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History of Doylestown PA 18901
By Howard | April 3, 2011
Amended from Wikipedia Doylestown is a borough in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, 27 miles (43 km) north of Philadelphia. In 1900, 3,034 people lived in the borough of Doylestown, and in 1910, 3,304 people lived there. As of the 2010 census, the borough population was 8,380.
Doylestown’s origins date to 1745 when William Doyle obtained a license to build a tavern on what is now the northwest corner of Main and State Street. Known for years as “William Doyle’s Tavern.”, its strategic location linking roads to (Norristown) and Coryell’s Ferry (New Hope) (now U.S. Route 202) and the road linking Philadelphia and Easton (now PA Route 611) – allowed the area to build into a village. The first church was erected in 1815.
The Fountain House, was built in 1758 and is on the National Register of Historic Places
The more centrally located Doylestown became the county seat in 1813. An outgrowth of Doylestown’s new courthouse was the development of “lawyers row”, a collection of Federal-style offices. One positive consequence of early 19th century investment in the new county seat was organized fire protection, which began in 1825 with the Doylestown Fire Engine Company.
In 1838 the Borough of Doylestown was incorporated.
An electric telegraph station was built in 1846 and in 1856 a branch of the North Pennsylvania Railroad was completed to Doylestown. The first gas lights were introduced in 1854. Because of the town’s relatively high elevation and a lack of strong water power, substantial industrial development never occurred and Doylestown evolved to have a professional and residential character.
During the mid-nineteenth century several large tracts located east of the courthouse area were subdivided into neighborhoods. The next significant wave of development occurred after the Civil War when the 30-acre Magill property to the southwest of the town’s core was subdivided for residential lots.
Doylestown established a water works in 1869. The first telephone line arrived in 1878, the same year that a new courthouse was erected. By1897, the first of several trolley lines connecting Doylestown with Willow Grove, Newtown and Easton began operation. A private sewer system and treatment plant was authorized in 1903. The Borough took over and expanded sewer service to about three-quarters of the town in 1921.
In the early 20th century, Doylestown became best known to the outside world through the “Tools of the Nation-Maker” museum of the Bucks County Historical Society. Henry Chapman Mercer constructed the reinforced poured concrete building in 1916 to house his collection of mechanical tools and utensils. Upon his death in 1930, Mercer also left his similarly constructed home Fonthill and adjacent “Moravian Pottery and Tile Works”, to be operated as a museum.
By 1931, the advent of the automobile and improved highway service had put the last trolley line out of business. The Great Depression took its toll, as many grand old houses constructed a century earlier fell into disrepair. During the 1930s, the Borough also expanded its land area to the north by admission of the tract known as the Doylestown Annex.
In the decade following World War II, Doylestown’s business community boomed. During the 1940s, streets were paved for the first time in two decades and parking meters were introduced downtown in 1948. However, the Borough’s post-war housing boom did not begin in earnest until the 1950s, when 550 new homes were built. This housing boom continued into the 1960s and 1970s, as more than 1,600 new homes were built during those decades and the Borough’s population grew from 5,917 in 1960 to 8,717 in 1980.
Borough Hall of Doylestown
As the 1990s progressed, the downtown rebuilt itself largely by turning to an out-of-town audience. Doylestown had long been respected as a bucolic tourist destination. The Mercer Museum, Moravian Pottery and Tile Works, and the local National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa brought a regular stream of short term visitors through the area as well. With charitable support, the art deco County Theater was restored and reopened showing arthouse fare, and a new main library and art museum were built around the ruins of the old stone jail, across the street from Mercer’s castle. An official “resort town” designation exempted the area from liquor licence caps and empty commercial space began to fill with a dense and vibrant nighttime scene of bars and restaurants.
This development goes hand in hand with the broader development of the region; as the Philadelphia metropolitan area expanded from southern into central Bucks County, the fields and farms of the communities around Doylestown quickly began to sprout housing developments. This development brought thousands of people to the area, but the neighborhoods created often lacked longstanding institutions or discernible centers. Doylestown, has also positioned itself as the regional center of culture and nightlife.
Doylestown is known for being the home of author James A. Michener, architect and archaeologist Henry Chapman Mercer, lyricist and playwright Oscar Hammerstein II, nobel-prize winning author Pearl S. Buck, anthropologist Margaret Mead, and pop-rock star Pink.
Mercer Museum
Doylestown Borough is home to three structures designed and built by Henry Chapman Mercer. The Mercer Museum, a structure built in poured concrete, is the home to Mercer’s collection of early American artifacts. It also houses a collection known as “Tools of the Nation Maker”¹, and is one of the most important collections of its kind in the world. The Bucks County Historical Society also maintains the Spruance Library, a research library, adjoining the museum. Fonthill (also known as “Mercer’s Castle”) was Mercer’s home and houses his collection of artifacts from around the world. The Moravian Pottery and Tile Works is an operational facility utilizing the tools and techniques used by Pennsylvania German potters in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The former prison, across the street from the Mercer Museum, has been converted into the James A. Michener Art Museum. The borough also boasts a small music conservatory, writers’ and artists’ organizations and other cultural activities.
Doylestown is also located near the Polish-American Roman Catholic shrine known as the National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa, which houses a painting of the Black Madonna of Częstochowa, Poland.
Doylestown borough is the location of several educational facilities of the Central Bucks School District. The Borough contains two elementary schools (Doyle Elementary and Linden Elementary) , one middle school (Lenape Middle School) and one high school (Central Bucks West). Bucks County’s regional educational service agency, Doylestown Township, which is adjacent to the borough, contains Paul W. Kutz Elementary and also the campus of Delaware Valley College, which is still primarily known as an agricultural and science school.
Doylestown rich in historical facts and events and a very vibrant community, is a lovely place to live.
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