Mercer Henry C. The Dating of Old Houses

From Bucks County Historical Society Papers, Vol. V. — New Hope, PA: BCHS, 1923. — 36 p.Dr. Henry Chapman Mercer, Sc.D. (1856-1930) was a noted archeologist, anthropologist, historian, potter, and collector of Americana. He was also the architect-builder of three highly unusual landmarks in Doylestown, Pennsylvania: his home ‘‘Fonthill”, the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works, and the Mercer Museum, which he presented to the Bucks County Historical Society in 1916, Considering the fact that all three are turreted ‘‘castles” of concrete — a medium virtually unknown at the beginning of this century — it is all the more interesting to note that he especially loved being driven in an old Model T around his native Bucks County and the Greater Philadelphia area, determining the age of the early stone and brick buildings.Long before the Historical American Buildings Survey came into being, Dr. Mercer was a one-man task force, methodically assembling, measuring, labeling, and photographing details of old houses. He pried nails out of attics, rescued hinges and locks from junk heaps, made plaster casts of paneling, and installed the “evidence” in his museum along with his collection, “The Tools of the Nation Maker.” In 1923 he summarized his findings in a paper read before the Society, and subsequently published.