In the mid-nineteenth century, Curtin's economy revolved around the Eagle Iron Works founded in 1810 by Roland Curtin, father of the Civil War–era governor Andrew G. Curtin. The complex comprises wooden industrial buildings (reconstructions), original worker housing, company store, grist and saw mills, a church, and a school. Curtin's house (251 Curtin Village Road), located at the center of the complex, dominates the industrial plantation spatially and symbolically. Built in 1830, the two-and-one-half-story, stucco over brick fifteen-room house, with its symmetrical facade, central arched entrance, and smooth surface, communicated order and refinement in this relatively remote spot. The building's role as the center of an active workplace required space for large-scale cooking and for a continual round of visitors and business associates. The Curtin family remained in residence until the 1950s. Nearby, a wooden tenant house accommodated furnace managers and their families. Still standing, a few hundred feet away, is the furnace stack of 1847. The village of Curtin and sixty acres around it are state owned and open to the public.
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