Monroe Furnace

Six miles northwest of McAlevys Fort, where Route 26 meets the side road to Mooresville, a square stone stack stands on the south side of a mountain, so overgrown that the nomination says it can be seen from the road only in winter. This is Monroe Furnace, a charcoal iron furnace nominated in 1989 as part of the Industrial Resources of Huntingdon County.

The nomination, prepared in July 1989 and drawing on a 1988 Historic American Engineering Record report by Nancy Shedd, says the furnace was established in 1846 and 1847 by General James Irvin, a prominent Centre County ironmaster associated with ten iron works in that county and two in Huntingdon County. Milton Scott Lytle's 1876 county history says Irvin built it in 1844 or 1845; the two sources do not agree. In 1850, the nomination says, Irvin employed 50 men here and produced 958 tons of pig iron valued at $21,000, but by 1851 the assessed value of the enterprise had fallen from $11,000 to $3,000. For all his experience, the nomination says, Irvin could not withstand the depression of the middle 1850s and was forced to retire from the iron business in 1857. By 1855 Monroe had been sold to George W. Johnston & Co. of Boalsburg, who set up a foundry making cast iron stoves. The operation continued under Johnston's name until 1864, when the Freedom Iron Company, owners of Greenwood Furnace, acquired it. By 1876 Lytle could write that it belonged to the Logan Iron and Steel Company and had not run for many years.

The stack is 30 by 30 feet at the base and about 20 feet high, cut native sandstone laid without mortar, with a 14 foot casting arch on the east, a 12 foot tuyere arch on the north and a small arch on the south. The lower ten feet of the northeast corner have fallen, and the nomination says the perfect alignment of the corner above the collapse shows the care taken with the original work. Along both sides of the Mooresville road lie the tumbled stone remains of 14 workers' houses. The site was nominated under Criteria A and D, for the charcoal iron industry and for what those foundations might yet tell about the size and arrangement of an iron plantation, and what the stack and slag might tell about why iron making here ended so soon. The district covers three acres, and it belongs to the state.

The walls and corners are intact except for the lower ten feet of the northeast corner. The perfect alignment of the corner above the collapsed portion witnesses the skill and care taken with the original dry wall construction.National Register of Historic Places nomination, Monroe Furnace (reference 89001818), Section 7 page 2 (PDF page 4) · character 4,474 of the scanned text

Checked 2026-09-05 · National Register of Historic Places nomination, read in full

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