In The Black Mill

It stood off to the east of town, in a zone of weeds and rust-colored earth, a vast, black box, bristling with spiky chimneys, extending over some five acres or more, dwarfing everything around it.  This was, I knew at once, the famous Plunkettsburg Mill.  Evening was coming on, and in the half-light its windows winked and flickered with inner fire, and its towering stacks vomited smoke into the autumn twilight.  I shuddered, and then cried out.  So intent had I been on the ghastly black apparition of the mill that I had nearly run my car off the road.

- Michael Chabon

Image source.

Pennypacker Mills

Pennypacker Mills is a Colonial Revival mansion surrounded by 170 acres of farmland located in Perkiomen Township near Schwenksville, Pennsylvania on the shore of the Perkiomen Creek.  Originally built around 1720 by Hans Jost Hite, it was purchased in 1747 by Peter Pennebacker, and remained privately owned by Pennypackers for eight generations.

During the American Revolutionary War, George Washington used Pennypacker Mills in the fall of 1777 as a headquarters prior to the Battle of Germantown.