Discovering Doylestown, Doylestown, Pennsylvania

You would have to go all the way back to mid-January for my last post not related to overseas travel, and even that was an output of a multi-day trip. Appearances notwithstanding, we do occasionally get out and about for short trips in our local area. Here is a recap of one such occasion back in May.

In this town, a native son, scientist, tile-maker, construction pioneer, and an avid collector Henry Chapman Mercer left a pretty impressive legacy.

The first on our itinerary was the Mercer Museum, an incredible compendium of artifacts related to practically every known field of human endeavor at the beginning of the 20th century.

The heart of the museum is the seven-story atrium, where larger in size artifacts are suspended from the ceiling and balconies, and the smaller ones are grouped around specific fields of enterprise in rooms around the perimeter.

The amount of items in this museum is a bit overwhelming, but there are several “highlight stations” on each floor that focus the visitor on the most impressive objects. The self-guided app available for smartphone download (free wi-fi is provided throughout the museum) is very well executed. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).