Mercer Museum

Henry Chapman Mercer was a Bucks County native, trained in law and drawn to archaeology, who came to believe that the true history of America lay not in famous names but in the everyday objects people made and used by hand. In the 1890s, as factory goods flooded the market, he grew alarmed that these handmade things were being discarded and lost. He began collecting them by the wagonload, buying up the contents of old barns and attics across the region.

He gathered some tens of thousands of objects, organized by the trades and tasks of ordinary life before the machine age. To house them he built this fireproof castle of reinforced concrete, then a novel material, designing it himself without formal architectural training. He gave the museum to the Bucks County Historical Society so it would endure. The county was part of the ancestral homeland of the Lenape people, whose descendant nations continue elsewhere today.

Mercer built with reinforced concrete because he wanted a museum that would not burn, having seen too many collections lost to fire. He poured the whole structure, floors, walls, vaults, and stairs, in concrete, shaping it into a fantastical castle of towers, arches, and vaulted ceilings that looks medieval yet was thoroughly modern for its day.

The centerpiece is the great central court, an open shaft climbing several stories, with the largest objects, wagons, a canoe, a whaleboat, hung dramatically overhead and along the walls. Smaller rooms and alcoves ring the court on each level, each devoted to a craft or theme, so that the building itself becomes a kind of ordered dream, dense with the things people once made with their hands.

The Mercer Museum is one of three concrete castles Mercer built in Doylestown, and seeing all three is the fullest way to understand him. A short distance away stands Fonthill Castle, his own extraordinary home, also poured concrete, a maze of rooms studded with the colorful tiles he made.

Between them sits the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works, the workshop where Mercer revived the art of handmade decorative tile, work that still adorns floors and buildings far beyond Bucks County. Together the museum, the home, and the tile works tell the story of a man who tried, in concrete and clay, to hold onto the handmade world as it slipped away.

The Mercer is an indoor museum, so it makes a fine visit in any weather, and its dense, layered exhibits reward a slow walk whatever the season outside. Around the colder months it often dresses up for the holidays, a pleasant time to combine it with Doylestown's small-town charm.

Spring and fall are especially lovely for pairing the museum with a stroll through Doylestown or a drive through the surrounding Bucks County countryside, which is famous for its stone farmhouses, covered bridges, and long history as an artists' colony. Summer brings the fullest tourist season across the county's many small towns and attractions.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.