pa2824.photos.038900p

Checked 2026-08-20 · Historic Mount Union collection

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