Doylestown Borough municipal offices are located at 57 West Court Street, Doylestown PA 18901; phone: 215-345-4140. Doylestown is part of the Central Bucks School District.

National Historic District

The Doylestown Historic District was nominated to the National Register of Historic Places in May of 1985. The following text is excerpted from a copy of the original nomination document.

Doylestown Historic District comprises the majority of Doylestown Borough developed before 1930. Situated in the central part of Bucks County Pennsylvania, Doylestown serves as the county seat as it has for the past 172 years; it maintains a high degree of historic and architectural integrity. Its primary periods of significance represent the major growth decades of the 1830s and 1840s and also the 1870s through the 1880s. Lesser periods of significance include the mid-eighteenth century as a crossroads village, circa 1813 when the county seat was moved to the town, and the 1910 decade with the contributions of Dr. Henry Mercer.

From the early establishment of major transportation routes, Doylestown has grown from a tiny crossroads community into the major town of the Central Bucks region. Specifically its prominence developed out of its roles as a transportation and commercial center and most predominantly in politics and government as Bucks County's county seat. It is a cultural and supply center for a prosperous agricultural and suburban community. Doylestown was also located at the hub of early settlement areas of Pennsylvania's primary cultural groups: the English Quakers, the Scotch-Irish, the Pennsylvania Germans and, to a lesser extent, the Welsh Baptists.

Doylestown's architecture draws on the influence of all these groups, although primarily from the Quakers and Scotch-Irish; and while representing a prosperous community, the buildings still hold an air of conservatism generated, in part, from these groups' early religious tenets. Generally favored are the house forms of the Colonial through the late Federal with a tasteful blending of Victorian and minimal examples of "German Gothic" so prevalent in the German settled upper county towns.

Doylestown further established its distinctiveness architecturally through the unique professionally designed major buildings of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many of these buildings have become clear identity links with Doylestown, in particular, the Intelligencer Building (1876), Lenape Hall (1874) and the Mercer Museum (1916). Additionally, the number of architecturally designed buildings is of a higher percent than the surrounding region and the town has a fine representation of the work of Addison Hutton, Thomas Cernea, A. Oscar Martin, as well as the self-taught architect, Henry Mercer.

The eighteenth century development of Doylestown is, for the most part, overshadowed by the arrival of the county seat in 1813 and subsequent nineteenth century growth; but the town is nonetheless significant to the early settlement and history of the Central Bucks region. Two major roads cross Doylestown's center, both established soon after settlers moved into the area. The road to Dyer's Mill (one and one half miles north of town) was opened from Horsham, Montgomery County in 1723 and later became the turnpike to Easton and, to the south, the main road to Philadelphia. Today the road is main street in town and Route 611 beyond. The primary crossroad, State Street or Route 202, was established in 1730 as the road to Coryell's Ferry on the Delaware River (New Hope) and subsequently New York and Maine and to the west to the Swede's Ford, later Norristown on the Schuylkill and beyond to Baltimore.

While not in an area with water power to support a mill, not the location of an early house of worship, the crossroads was certainly well traveled enough to support a travelers' rest stop and tavern. Purchasing land in the 1730s, Edward Doyle and his sons William and Clement moved here from along the Delaware River and by 1745 William Doyle obtained his first tavern license for a site on West Court Street, then New Britain Township. Within a decade he relocated his tavern "one block away" in Warwick Township on the northwest corner of the intersection, now the location of the Fountain House (aka Mellon Bank). Concurrently farmsteads were being developed throughout the region, with at least ten defined within the present borough boundaries.

Of interest to Black History is the early land ownership of the town's very center. Jeremiah Langhorne, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and a substantial landholder in Bucks County, deeded approximately 300 acres from the present Hamilton Street, one block west of the main intersection, extending easterly along Court Street to East Street (outside the district) to his two slaves Cudjo and Jo to become free landholders after his death in 1742. Soon after this date the lands were sold to Isabell Crawford and subsequently divided into large lots to become the basis for Doylestown's development, including the location of Doyle's second tavern.

By 1774 the "Sign of the Ship" tavern was opened on the corner opposite Doyle's and a cluster of buildings developed to house mechanics and artisans. Washington and his troops camped in and closely around the town (labeled "Doyltown" on period maps) during the revolution, with the General's headquarters located at Jonathan Fell's farm within the present borough boundaries. As early as 1784 a total of eight petitions with 284 signatures requesting the removal of the county seat from Newtown to Doylestown were submitted to the Legislature although not acted upon.

The town, however, continued to grow and by the turn of the century a library had been established with the post office soon following in 1802. In 1804 the Union Academy opened its doors and the direct ancestor of the present newspaper, the Daily Intelligencer, began publication. It was becoming obvious that Doylestown's location was quite favorable for the growth of both a regional communications center and a cultural center.

Doylestown's location in the midst of a number of strong cultural groups may have enhanced its role as a cultural "melting pot." The townships that were to lend their land to the formation of Doylestown Township in 1819 were home to distinct settlement groups. The English Quakers of Buckingham Township represented one of Bucks County's most dominant developers to the southeast. The Scotch-Irish of Warwick Township were also located in other pockets throughout the county including Newtown. The Welsh Baptists populated New Britain and further west, Hilltown Township, and the majority of Bucks County lands to the north and northwest beginning with Plumstead Township were settled by German Mennonites and Lutherans. Perhaps fortuitously, no one religious group could claim total jurisdiction of what was to be the county's secular state.

While there were other sites competing for the designation of county seat, on February 28, 1810 Governor Snyder signed an Act of Assembly authorizing the move of the county seat from Newtown to Doylestown. A year later, bids were advertised for the erection of the courthouse and public buildings and by May 1813 the first court session was held in Doylestown. The move, permanent to this day, established the overriding significance of Doylestown and its social makeup. The prevalence of professionals, wealth, quality and culture soon established itself and continues to the present. The lack of any substantial industrial development has acted to preserve this rather singular community.

Ironically, the arrival of the courthouse did not spur a burst of development, but rather enhanced the slow and steady growth which had already commenced. Historian W.W.H. Davis marvels in his History of Doylestown Old and New:

A community that waits fifteen years before planting trees on the grounds of its public buildings and erecting a fence around them, is conservative to the point of lacking public spirit. A boom had long been anticipated, but it did not come until the decade had expired and the century turned into the 30s.

Little concessions were made to the layout of the town for the public buildings and contrary to many governmental centers, there were no planned center squares, grand avenues or alleys, nor was the courthouse placed in the very center of town. The public buildings were built on the end of a triangular piece of ground one block from the main intersection between the Easton Road and Academy Lane, later renamed Court Street. The only distinguishing feature of the courthouse site, and taken advantage of by the later courthouse buildings, was its location on the highest point of land in the area, commanding vistas reaching far into the surrounding townships.

Unique in the history of Bucks County townships is that Doylestown Township was formed out of previously existing townships, not carved out of unsurveyed wilderness area. The youngest of Bucks County's townships, Doylestown was made up in 1819 of portions of New Britain, Warwick, and Buckingham Townships, very near the line with Plumstead Township. By 1838 the borough of Doylestown was incorporated from the central core of the twenty-one year old township.

Doylestown's coming of age in the 1830s and 1840s is represented by a building increase of almost 130 percent and provided the basis of the town core of today and its architectural style. The low building numbers within the district for before 1814 perhaps represent building attrition as much as survival. It is estimated that there were at least a dozen or more buildings by that day, a number which slightly more than doubled by 1830.

Despite the variety of architectural styles and building materials in Doylestown, the town very effectively conveys a sense of architectural and historical cohesiveness and a strong sense of time and place. The most distinctive of Doylestown's architecture is the late-Federal style used profusely during the 1830s when the town achieved borough status. At a time when many areas were embracing the fashionable Greek Revival, Doylestown's Federal clearly incorporated the region's building traditions, now over a century old. The typical late-Federal building plan in Doylestown echoes the two-thirds Georgian side-hall and double parlor arrangement with the gable ends of the buildings still to the side and double parapeted chimneys anchoring the gable. Entrance doors have fan or depressed segmental arches and main facade fenestration is even.

Doylestown established its own tradition for high-level quality by building with brick in contrast to the farmhouses of the surrounding area where the continued use of fieldstone was the standard. The architectural cohesiveness in the town is achieved primarily through the consistent use of the even fenestration, the two and onehalf story, three bay, one or two pile deep house with the standard gable roof. Throughout the town brick buildings tend to accent the streetscape of the solid-tone plastered masonry and frame. Contrasting shutters are also used with regularity even in the later Victorian neighborhoods. Likewise, the popular use of stone walls and wood or iron fencing provide distinctive features within the district.

While Bucks County as a whole remained an agricultural county throughout the nineteenth century, several of its larger towns developed manufacturing industries, such as Bristol, New Hope, and Quakertown. Through the first half of this century the county government was the main focus of activity in Doylestown and there was little manufacturing above the area's needs. This absence of a manufacturing base in such a large community was due initially, as mentioned before, to the lack of strong water power and was exacerbated by the ten-mile inland location from the Delaware River, denying Doylestown supplies and shipping of heavy goods via water. As a result, Doylestown has a dearth of workers' housing and middle class row houses which characterize Bristol, Quakertown, and to a smaller scale, New Hope with a crowded, high-density feeling.

The center of town continued to develop strong businesses and commerce related to the stagecoach and rail transportation. With the arrival of the railroad to Doylestown from Philadelphia in 1858 the restraints on industrial transportation were lifted and the manufacture of agricultural machinery evolved as the town's significant industry. A foundry was established near the railroad and by the latter decades of the century the Doylestown Agriculture Works, adjacent, was producing farm implements, including the famous "Doylestown Thresher" for a nationwide market. The "Ag Works" located in the Francis B. Shaw Block Historic District continued to serve the viable agricultural market through the 1960s. Also representative of Doylestown's prominence in the agricultural community is the founding in 1876 of the W. Atlee Burpee Seed Company with its world-famous trial gardens on the town's fringes. On several farms adjacent to the Burpee farm was the National Farm School (established late in the century, now known as Delaware Valley College of Science and Agriculture).

A second major period of significance for Doylestown occurred in the decades of the 1870s and 1880s. It was this period which transformed the town in size and design with a burst of building concurrent with the general trend of urbanization in the Delaware Valley. This growth of towns was due to a series of factors. The most important of which were technological advances in the fields of industry, transportation, and agriculture. These advances allowed for the successful manufacturing of numerous products, the relative ease in marketing the products and obtaining raw materials by railroad, and the availability of a sufficient labor force released from the agricultural farm hands. In Doylestown this prosperity led to the rapid growth of both residential and industrial buildings as well as the erection of important public buildings to befit the seat of government of a growing, prosperous county. These buildings also set the pattern which influenced the future growth of the town. To distinguish this period of prominence were a number of buildings from the 1850 through the 1830s designed by architects. Certainly one of the most celebrated of the architects who worked in Doylestown is Addison Hutton from Philadelphia. He designed some of the town's most important buildings including the Doylestown Presbyterian Church (1871 - 1872) assisted by Thomas Cernea with Lenape Hall (1874), the Bucks County Courthouse (1877 - 1878; razed in 1962), and the Bucks County Jail (1885). These buildings, of monumental scale for the traditional town, arriving in quick succession, heralded Doylestown into the Victorian age.

Thomas Cernea of Buckingham, a prominent local architect who practiced with Hutton, is said to have designed the Hart Bank (circa 1850), the brownstone additions to the Titus-Chapman-Lyman House (circa 1874), the Darlington Mansion (circa 1877), the Ruckman Mansion, and alterations to St. Paul's in 1870 which included adding a bell tower, vestry, and chancel. All of these were done in brownstone. Two frame buildings attributed to Cernea are the Ely- Hayman House and 386 Maple Avenue. His most noteworthy buildings are the Intelligencer Building and with Addison Hutton, the Lenape Hall. The latter are of brick with stone detailing and reflect a curious play of classical, Italianate, and Victorian motifs. With many of his buildings Cernea gives the vertical proportions a unique height and aliveness.

His versatility as an architect is shown in the Hart Bank, with the portico a study in Classical design and proportion. While not an architect, Henry D. Livezy, a prolific Doylestown builder, contributed much to the architectural content of the town. Working predominantly in the 1870s, his interpretation of the Victorian styles can be seen in the several neighborhoods within the district. Following in the next generation of architects and in design concepts was A. Oscar Martin of Doylestown, who studied at Drexel University and began his local practice in 1896. In an age reacting to the frivolities of the Victorian, Martin's quality traditional style, which incorporated tasteful architectural details onto a substantial masonry rectangular core with symmetrical fenestration, was well received in Doylestown. Many of the town's better early twentieth-century buildings including the Fire House on Shewell Avenue, the South Main Street Methodist Church, the horse hospital and the United Church of Christ are the work of Martin. Most representative of his ability to give Colonial Revival a cozy air is Geraghty's Travel Agency. His Arts and Crafts tendencies came out in the rear wing of what is now the Yaroshuk Law Office and in his own home on Shewell Avenue. The horse hospital and 77 North Hamilton (1898) show his origins in the late Victorian. Martin worked in Doylestown for 46 years.

Without a doubt, Dr. Henry Mercer contributed the most unique architecture to Doylestown. His fanciful reinforced concrete buildings are excellent examples of the early twentieth century Arts and Crafts reaction to the machine age and the uniformity of manufactured building materials. His buildings are hand-molded Gothic, Norman, Medieval, and Spanish Colonial sculptures which for many years stood ridiculed because of their lack of symmetry and traditionality. Today, Mercer's buildings - of which the Mercer Museum is one - are among Doylestown's architectural contributions to the nation.

Doylestown today maintains an historic cohesiveness by having the same use pattern continue from its early development. It is still the government center for the county with a strong professional and retail flavor, uppermiddle class income level and little manufacturing or heavy supply within the town itself. For the most part, the English oriented cultural group mixed with a lesser proportion of the German cultural group remains similar to its historic settlers.

The influence of Mercer and Hutton as architects and the general cultural atmosphere of a county seat have presented Doylestown's affect on the overall religion, the state, and in the case of Mercer, even nationwide.