The Mercer Mile

     One of Bucks County’s famous landmarks is that of the Font Hill, Mercer Museum and the Moravian Pottery Works…”The Mercer Mile”. With a gothic castle setting and pristine grounds, this being the home of an archaeologist,scholar, collector and tile maker and putting his mark on Bucks County and Pennsylvania history.

    
 Henry Chapman Mercer born in Doylestown on June 24, 1856, not much can be found of his early life and schooling, in 1870, he was sent to Europe for his first trip to the continent and upon his return enrolled into Harvard and received a degree in Liberal Arts in 1879. In 1880 he enrolled into University of Pennsylvania Law School and in 1881 he read law at a Philadelphia based law firm, but choose to travel to France and Germany again, even his position with the University Curator of American and Prehistoric Archeology could not keep him from traveling abroad dedicating himself to finding old American artifacts as well as learning about German pottery. After returning to Doylestown, Mercer dedicated himself to the preservation of American artifacts as well as creating the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works in 1898.
     
Apprenticing himself to a German Pennsylvanian potter Mercer insisted his pottery would be made the “old fashion” way. With ancient tools and methods Mercer designed a series of four hundred mosaics that trace the history of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania from prehistoric times. At the Pennsylvania State Capitol is the largest single collection of Mercer’s tiles. You can also find other works by Mercer at Rockefeller’s New York estate, Grauman’s Chinese Theater, the casino at Monte Carlo, and the St. Louis Public Library.

      The Bucks County Historical Society now owns Fonthill and the Mercer Museum both are open to the public. The Moravian Pottery and Tile Works is owned and operated by the Bucks County Department of Parks & Recreation. These three buildings make up “the Mercer Mile”. All three buildings were designed and constructed by Henry Mercer. Construction of the Museum started in 1913 with the help of eight day laborers and “Lucy” the horse (which is honored by a lightning rod on Fonthill). Rising six stories high, the Museum is built entirely of concrete reinforced with iron rods and mesh at a cost of $38,944.99 the Museum was completed in June of 1916. Henry Ford stated that the Mercer museum was the only museum worth visiting in the United States, and was apparently Henry Ford’s inspiration for his own museum, located in Dearborn, Michigan. The Mercer Museum houses over forty thousand artifacts from early American society, among the oldest artifacts in the Museum collection are a whale oil lamp over 2,000 years old, and Native American implements dating to 6,000 – 8,000 B.C.

      Mercer died on March 2, 1930 at Fonthill, the house he designed and constructed from reinforced concrete in 1908-1912. The Mercer Museum was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985. The Museum was awarded accreditation in 1992 by the American Association of Museums, the national organization which upholds museum standards.

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