Brethren's House
Bethlehem, Northampton County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Built 1748 by Moravians as house for single men. Early industry center: bell foundry, silkworm culture, other crafts and trades. Military hospital in Revolution. Girls' school from 1815. Now part of Moravian College and a museum.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
The Moravians who founded Bethlehem built this stone house in 1748 to lodge their unmarried men, and it quickly became a hive of colonial-era craft — a bell foundry, silkworm raising, and other trades that made the community largely self-sufficient. During the Revolution it sheltered wounded Continental soldiers as a military hospital, and after 1815 it opened as a girls' school before becoming part of Moravian College and a museum.
Why it matters
Few buildings hold so many threads of early American life at once — communal religion, skilled industry, wartime service, and the education of young women — making it a compact record of how a colonial settlement grew.
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Related events
- · American Revolution
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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