Pennsylvania 2018: A Very Different Castle

Fonthill Castle is situated about 3 miles outside Doylestown. It was designed and built by Henry Mercer who was a native of Doylestown, a child of a prominent doctor. He had all the advantages of privilege – went to Harvard, became an archeologist at Harvard, became a lawyer through the University of Pennsylvania Law School, yet never practiced and spent 8 years rambling through Europe. When his aunt died, she left him her entire fortune and he used that money to fund his passion to save the work tools that were being lost because of the Industrial Revolution, ultimately becoming one of the icons of the Arts and Crafts Movement. He acquired over 40,000 tools and implements and needed a place to display them. So, he built the Mercer Museum in downtown Doylestown – seven stories of rooms chock full of scythes, wheels, axes, etc. It was like the largest garage museum anywhere in the world. But it was better than a typical garage museum in that the display of these artifacts is very artistic and the artifacts were documented, and their significance noted.

Henry, who never married, was fascinated with reinforced concrete and built both the museum and the Fonthill Castle, his home, using this material. Not a trained architect or engineer, nevertheless, he designed both buildings and used trade people using non-Industrial Revolution methods to construct these huge buildings. The buildings are fascinating in several dimensions; how they were constructed, how they look and how well they have survived since the early 1900s. None of the buildings have any structural problems; no cracks, no wall separations, no sagging.

In his castle, he indulged his passion for tile work and covered almost every surface with tiles designed and made in the tile factory he built next to the castle. These tiles are based on techniques he found in Europe where he basically apprenticed himself to learn the craft from Moravians. The scenes in the tiles depict work tasks and activities commonly found before the Industrial Revolution. At the end of the castle’s construction, he allowed that he may have gone overboard with the tiles.

I feel so fortunate that the Bucks County Historical Society is housed within the Mercer Museum. The research room was designed by Henry Mercer and is representative of the rooms of the museum. We spent a very pleasant day getting information on our ancestors and admiring the room design.

Doylestown is a very charming village with many Victorian homes and buildings that have been restored to their former beauty. We walked around the streets a bit to take in the scenery and had dinner at a small restaurant on the main street. There were several interesting shops to explore and the weather was pleasant, for once. It seems that the weather of this trip has either been in the 90s with high humidity or rain with warm temperatures. Apparently, the average temperature this summer is 12 degrees higher than usual. Whew!

The roof line of the Castle and its outbuildings is very fanciful, reminds me of some of the Disney castle scenes.

The castle was constructed in segments with each segment having slightly different architectural features.

Inside, each column was circled by Moravian tiles, all of which were designed and made in the tile factory on site.

Amazing detail in the tiles.

Russ seems to be engrossed with the docent's talk.

Occasionally, Henry would display the artifacts he collected as an archeologist using tiles. In this case, these are cuneiform tablets from Egypt.

In keeping with his emphasis on the value of the trades and crafts, most of his cuneiform collection related to the trades.

Loved how this cuneiform was incorporated into the flower tile.

This is in the kitchen. In keeping with Art & Crafts movement's desire to recycle and respect the past, the farmhouse that was originally on the grounds was incorporated into the castle. The floor of the 2nd floor above the kitchen was removed, but the 2nd floor fireplace was left intact.

Mercer decided not to integrate electricity into the building construction, instead he routed the wiring around the surfaces of the rooms. Wise move because replacement/repair of these wires, if they had been included into the walls, would have been very tough.

All sorts of nooks and crannies, along with small irregular shaped rooms.

Even the restrooms were replete with tiles.

The floors had large story tiles.

The extensive library has concrete bookcases all over the walls.

Alas, poor Yorick! Every well stocked library needs a real human skull.

This set of winding stairs leading to a bedroom was obviously not constructed with wood forms.

A photo of Mercer supervising the construction of the castle.

Some Chinese tile was incorporated into the walls of a staircase.

A key wall, of course made of concrete, for the castle. Each room had their own unique key.

The grounds of the castle. Mercer spent a fair amount of time buying land from several landowners to build his grounds. It was very marshy back then and is still pretty wet, given all the rain this summer.