A Clear Roofing & Exteriors roof replacement on a suburban colonial, shown for the work. It is not a historic district house.
West Chester historic district roof replacement: how HARB review works
If the house sits inside West Chester Borough's Downtown Historic District and its roof can be seen from a street, a roof replacement goes to the borough's Historical & Architectural Review Board (HARB) before you apply for a building permit. HARB only advises. Borough Council grants the Certificate of Appropriateness, and the borough's design guidelines say the whole review usually takes about a month. Flat roofs are the one roof job the guidelines exempt by name.
We are Clear Roofing & Exteriors, a roofing company with its office on Lincoln Avenue in West Chester, and roof replacement is most of what we do. This post sticks to the borough's own documents: the HARB page, the HARB application form (revised June 2022) and the borough's Design Guidelines for the West Chester Historic District (July 2002).
Is the house in the district at all?
Check this first, because a West Chester address doesn't settle it. The local district dates from 1988, when Borough Council passed a historic district zoning ordinance under Pennsylvania's Historic District Act of 1961. It started from the Downtown National Register district and was expanded in 2006 to take in the 200 block of West Market Street and the unit block of North New Street.
Two other National Register districts overlap the borough, the West Chester State College Quadrangle (listed 1981) and the 2005 West Chester boundary increase. The borough's own GIS notes say neither gets local design review. Only the Downtown district does. To check a parcel, open the borough's Zoning Map Lookup and turn on the historic districts layer.
Plenty of houses with a West Chester mailing address aren't in the borough at all; they're in West Goshen, East Bradford, Westtown or another township, and HARB has nothing to do with them. Our page on roofing in West Chester covers which office issues the permit on each side of the borough line.
Which roof jobs need HARB review
The rules reach any building that is "viewed or may be viewed from a public way" inside the district. The guidelines say HARB goes easier on changes visible only from an alley, and they treat a side wall as a primary facade unless the gap to the next building is under eight feet. On a corner rowhouse that means both street slopes, while a back slope that faces only an alley gets a lighter review.
Roofing and gutters are both checkboxes on the HARB application. The guidelines exempt flat roofs in plain words: no Certificate of Appropriateness is needed to get a building permit for replacing one. We found nothing in the borough's documents that exempts a like-for-like pitched roof. The 2002 ordinance text reprinted in the guidelines says routine maintenance and repair aren't blocked, and lets HARB give minor changes, a roof among its examples, a lighter look. A tarp or a patch to stop a leak after a storm reads as repair. A full tear-off on a visible slope is a different job, so ask the Building & Housing office before you sign a contract. The application form tells owners to do exactly that, because some jobs need a building permit and a certificate.
What the guidelines say about roofing materials
The guidelines describe standing-seam metal and slate as the typical historic roofs on sloped buildings in the district, and the advice follows from that:
- Slate. Keeping and repairing slate, or replacing it with new slate, is "highly encouraged."
- Slate to asphalt. Not appropriate on a Mansart roof; the guidelines compare it to covering brick with vinyl siding. On a gable or hipped roof it is "discouraged but acceptable."
- Metal. Painted standing-seam is encouraged for re-roofing. Pre-formed low-profile seams may also pass.
- Substitutes. Rubber, polymer or fiber-cement shingles made to look like slate can be acceptable if they closely match historic roofing.
- Asphalt. Not recommended on visible slopes. Where it goes on anyway, the guidelines ask for heavyweight dimensional shingles in a color close to the historic material, and they rule out white and light green.
How much the roof matters depends on how a pedestrian sees it. The guidelines call a porch roof very important and a shallow 3-in-12 roof on a three-story building not visually important. If you're torn between the two old materials, our comparison of cedar shake and slate roofing covers weight, lifespan and look; this post is about the approval.
Gutters, chimneys, dormers and skylights
A roof replacement usually touches the edges too, and the guidelines cover those. Half-round gutters with round downspouts are recommended. Copper, terne-coated stainless and lead-coated copper can weather on their own, aluminum and galvanized steel should be painted, and vinyl gutters and downspouts are listed as not appropriate. Built-in and pole gutters should be kept and replaced in kind. Historic chimneys and cornices should be preserved. New dormers and skylights are not appropriate on a principal facade; on a secondary facade a dormer can be no wider than half the roof, and a skylight should be low and flat. Air-conditioning units may not be mounted on sloping roofs.
What goes in the application
The form wants one paper copy plus an emailed copy to Building & Housing, signed by the owner, and the borough won't accept an incomplete one. For roofing, Section 3 asks for:
- Clear photos of the roof, the streetscape and the buildings on either side
- Elevations or photos of the building
- Material specifications and the manufacturer's pamphlets
- Old and new material, installation method, dimensions, and old and new colors, with the reason for the change
The guidelines add material samples where they apply, and every sketch has to be signed by whoever drew it. A detailed roofing quote should already name the product line and color. Ask your roofer for those in writing, with the manufacturer sheets, well before the filing deadline.
How long the review takes
HARB meets the last Thursday of every month at 7 p.m. in Room 232 of Borough Hall, 401 East Gay Street. Applications are due by 5 p.m. ten days before the meeting. You don't have to attend, though the form warns that questions nobody is there to answer can table the application to the next month.
HARB can recommend approval, approval with conditions, denial, or continue the application. A recommendation then goes to Council's PZBID Committee and on to the full Council's voting session. Afterward the Building, Housing & Codes Enforcement office sends a letter, and an approval letter is what lets you apply for the building permit. The guidelines put the design review at about a month, plus another month if you ask for an optional pre-application review on a major project. So a replacement that has to clear HARB first won't start the week after the estimate, and the schedule should say so.
For a free roof inspection and quote on a West Chester house, in the district or out of it, call (484) 983-3476 between 8 AM and 8 PM any day or use the contact page. Slate, cedar and standing-seam metal are on our specialty roofing page.
Sources, read October 21, 2026: West Chester Borough, Historical & Architectural Review Board; HARB application (rev. 06/20/2022); Design Guidelines for the West Chester Historic District (July 2002, incl. Appendix C ordinance text as of 2002); borough GIS historic districts layer behind the Zoning Map Lookup. The ordinance may have been amended since 2002; the borough's current code governs.
