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A Home at Isabella Furnace LIVE WITH HISTORY IN NORTHERN CHESTER COUNTY
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Laurel Anderson
EW PEOPLE DREAM OF MAKING A HOME surrounded by the remains of the last iron furnace built in Chester County—not even history buffs familiar with our area’s rich past linked to the iron industry. Yet several fascinating properties, once sites of former iron furnaces, dot the pastoral northern Chester-Berks County border: Warwick Furnace Farm, maker of cannons and cannonballs for the Revolutionary War; Hopewell Furnace, a National Historic Site and 848-acre park; Joanna Furnace, started by Samuel Potts with others and named after Potts’ wife; and the Reading Furnace Historic District with a showcase mansion house restored by R. Brognard Okie. Another property near Elverson—Isabella Furnace, named after Isabella Potts of the Potts iron-making family—was the last iron furnace to operate in Chester County, going “out of blast” in 1894. And it was the first place that Ted and Debby Flint visited when searching for a new home in 1985.
“Ted fell in love with it on the spot during the open house, as we looked out at the snow on the grounds,” says Debby, remembering her late husband. “He’d worked at Bethlehem Steel and felt a real connection to the place and its history.” And so the Flints created their dream home on a hill surrounded by 26 mostly wooded acres and the massive stone buildings from a bygone era. This property, on the National Register of Historic Places, is ready for its next owners. MAIN HOUSE Previous owners had taken the first steps in 1972 in converting one of the industrial buildings into a residence. Towering stone walls provided the “good bones” for a unique structure that became a 5,700-square-foot house spanning three floors The Flints continued the process of sensitively restoring the historic buildings and creating a grand yet comfortable home—an open-space design, with soaring ceilings, wood beams and stunning CountyLinesMagazine.com | February 2022 | County Lines
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