Doylestown

By Friday, June 28, Klaus and I were both ready for a less demanding schedule.  On Tuesday we had driven from Williamston to the Harrisburg, PA, area.  Then on Wednesday we visited the Amish Village and Railroad Museum in Ronks/Strasburg, and moved on to our "base" hotel in Horsham, a few miles south of Doylestown.  Then Thursday was spent in Philadelphia's historic district.

Now it was time for a break!

We slept in on Friday, had breakfast at the hotel, and drove up to Doylestown to look around.  My primary goal was a quick visit to the Doylestown Historical Society (DHS) to see how my grandfather's artifacts are being preserved.  No one was home when we first knocked at the headquarters building at 56 South Main St.  Therefore, Klaus and I had coffee at Starbucks at the Fountain House and then spent the morning wandering around the center city area.

Like so many small American towns, the growing dominance of shopping malls in the 1960s and 1970s all but destroyed Doylestown's downtown shopping zone.  An abundance of vacant and deteriorating buildings yielded a recommendation from the county redevelopment group to raze many of the town's oldest structures.  Local residents and businesspeople resisted.  They staged a revival which has turned Doylestown into a vital center of the tourist industry in Bucks County.

There are more restaurants than I can count! This once sleepy farm town north of Philadelphia now boasts a vigorous nightlife and, in Klaus' view, some great music!  My grandmother, a very Victorian lady, would definitely not approve.

The Fountain House, built in 1758, stands at the town's main intersection. 
 (Wikimedia Image)

After wandering for awhile, we stopped at an art gallery.  I was curious to see what art might be available featuring Doylestown subjects.  The gallery offered several interesting paintings, with the art deco movie theater being a favorite subject.  However, nothing appealed to me so strongly as to say, "I belong on your limited wall space in Presque Isle!"  After that Klaus and I had lunch at a Thai restaurant.

The Doylestown Historical Society is located at 56 S. Main St.,
in a house built in 1814.  Their property includes the Cyd and
Sharon Martin Barn, recently renovated to house the research center.
(DHS Image)

Returning to the Historical Society we found Fletcher Walls, DHS's man for all seasons and jobs, who quickly led us across to the new Holloway Research Center.  The Society's volunteer archivist showed us a bank of lateral filing cabinets in which the William Edgar Geil Collection is now housed.  A substantial portion of my grandfather's papers and effects have ended up here, most donated by the daughter of the man who purchased this material in 1959, and other items acquired more recently.  Everything is stored in acid-free manila folders and files, in a temperature and humidity-controlled environment.  The attention paid to good preservation techniques is admirable.

I was very impressed with this Holloway Research Center.  The old barn building has been renovated from top to bottom, and now stores a remarkable collection of Doylestown artifacts, such as all high school yearbooks going back into the early 20th century.  Much of this material would surely vanish if no one makes an effort to retain it.  DHS was founded in 1995 to do exactly that — to prevent evidence of Doylestown's past from disappearing.

The Moravian Pottery and Tile Works.  (Wikimedia Image)

Leaving DHS, Klaus and I drove a few blocks to the Moravian Pottery and Tile works, established in 1898 by archaeologist and designer Henry Chapman Mercer (1856-1930).  Mercer was a major advocate of the Arts and Crafts Movement in the U.S.  The pottery — which has no apparent connection to the Moravian church or community in America — has long been one of my favorite places in Doylestown, in part because its tiles were used in construction of my grandmother's house south of town.

This replica of China's Ink Pagoda, built by
my grandfather in 1912, housed a cistern in the
top story which provided water pressure for the house
he and my grandmother lived in across the lawn.

We took a tour of the pottery, which is now owned and operated by Bucks County, and spent a fascinating half-hour talking with the two employees who still produce tiles using the techniques and materials developed by Mercer over 100 years ago.

I should note that Klaus and I had great luck with weather throughout our trip.  In the Amish area we saw evidence of serious storms, such as crops blown down, trees split and the broken tops thrown a quarter-mile, and so forth.  Every morning of our trip the Weather Channel predicted a deluge, but the rain almost always waited until just a few minutes after Klaus and I finished our day's sightseeing.  In fact, the only seriously bad weather we experienced was during our drive back to Williamston at the end of the trip. •••