York’s housing stock not that revolutionary
York’s association with the American Revolution has been so strong that it was inevitable that its minor league baseball team would be named the “Revolution.” Indeed, some even erroneously view its architecture as Colonial.
A few buildings remain from Revolutionary times — the Gates House and Plough Tavern and the Cookes House (See “Vandals strike house where Thomas Paine reportedly labored” entry in York Town Square archives), for example.
And a few 20th-century buildings are designed to bring people back to those days — the Colonial Courthouse replica along the Codorus and Sovereign Bank’s (formerly York Federal’s) downtown office.
But much of York’s building and house stock is predominantly Victorian, meaning late 1800s and early 1900s… .
“York’s role in the Revolutionary War cannot be underestimated, and the efforts to promote this are valid,” a historical preservation official wrote a few years back. “But of far greater importance in terms of the impact of the York of today is York’s great industrial and manufacturing past.”
