The Doylestown Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. Portions of the content on this web page were adapted from a copy of the original nomination document. [‡]
Doylestown is located on a promontory in a surrounding agricultural and residential region. The 447 feet above sea level is the highest point for a radius of at least two miles and from many points much further distant, the courthouse, church spires and the roof peaks of the Mercer Museum can be seen. As the county seat of Bucks County, it is appropriate that the town is situated at the intersection of two major transportation routes: Route 202, historically the road to the Swede's Ford and Coryell's Ferry — also an old road from Maine and New York to Baltimore and Route 611 — Old Easton Road, the main path out of Philadelphia (30 miles south) to Easton (31 miles north) and through the mid-nineteenth century, to the Durham Iron Works. A small crossroads village in the eighteenth century, Doylestown's location very near the geographic center of Bucks County was a major argument for the removal of the county seat from Newtown to the small village in 1813.
The combination of influences from the county's center of government and the lack of strong water power for early industry due to the land elevation clearly guided the town's growth and hence its physical appearance. It is a residential and professional town with retail suppliers serving the surrounding agricultural and, more recently, suburban community. The only major industrial complex within the historic district, the Doylestown Agricultural Works (Francis B. Shaw Block – National Register Historic District, 12/17/79) was originally surrounded by houses and a hotel and is now being converted into shops and offices.
Doylestown is distinguished from its immediate surroundings by being an older built-up town with greater building density, variety of building use and a distinct center, defined through approach by up-hill grade and increasing building height and density. Quite obviously, the courthouse sets Doylestown apart from the surrounding region. Beyond the mid-twentieth century housing developments which spread out from the borough are townships with a rural land use pattern.
The Doylestown Historic District represents 90% of Doylestown's sections built before 1930. Outside of the boundaries the concentration and actual number of historic structures falls off greatly. The overall integrity of Doylestown is quite high with only ten percent intrusions. The intrusions generally blend with the historic district structures either in material or scale. The courthouse building (1960) is the major intrusion within the historic district boundaries, and although in the center of the town, the courthouse is set apart on its own block. This, plus the use of brick and glass, tends to minimize the monumental scale of the building and the impact on the pedestrian. The building does retain an historic plan of the previous courthouse with a circular portion for the courtrooms flanked by a rectangular administration wing.
Doylestown is predominantly an upper middle-class town with well-built houses and, in the residential areas, generally two and one-half stories on single lots. With the exception of the several blocks in the core of the town, the properties are well landscaped, set back from the street and enhanced with tall shade trees. While containing a scattering of offices, the areas east of Pine Street and west of Clinton Street maintain a strong residential character of mostly mid- to late-nineteenth century homes. More modest, middle-class homes and a small section of row houses occur along Cottage Street and in the area northeast of West Court Street. Proportionally, the number of low to middle class homes to the number of upper middle class homes is not large.
Stores and offices are concentrated in Doylestown's center along Main Street and for one full block deep along the cross streets and in a more scattered pattern several blocks out West State Street. These central core buildings are primarily three to three and one-half stories high, very near or sharing party walls and with little setback from the sidewalk. The massing and density of these structures is relieved by the variety of distinct architectural styles with, in many cases, the close proximity creating complimentary juxtaposition of form and detail. As streets extend out from the town's center the buildings become more uniform in scale, spacing, fenestration and style.
While primarily a nineteenth century town, the architecture of Doylestown is strongly influenced by the Colonial and Federal building styles used in Lower and Central Bucks County for 100 years previous to the arrival of the county seat. The building traditions of these areas — with Quaker and Scotch-Irish predominant — were strongly held to throughout Doylestown's construction history. This was reinforced by several factors, the early and continued settlement of the Quakers and Scotch-Irish in areas adjacent to Doylestown, the continued conservatism of these groups through the nineteenth century and the removal, along with the county seat, of an earlier building tradition and taste from the strongly conservative Newtown.
The two and one-half stories, three bay front facade with gable roof and end chimneys became the basis for house construction through the entire century. Federal and late Federal houses generally moved the entrance from the center to the side bay, used the double pile (two room deep) plan more frequently, and subsequently the double parapeted end chimneys. The Greek Revival went essentially unnoticed as late Federal continued through the 1840's with wide transoms and sidelights by the entrance doors as the major stylistic concession to the Greek. Doylestown even retained the street oriented gable roof through to the Italianate of the late 50's and 60's with the only definitively Greek Revival building (and a very fine example) being the Hart Bank, built in 1850 in the Graeco-Roman temple mode.
The Italianate used the flat facade, rectangular plan, and even fenestration of the previous styles with minor changes in raising the buildings to two and three-quarters to three stories with low pitched gable roofs and wide bracketed overhangs. Examples of these are on East Court Street and along South Clinton Street. This heavier treatment of wooden cornices and porches continued in a more elaborate fashion through later styles with the building cores remaining the basic three or four bay rectangles of brick or frame.
The Victorian in Doylestown was introduced dramatically by architects Thomas Cernea and Addison Hutton with their contributions of the Intelligencer Building, the second Courthouse-1878 (demolished) and the County Jail-1885 demonstrating the liveliness of combining Gothic, Norman, Romanesque, Italianate and Chateauesque. Other prominent downtown Victorians are the Hart Buildings-circa 1890, the Borough School-1889 (burned) and the Doylestown National Bank on Monument Square (demolished). The Lenape Building while born of Victorian proportions and freedom of decoration exhibits an early return of the preferred Classical-Georgian decorative motifs.
Primarily houses and buildings of the 1870's and 80's were using the standard form but sporting the Mansard roof — a modest concession in style and major practical bonus of interior space. This roof appeared on most larger homes and buildings of the period such as the Henry Lear House-1875 and the Ely-Hayman House and several major buildings of much earlier vintage, i.e. the Fountain House and the Dr. Hugh Meredith House on Lawyer's Row. Most domestic homes still used the street oriented gable roof.
By late nineteenth century the rectangular house form was broken by the freer Queen Anne-Eastlake floorplans and Doylestown has a handful of fine examples of this period including the Charles E. Meyers House-1887, a small house on West State Street, the large rambling Shellenberger Estate on East Court Street and "F. X. Dougherty" house on South Main Street. Several brownstone houses used crenellated towers and Gothic pointed windows to create Medieval motifs.
Very quickly, however, the turn of the century brought the Colonial Revival and the return to the traditional forms with which Doylestown is most comfortable. The American Four Square and Bungalow were used to a small extent — generally with Classical motifs to dominate their design. Perhaps one of the most striking examples of the tenacity of the simple architectural designs of the early nineteenth century is seen in the Doylestown Agricultural Works main building, rebuilt in 1914 after a destructive fire and adhering almost religiously to ill design of a century previous.
It is not surprising that the reinforced concrete monuments created by Dr. Henry Mercer contemporary with the traditional Agricultural Works were viewed as an expression of an eccentric and unfitting for the town at the time.
The street pattern of Doylestown is developed out of two grid systems which essentially collide with each other in the center of town and create several important intersections of five or more streets with wedge shaped corners. The courthouse block is a distinct triangle with its right angle sides fitting into a grid system established by William Penn and his surveyors at the onset of the development of the county. Penn's rectangular land grants were most consistent and still visible today in the central portion of Bucks County surround, Doylestown running parallel and perpendicular to the county line with Montgomery County. It is along these lines that Court Street, the division between Warwick and New Britain Townships out of which Doylestown was formed, was laid. Nearly all of the streets north of Route 202 or State Street are aligned at right angles with Court Street and the pattern is continued south of State Street and west of Clinton Street. For a remaining third of the town from Hamilton Street towards the east, south of State Street the pattern falls nearly parallel and perpendicular to State Street, essentially twenty degrees off of the "Penn" grid. Route 611 at its intersection with State Street is nearly perpendicular to State Street, but bends as it reaches the courthouse to 40 degrees nearly bisecting the northern portion of the town. Only the streets and properties along South Main Street near Bridge Street and Hillside Avenue show direct influence from Route 611's northerly compass direction. The dominant axis streets are State Street and Court Street, most properties orient their frontage to these streets and those streets parallel to them.
Doylestown's buildings exhibit a full variety of building materials with no one type being overwhelmingly dominant. Fieldstone was most common on buildings built before the mid-1830's and they were often plastered. Brownstone and cut stone were generally reserved for more prominent buildings and homes later in the nineteenth century. Examples of early fieldstone buildings are the Fountain House Hotel circa 1756 (National Register 3/16/72), the John Barclay House-1814, the Meredith-Shaw Mansion, circa 1812, the Dr. James S. Rich House-1824, and plastered ones, the Barnes House-1804 and the Samuel Aaron House circa 1829. The Pugh Dungan House circa 1833 (National Register 3/20/80) shows a transition with a brick front (now plastered) and fieldstone side and rear walls. Cut stone was used in the late nineteenth century for the courthouse, the Bucks County Prison and several brownstone homes, the Christian Scientist Church (H. T. Darlington House-1878), and Ruckman House circa 1870 and a house on West Oakland Avenue.
Brick, both exposed and plastered was common during the mid-nineteenth century for the better quality homes and buildings. The mid-1830's brought an influx of brick with Shive's Hardware Store c. 1833 and Lawyer's Row. The James-Lorah House circa 1844 (National Register 10/17/72) shows the original use of plaster on a stately brick mansion. Brick continued to be popular through the 1860's especially on houses along East and West Court Streets, Broad Street and in a scattered arrangement throughout other neighborhoods. Major buildings using exposed brick are the Lenape Building-1874 and the Melinda Cox Library, originally a bank-1886. Brick was also used for the reconstructed Doylestown Agricultural Works-1914 and on the foundation of the frame and stone industrial buildings destroyed by fire.
While frame was used continuously since the eighteenth century (the old Ship Tavern at the site of the Lenape Building) it was not until after the Civil War that it was fashionable for larger homes and buildings. The Caretaker's House circa 1850 was one of the first homes to display the decorative qualities of wood with its elaborate jigsaw cut porches. Many neighborhoods of the 1870's through 1900 were predominantly frame, often with front porches including East Oakland Avenue, Maple Avenue, the homes around Decatur and Clinton, Bridge and Hillside, and West Oakland and Franklin Streets.
It is rare to find any one block or section of street in Doylestown with just one building material. However, the percentage of frame structures along Main and State Streets is minimal, thus giving Doylestown an overall character of being a town of masonry buildings. Doylestown's architecture represents sophistication and quality and in a number of cases, the hand of a professional architect in the design of the buildings. The buildings are of high quality and there is a prevailing air of conservatism with a preference for good, solid proportions and even fenestration.
The total number of buildings within the boundaries of the Doylestown Historic District is 1190 with 90% or 1069 over fifty years old. 68% were constructed between 1851 and 1910. There are 650 frame buildings, 345 of brick, 172 stuccoed, 112 of masonry (not defined), 84 of stone and a small number of other materials such as log, reinforced concrete and perma-brick (or other similar type).
SIGNIFICANCE
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.[1]
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 one-half 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, upper middle 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.
Endnote
[1] W. W. H. Davis, History of Doylestown Old and New...1745-1900, pages 71 and 72.
References
Books:
Battle, J. H. ed. History of Bucks County, Pa. Philadelphia. A. Warner & Co., 1887.
Davis, W. W. H. Doylestown Old and New. Doylestown: Intelligencer Print, 1904.
Ibid, History of Bucks County, Pennsylvania from the Discovery of the Delaware to the Present Time. Doylestown, 1876.
Doylestown Borough Planning Commission. Design Resources of Doylestown, 1969.
McNealy, Terry A. A History of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Fallsington, Pa.: Bucks County Historical and Tourist Commission, 1970.
MacReynolds, George. Place Names in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Second Edition. Doylestown, Pa.: The Bucks County Historical Society, 1976.
Rezer, Wilma Brown. Doylestown and How It Came to be. Doylestown, Quality Quick Print Inc., 1981.
Ibid. The Historic District of Doylestown, Pa. I & II. Unpublished manuscript. 1980.
Newspapers:
1804 - resent The Intelligencer, Doylestown, Pa.
1816 - ca. 1930 The Democrat. Doylestown, Pa.
Maps:
1817 - Kennedy, Thomas G. A Map of the County of Bucks.
1830 - Kennedy, A. W. A Map of Bucks County.
1850 - Morris, W. E. Map of Bucks County. Philadelphia: R. P. Smith.
1857 - R. K. Kuhn & Wm. B. Shrope. Map of Bucks County.
1858 - Township Atlas: Doylestown.
1876 - Combination Atlas Map of Bucks County, Pennsylvania: Compiled, Drawn and Published from Personal Examination and Surveys by J. D. Scott. Philadelphia, 1876.
1891 - Atlas of Bucks County, Pennsylvania: Compiled from Official Records, Private Plans and Actual Surveys. Philadelphia, Pa.: E. P. Noll & Co.
1921 and 1928 - Insurance Atlas of Doylestown, Pa. Sanborn Company. Repository: Doylestown Borough Hall.
1931 - Bucks County Road Map.
1935 - Bucks County Road Map.
‡ Auerbach, Kathryn Ann, Marshall, Jeffrey L., and Hayman, Judith, Bucks County Conservancy, Doylestown Historic District, nomination document, 1985, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, Washington, D.C.
Nearby Neighborhoods
Street Names
Ashland Street East • Ashland Street West • Belmont Avenue • Bridge Street • Broad Street North • Bunker Street • Church Street North • Clinton Street North • Clinton Street South • Cottage Street • Court Street East • Court Street West • Donaldson Street • Franklin Street North • Franklin Street South • Green Street • Hamilton Street North • Harvey Avenue • Hillside Avenue • Jackson Street • Main Street North • Main Street South • Maple Avenue • Oakland Avenue East • Penn Street • Pine Street North • Shewell Avenue • Spruce Street • State Street East • State Street West • Union Street • West Street North • West Street South • Wood Street