The Moul family mansion stands beside the Conrad Moul iron foundry and saw and planing mill, a business first established in 1842, with its brick commercial building erected in 1888. The Moul enterprises were a mainstay of the Public Commons, Hanover’s industrial park from the late 19th century well into the 20th, where foundries, distillers, and coal, lumber, and hemp rope distributors bought or rented parcels in an area stretching roughly from Railroad Street west to North Street north and Chestnut Street east. On Chestnut Street stood Hanover Fire Co #1, the town’s first firehouse, built in 1878, and beside the Moul structure stands Hanover’s second municipal farmers’ market, built in 1932-33 to bring commerce indoors and improve sanitation, still owned and operated by the borough and open every Saturday. In the 19th century, the original Moul townhouse stood nearby as the mirror image of the townhouse at 217 Broadway, but by 1915 the family had replaced it with the Neoclassical Revival mansion designed by York’s Dempwolf Architects, and relatives of Conrad Moul still occupy it. Nearby, the Fitz house was home to Samuel Fitz, founder of Hanover Foundry and Machine Works, later the Fitz Water Wheel Company, and to his son John S. Fitz. At the outer boundary of the Commons on North Street, the Fitz Water Wheel Foundry operated from 1840 well into the 20th century, and Penn-Mar Castings, Inc. now occupies that site. The Fitz I-X-L steel overshoot water wheel became a major seller because of its superior efficiency, and by 1915 more than 300 were running throughout the nation and Europe, including 40 in York County alone. A family recollection by Ervin M. Fitz, grandson of Conrad Moul, remembered bullet holes in a downspout and brick wall from soldiers’ gunfire as they came along Abbottstown Street, when the family took shelter in the cellar until the danger had passed.

Photo: Cosmos Mariner

Photo: Cosmos Mariner

Photo: Cosmos Mariner

Photo: Anonymous

Photo: Anonymous

Photo: Anonymous

Photo: Anonymous

Photo: Cosmos Mariner

Pennville, Pennsylvania · USA