East King Street -- which begins at Lancaster's commercial hub at Penn Square and extends east to the City's boundary with Lancaster Township -- spans three centuries of Lancaster's history from Colonial times through the Automobile Age. In the early eighteenth century, East King Street was part of the "King's Highway" that connected Lancaster with Philadelphia. Two centuries later, East King Street became part of the "Lincoln Highway," established in 1913 as one of America's first transcontinental automobile roads extending from New York to San Francisco.

Social history of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries is reflected in the varied architecture found along East King Street, which includes modest rowhouses, fashionable one-of-a-kind residences, major commercial buildings, small neighborhood storefronts, a Victorian markethouse and a nineteenth-century prison. The block culminates with a city park that was once the site of a reservoir, and a vocational college on a 32-acre campus founded in 1905 from the legacy of congressman and abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens.

This walking tour was developed in cooperation with staff from the East King Improvement District. Find out about their programs and activities at www.historiceastside.org.

The walking tour brochure was financed in part with Federal funds from the National Park Service, Department of the Interior.