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Mercer Museum

84 S Pine St, Doylestown, PA 18901
Mercer Museum

Inside the Mercer Museum.

Photo credit: By Bestbudbrian (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

The Mercer Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, houses a collection of preindustrial artifacts amassed by archaeologist Henry Chapman Mercer (1856-1930). In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Mercer collected pre-industrial hand tools and other implements of the past. He personally designed plans for a museum to house his collection. In addition to tools, the museum displays furnishings of early America, carriages, stove plates, a gallows, antique fire engines, a whaleboat, and the Lenape Stone. The museum, completed in 1916, was one of three poured-in-place concrete structures built by Mercer. The others are his home Fonthill Castle and the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works, both of which are located one mile from the museum.

The museum is operated by the Bucks County Historical Society, which maintains an archive of historical research materials in the Spruance Library on the third floor. The society also operates Fonthill Castle as a museum and events venue.

This description includes material adapted from the Wikipedia article "Mercer Museum", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0. It has been edited for brevity and to conform with the style of this website. The edited description is distributed under the terms of the same Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0 license.

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