Visitors to the Heller Homestead recognize the importance of the place as the property on which early European colonists from Germany arrived in the Saucon Creek region, the homestead of the people who gave Hellertown its name. There are, however, several other significant aspects to the Homestead.
For example, the house is registered as a National Register of Historic Places not because of the property’s long historical lineage but because the house is considered an example of Colonial Revival architecture due to the remodeling the Geyer family did in the mid-1930s. The owners decided to update the house with several then-popular Colonial Revival details such as fanlight style windows over the front entrance door. The house lent itself to the Colonial Revival remodeling because the Hellers, when they expanded the original one-room, two-story stone house in 1791, employed the center-hall Colonial (also called Georgian) style. More than a century later, the central hall entrance design made the renovation relatively easy, although any remodeling that involves thick, stone walls poses challenges. The historical narrative of the house for NRHP says:
Arcuated means: A structure erected using arches rather than columns and lintels.
The owners who lived in the Heller House during the 1930s and 1940s clearly wanted their home to appear more up-to-date. They may have thought the stone-front, Pennsylvania-German look was old-fashioned–and it was. Now, even the Colonial-Revival architecture is considered “historic.”
