History

OLD WESTMONT’S HISTORY

Old Westmont is perched above the city, connected to the hubbub below by a Johnstown’s famed Inclined Plane. The neighborhood and the incline both came out one of the worst tragedies of our nation, the Great Johnstown Flood of 1889. Built on acres of land once used as pastures for the horses and mules that served the Cambria Iron Company, Old Westmont was mostly developed from 1892 to 1905. It provided a neighborhood safe from floods. The Inclined Plane carried people to and from work in the city’s mills below.

Intentionally designed as a neighborhood for all kinds of people, as you walk the streets of Old Westmont, you’ll notice stately homes around the corner from apartment houses and more modest bungalows. In this community, leaders of the Cambria Iron lived alongside middle managers and skilled and unskilled workers. The purpose was to build relationships that carried over into work.

Today’s Old Westmont is not the company town of the past. However, it continues to be a place that is home to all kinds of people from all walks of life. The diversity lends a certain vibrancy to the neighborhood that is hard to find anywhere else.

Old Westmont was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995. Many of the homes still appear as they did more than a hundred years ago. Follow the links below to maps of walking tours and additional history about this remarkable neighborhood.