This building in Rockwood, which Terry and Judy Pletcher are restoring for performing artists, restaurants and boutiques, was built more than a hundred years ago. It has served as a lumber store, opera house above the frame lumber store, and a brick lumber and grain mill, the latter which closed in the 1940s.

The first half of the mill, fronting on Main Street/Sr 653, is 2 1/2-story frame building, built about 120 years ago. By 1900, Wolf added a large addition, four floors of brick laid four layers thick, with three-story grain bins, a heavy-duty freight elevator, and a back door siding-up to the railroad tracks.

The lumber store/opera house on the left, the brick grain & lumber mill on the right.

A closer view of the grain/lumber mill with the access to the elevator. Wolf's business stationary stated he dealt in lumber, grain, hardware, groceries and, in a touch of incongruity, theater. From 1942 until 1992, the feed mill was run by renter, Ray Friedline.

This house and garage are located across Chestnut St. from the mill. It is quite possibly the miller's house built by Penrose Wolf.

This brick and stone building is fronting Main St. to the west of the mill.

Wolf's Lumber and Grain mill were highly successful, employing many of the local men. "Ask Penrose Wolf for Sunkist, the flour of perfect purity," an advertisemnent in the 1912 Somerset County Leader urged.

The feed mill belonged to a different, slower time, when Rockwood had a few hundred more people. Deep-shaft mines were spread throughout the area, and the town boasted four brickyards and a castle-like brewery.

Signs depicting the businesses now extant in the old mill/opera house.

GPS: 39° 54.84' N 79° 9.46' W ele 1,808'/551 meters Rockwood Quadrangle