Downtown Gettysburg and Old Town: Finding Moisture in the Borough's Oldest Buildings

By John Calhoun, owner of Mold Remediation Gettysburg PA · Updated October 20, 2026

Lincoln Square and the four streets that run out of it hold many of Gettysburg’s oldest buildings. The Brafferton Inn dates to 1786 and is described as the oldest deeded house downtown. Borough-wide, the Census puts the median home at 1942 and nearly half of all homes before 1940. So downtown moisture problems are mostly old-building problems: water through masonry and old roofs, leaks that travel between floors, and fixes that have to respect the historic district.

Where most of my calls come from

Most of my calls come from downtown. Part of that is the buildings: the oldest ones in town are here, and old buildings have had the most time to collect leaks, patches and changes. Part of it is that downtown is where people know me, since my office is on Baltimore Street. Either way, these are the buildings I know best.

What the numbers say about the borough

The Census doesn’t break out downtown by itself, so these are borough-wide figures from the American Community Survey, 2020 to 2024. They still tell you a lot about the buildings around the square.

Borough of Gettysburg	Figure
Median year built	1942
Homes built before 1940	47.5%
Homes built before 1970	78.7%
Households that rent	53.3%
Homes in buildings with 2 or more units	37.3%
Attached single-family homes (rowhouses and twins)	16.7%

The Census does split the borough into two tracts, and downtown falls in the southern one, Tract 315.02, which runs from Lincoln Square south, west and east. It holds 2,202 of the borough’s 2,801 homes.

Tract 315.02 (the square and south)	Figure
Median year built	1942
Built before 1940	46.9%
Built before 1980	90.2%
Households that rent	52.4%
Homes in buildings with 2 or more units	37.0%

The full tables, with the townships alongside, are on the Gettysburg housing data page.

Empty buildings and upper floors

About 1 in 8 homes in the borough was vacant when the Census surveyed it, roughly double the rate in the surrounding townships. Almost all of those vacant homes fall in the southern tract that includes downtown, and the Census counts around 100 borough homes held for seasonal or occasional use, all of them in that tract. These are small-sample numbers with wide margins, so read them as a rough picture rather than a count.

An empty unit over an occupied shop is a moisture risk for both. A dripping supply line or a slow roof leak in a vacant apartment can run for weeks with nobody upstairs to notice, until the stain shows up on the shop ceiling. If you own a building with an empty floor, walk it after heavy rain and keep the heat on in winter.

Shops downstairs, apartments upstairs

The borough’s Old Town zoning district is written around downtown as a mixed, people-oriented center, with upper-floor apartments meant to support the shops below. The Baltimore Street corridor has its own historic corridor district, built around its mixed-use buildings.

That arrangement changes how a mold problem behaves. In a single house, the person with the leak and the person with the stain are the same person. In a mixed-use building they often aren’t. A slow drain leak under an upstairs tub shows up as a brown ring on a shop ceiling. A dripping radiator valve soaks a floor that belongs to the business below. The upstairs tenant may not know anything is wrong.

When I’m called to a stain downstairs in a building like this, the first job is going upstairs. Moisture readings on the ceiling below and the floor above, a look at the plumbing in between, and sometimes a borescope through a small hole, will usually tell me where it’s coming from before anybody cuts out a ceiling.

Old walls, old roofs, old windows

Downtown buildings span a long run of styles, from Federal and Greek Revival to Italianate and Queen Anne, according to the National Register listing for the historic district. Whatever the style, a building that’s been standing a century or two has had a lot of roof patches, chimney repairs and window changes. Those are the seams where water gets in.

I won’t tell you what your foundation is made of without seeing it. What I see in old buildings generally is water that comes in high and shows up low. A failed flashing at a chimney runs down inside a wall and appears as a stain two floors down. An old window sill that’s lost its slope lets rain sit and soak into the wall below it. Following that path takes a moisture meter and some patience, and it’s covered step by step in how to find a hidden leak.

The historic district rules and moisture fixes

The borough created its local historic district in 1972. Its Historic Architecture Review Board reviews exterior changes in the district that can be seen from a street or alley, even when no building permit is needed, and replacing historic windows needs a Certificate of Appropriateness. Every project in the borough also needs a Land Use Permit.

That matters because a lot of moisture fixes are exterior fixes: new gutters, repointed masonry, replaced windows, new flashing. Plan them with the borough before you schedule the work, not after. The mold cleanup inside can usually move ahead while that review happens, as long as the active leak is stopped or controlled. For buildings older still, what changes in a pre-1900 house goes deeper.

Shared walls downtown

Many downtown buildings sit wall to wall with their neighbors. Moisture in a party wall can come from either side, and the fix may involve two owners. If that’s your situation, read mold on the wall you share with the neighbor before anyone starts cutting.

Old buildings, ordinary fixes

An old building downtown isn’t doomed to mold. It needs the same thing every house needs: the water found and stopped, the wet material dried or removed, and proof at the end that it’s dry. I’m John Calhoun, my office is on Baltimore Street, and these are the buildings I walk past every day. If you want the bigger picture first, start with mold remediation in Gettysburg, PA or my mold services.