Bucks County countdown continues with a memorial, fine art, famous authors and steamboats
My four-part series listing 16 reasons Bucks County has enduring fame passes the halfway point to No. 1. Let’s begin . . .
No. 8: The Garden of Reflection
The official state memorial to 2,973 victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack is in a peaceful, landscaped garden in Lower Makefield. The 2.5-acre site designed by Yardley architect Liub Lashchy features a memorial walkway lined with the names of all the casualties. Eighteen local victims are given special attention on reflective glass panels beside a large pool. In warmer weather two lofty fountains are illuminated by light beams representing the former Twin Towers destroyed by highjacked jetliners in New York. Scarred beams from the rubble dominate the entrance in 62-acre Memorial Park. An encompassing oak arboretum surrounds the garden.
Fund-raising is underway for roadside markers designating highways and hiking/biking paths connecting the nation’s 9-11 memorial sites. At 1,300 miles long, the September 11 National Memorial Trail will link New York City’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the Flight 93 Memorial in Shanksville, Pa. and the Garden of Reflection among other sites in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and District of Columbia.
No. 7: New Hope’s art colony
Artists in New Hope at the beginning of the 20th century gave birth to the Pennsylvania Impressionist movement. Their base was an old grist mill and village on the edge of town. New York City architect/craftsman Morgan Colt designed and built cottages for visiting artists. What he achieved was an ersatz 15th century English village noteworthy for peaked slate roofs, cement and brick walls interlaced with black wooden beams, leaded glass windows and sturdy medieval doors.
Colt conceived it after he and his wife moved to New Hope. There he befriended artist William Lathrop who ran an art school in Phillips Mill. Lathrop, Robert Redfield and Daniel Garber founded what came to be known an artist colony at the mill. By 1916 Lathrop, Redfield, Garber, Charles Rosen, Rae Bredin and Robert Spencer exhibited their works nationally as the “New Hope Group”. Eventually they plus Fern Coppedge, John Folinsbee, Walter Schofield, Colt and others became the Pennsylvania Impressionists of the New Hope Art Colony, cementing the borough’s fame internationally.
More:The countdown continues: 4 more reasons Bucks County has enduring fame
More:Sixteen reasons Bucks County has enduring fame
More:The final 4 of 'why Bucks County has enduring' fame
Today, efforts are underway to reinvigorate the village through a fund-raising campaign of the Phillips Mill Foundation for the Arts.
No. 6: Home to literary giants
Bucks is known not only for its art tradition but its literary legends, many drawn to the county’s rural landscape and change of pace from New York’s hubbub 90 miles away. There are far too many to list in this space. But here’s a teaser starting with two homegrown talents, James A. Michener and Margaret Mead. Michener of Doylestown wrote best-selling historical novels like “Tales of the South Pacific” that led to Broadway and Hollywood adaptations. Doylestown’s Michener Art Museum is named for him. Mead of Buckingham was a Columbia University grad who studied youth in Samoa. She concluded personality differences between men and women were due to cultural conditioning, not biology. Her book “Coming of Age in Samoa” in 1928 made her famous.
Others on the short list who lived in Bucks:
Oscar Hammerstein II (Broadway musicals/Doylestown), Stephen Sondheim (Broadway lyricist/ Middetown), Moss Hart (Broadway playwright/Solebury), George S. Kaufman (Broadway playwright/Buckingham), S.J. Pearlman (satirist and screenwriter/Tinicum Township), Dorothy Parker (humorist/Pipersville), James Whittier (poet/Solebury), Eric Knight (author “Lassie”/Springfield Township), Pearl S. Bucks (author “The Good Earth”/Bedminster) plus Stan and Jan Berenstain (children’s books/Solebury)
The New York Times referred to Bucks as “the genius belt” in the 1930s and ’40s due to so much literary talent based here. New Hope’s Bucks County Playhouse featuring summer stock stars and plays bound for Broadway enhanced that reputation.
No. 5: Steamboat visionary
Warminster’s John Fitch was walking along Street Road in the 18th century when a horse-drawn chaise passed. In a flash, Fitch conceived the idea of a buggy or boat powered by a steam engine. To prove its feasibility, he built a model boat with stern-mounted paddles on a crank shaft attached to a miniature steam engine. Encouraged by a successful trial on an Upper Southampton pond in 1785, he launched “Perseverance”, the world’s first steamboat two years later and inaugurated passenger service between Philadelphia and Trenton.
Though Congress issued him a patent, Fitch was unable to attract major investors to expand service in the U.S. and Europe. On a trip to France, he left his master plans in the care of a Paris associate who loaned them to visiting New York inventor Robert Fulton. After Fitch died poor and embittered, Fulton launched the “Clermont” based on Fitch’s work. It was a big success and made Fulton rich and famous. Steam locomotive trains and ocean-going ships Fitch envisioned would revolutionize worldwide travel.
The Final Four next
Information on Fonthill, the Mercer Museum and Moravian Poetry and Til Works can be found on the web at www.mercermuseum.org/; “New Hope for American Art” by James Alterman published in Philadelphia’s Public Ledger on Oct. 4, 1924. and information about the John Fitch museum is on its website, www.craven-hall.org or by calling 215-675-4698. Information on the Garden of Reflection can be found on the web at www.9-11memorialgarden.org and on the national 9-11 Memorial Trail at www.911trail.org.
This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Bucks County countdown: memorial, fine art, famous authors, steamboats
