The period of significance for the Washington Grove Historic District spans the years 1873 to 1969. It begins with the establishment of the Washington Grove Camp Meeting and ends in 1969 (50 years before the updated and expanded 2020 form nominating Washington Grove for designation as a Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places was submitted).
During this period, Washington Grove achieved its design significance in the areas of architecture, community planning and development, and landscape architecture as a town founded on camp meeting principles that evolved to incorporate a range of vernacular and stylistic design trends. This period encompasses the formation and development of Washington Grove as a religious camp meeting, its location as an independent Chautauqua assembly, municipal organization, and the events and activities that contribute to its significance within the context of post-World War II planning and development in Montgomery County.
Contributing resources in the historic district represent a wide variety of architectural styles and forms. While carpenter gothic cottage architecture is iconic to Washington Grove, this style represents less than half of the structures classified as contributing resources to the historic district.
Actually, the next most represented architectural style in the historic district is the ranch house, which generally shares the modest scale evocative of Town’s original cottages. Almost forty residences are categorized as ranch.
In fact, a total of twenty-five discrete architectural styles (e.g., Cape Cod, Bungalow) and forms (e.g., side gable, pyramidal) are called out in the table of Contributing and Non-Contributing Resources in the updated and expanded National Register nomination form.
If you are interested in the range of architectural styles and forms in town, or you are simply curious about how your home has been identified, when it was built, and whether it falls into the contributing resource category, this link will take you directly to the table of Contributing and Non-Contributing Resources excerpted from the 2020 National Register nomination form (PDF).