In late October, Little Kate treated us to some photographs and history of her home, Lismore, in New South Wales, Australia. She invited the rest of us to pile on, and I thought I’d oblige with a little tour of our hometown, Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania.  

Newtown was founded by William Penn in 1684, which means we’re passed our 325th birthday—not as old as that one time New Towne (founded 1630) up in Massachusetts that now goes by another name, nor a rival to St. Augustine (1565) or Santa Fe (1598)—and it can’t hold a candle to Acoma, the oldest continuously occupied city in what is now the United States (founded in the eleventh century), but, all in all, pretty hoary for the United States.  

The town served as Bucks’ county seat for some years (1726 to 1813), but it lost that distinction to Doylestown. Newtown is a township, the unit of local government in Pennsylvania. The township covers about 12 square miles, in the center of which is the separate community of Newtown Boro, which split away in 1838. The Boro holds the historic core of the town, but, at less than a square mile, has only about 2,200 people. The township has under 19,500. The central business district of the boro is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Newtown Creek runs north to south along the western edge of the Boro; it once bordered the common area in the center of the township, but—unlike the case in Massachusetts—that common was subsequently divided into lots and settled. The creek runs into Neshaminy Creek, a tributary of the Delaware River (Neshaminy Creek figures in photos I’ve posted over the years from the state park nearby).

The Creek, looking south.  

The town still has a few structures from the eighteenth century, including this old Presbyterian church (built in 1769), which was used to hold prisoners captured by George Washington’s army at the Battle of Trenton on Christmas Day, 1776. Washington and his men marched back to Newtown after the battle, and he made a home here his temporary headquarters. That structure, unfortunately, was taken down a few decades ago and now is a gas station.

The old Presbyterian church; the original church on this site was built in 1734. The cemetery has more than two dozen veterans of the Revolutionary War. 

Another eighteenth-century structure is the Bird-in-Hand House, built in the 1720s as a tavern. This structure also played a bit part in the Revolution: uniforms were being sewn here in the winter of 1778 for Washington’s army at Valley Forge, but a Loyalist raiding party attacked, killed several of the soldiers guarding the operation, and made off with a 2,000 yards of cloth.

The Bird-in-Hand House ordinarily has a sign of a hand clutching a bird in the black rectangular frame visible here. I guess it’s being repaired. 

The stone structure at the end of the street in the following photo is the Court Inn (originally Half-Moon Inn), built in 1733 near the county courthouse.

The Court Inn is now headquarters of the Newtown Historic Association. 

The original part of the Brick Hotel, another inn and tavern now restaurant and bed and breakfast, was built in 1764. The third floor, it seems, was built by the innkeeper from the early 1800s, a French immigrant who had been an officer in Napoleon’s army and had accompanied the emperor to his exile in Saint Helena. Who’d have thought?

The Brick Hotel, where Mrs. P and I had lunch in between closing on the condo we sold and closing the house we bought.

Another older structure is the Temperance House, built in the early 1770s, when Newtown was county seat. The town has several inns and taverns from that period. The Temperance House is on the town’s main street, called (as often in Pennsylvania) State Street.

The Temperance House, now a restaurant and inn; we had an anniversary dinner here one year. The building to the left also dates from the 1700s. 

One old structure of note is the Edward Hicks House, home to Newtown’s most famous resident, the primitivist Quaker painter Edward Hicks, most famous for his painting Peaceable Kingdom a subject he actually painted more than a hundred times, though one version (see here) is the most well known.

The Edward Hicks House was built in 1821. 

Some other homes are not necessarily famous but are worth a glance.

I love wrought iron work along that porch! 

Several homes, like this one, have terrific porches.

As you can see, I started taking these pictures around Halloween. The family that lives in this home obviously got into the spirit of things! 

Quakers have lived in Newtown since its founding, though the Quaker Meetinghouse dates from 1817. It was built under the leadership of Hicks on the site of the old county courthouse. Apparently he was the first to preach there after its completion. The grounds have several magnificent trees, some of which will appear in another post in this series.

The Quaker Meetinghouse reflects the plain style of Quaker houses of worship.

The old Methodist church was originally built in 1846 and also shows a very simple style. The newer structure dates from 1896 and is made of stone quarried nearby. 

The original Methodist church. 

The newer Methodist church, still in use, which stands next door to its predecessor. 

We also have Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Baptists, Catholics, Lutherans, Jehovah Witnesses, and various evangelical churches, along with a couple of different versions of Judaism. Alas, I did not take a picture of the A.M.E. (African Methodist Episcopal) church, though in truth the fresco inside it is more interesting than the simple exterior. The Delaware Valley is actually the original home of the A.M.E. church, which was organized by the Reverend Richard Allen in Philadelphia in 1816. Allen and his parishioners were free blacks, and many towns up the Delaware River had small free-black communities. (Some homes in these communities served as stations on the Underground Railroad; I don’t know if that’s true of Newtown.)  

Our town also believes in recycling. The Starbucks of today used to be a general store, several old homes are now lawyer’s offices, several more are salons (Mrs. P and I believe that the town has the most salons per capita in the world), and churches have changed denominations. 

This community center for Orthodox Lubavitch Jews was once a Christian church of I cannot recall what flavor. 

The tall building once housed a butcher shop; now it serves as the entrance to the Temperance House. 

The Stocking Works was a factory; it was renovated in the late 1980s into an office complex. 

This cute little building is full every summer evening with people lusting for fantastic ice cream. 

The hardware store first occupied these premised in 1869 and perseveres.

A few dozen benches sit outside several of the businesses along State Street, which add to the town's charm and convenience! 

Businesses also let kids paint their windows for the various holidays, which helps brighten State Street.

All is not sweetness and light. The recession hurt several businesses, most notably a family that owned two of the three car dealerships in town, both of which were de-franchised out of existence. One has been converted to a flooring store, but the other stands empty.

The town's biggest eyesore, however, is the site of a former supermarket, which has been abandoned for about a dozen years when the store moved to a new, larger building nearby. The developer and township planning council have wrangled ever since about the size and nature of what is to take its place. 

The lack of resolution on this lies with township officials, not those of the boro; well, and the developer, too.

The town has its civic structures as well, of course. The boro council chamber is suitably modest for a tiny boro. The boro firehouse still stands near the center of town, though the township has a newer, larger one about two miles away.  

More like a chamber-ette. The boro police station is behind it.

The firehouse also holds some restored historic fire engines, giving a glimpse of the history of firefighting. 

And the town is notable for having the oldest still-active movie theater in the country; movies were first shown there in 1906. The building was originally built in 1831 as a town meeting hall, concert and dancing venue, and nondenominational home for itinerant preachers. In addition to functioning as a movie house, it is home to a theater company that performs a few plays, usually light and family oriented, each summer. 

The theater had no air conditioning until 2002, when it was installed for a local premiere of Signs, some scenes of which were filmed in the town. When Mrs. P, the boys, and I went to see Apollo 13 here, we envied the three astronauts when they were turning cold in the unheated capsule: we saw the movie on a hot summer day before the air conditioning . . . .   

Perhaps the most mysterious public structure, though, is this one, which I encountered on my stroll on a sidestreet yesterday morning, and for which I have absolutely no explanation. 

A Polish flag hangs outside this structure, near the sign. You got me, though.  

Words and pictures © 2011 AtHome Pilgrim.

All Rights Reserved.