The Anchor House

Once part of the large Paxson estate, the creation of this property can be traced back to 1891. Sarah Ely Paxson sold the property to developers Alexander Manning and John Simpson Betts, who then sold off dozens of North Main Street lots after the road was relocated to the west, away from the Delaware River. The home on 68 North Main Street was built circa 1898. There are currently 8 similar modest Stick Victorian-style homes still standing on North Main Street in the New Hope Borough Historic District. Prior owners of the property have been several prominent families in the history of New Hope and Lambertville, Magill, Holcombe, Ely, Betts, and Balderston.


Michael and Paul acquired the property in 2014. Over the past 9 years, they have completed an extensive restoration. The original house has since been updated with an emphasis on restoring the character and material of the original design. The metal siding was removed and all of the original exterior shiplap siding was restored as well as the long hidden scallop shingles located at the apex of the roof.


The exterior was repainted with period colors from the late 1800s. Real working Timberlane shutters were installed with a personalized anchor cutout. The original slate roof was removed years ago and is now replaced with an architectural asphalt shingle to mimic a wood-shake roof. One feature that stands out is the 17 light diamond pane windows that grace the home's exterior, enhanced by a rectangular split two-pane glass transom window above the front door that local artist Ilia Barger hand stenciled No. 68 using gold leaf paint.


An electric doorbell echoing an old-style pull-string bell system has been installed. When the new hardwood floors were installed a surprise trap door was discovered under layers of older floor renovations which led to an underground 6-foot deep by 4-foot wide 1000-gallon basement cistern originally used to hand pump water into the kitchen sink. The cistern has now been turned into a wine cellar.


The original home was built with two wood-burning stoves for heat and a rear yard outhouse. In the early 1900s, cast iron radiators replaced the two wood-burning stoves and are still being used to heat the original portion of the home today.


A new rear addition includes a first-floor den with a wood-burning Mercer Tile fireplace and an additional fourth bedroom Master Suite overlooking the Delaware River.

New "Lambertville" fluted trim was milled for inside the addition.


An additional staircase leads up to what once was a third-floor unfinished attic. The roof line was so low that you literally had to get onto your hands and knees to enter, but once inside there was ample ceiling height. A new dormer was added to fix this issue and the attic now includes additional living and office space.


Stone aggregate was mixed into the tinted grey cement for the new sidewalk and walkways to be consistent with historic guidelines. A rear detached cinderblock two-car garage circa 1950 has been renovated using the original home's exterior trim and stone foundation and is graced with an illuminated octagon cupola. A matching rear carriage house door has been added to the garage and when both doors are open the river view, once blocked, can now be seen from the first-floor den windows. It is now reminiscent of a boathouse. A covered patio connected to the garage includes an outdoor gas fireplace and kitchen. A gangway leads to a new dock along the Delaware River. The prior owners presented a horseshoe that they had found buried in the rear yard, perhaps offering good luck to the new owners.

1955 and the early 2000s brought flooding to New Hope. During the 2006 flood the house, surrounded by water, was pictured on the front of the New Hope Gazette.

Advertising brochure from AV Manning’s Sons, circa late 1890s, for development of North Main Street, New Hope. The circled property is the featured historical property, 68 North Main Street.

The Parry Mansion Museum Archives Team is a team of passionate and energetic volunteers who bring diverse, professional backgrounds to advance our archives with programs such as this monthly series “Beyond the Door,” and individual and community research request fulfillment and so much more. Many thanks to the Archives Team!

Beyond The Door

Methodists, Marsha Brown, and Oldstone Steakhouse

April 13, 2025
April 14, 2025 One of the most prominent buildings in New Hope today is found at the current location of the Oldestone Steakhouse . For 125 years it was the home of the New Hope Methodists, under various names including the New Hope Methodist Episcopal and New Hope United Methodist Church. The history of this building is intertwined with the history of New Hope and helps inform us about how societal trends impacted our community. To prepare this article, volunteers from the New Hope Historical Society met and toured the building with current Oldestone owner/partner, Michael Sklar. They also spoke with Walter Jennings who was born while his father pastored the church in the 1940’s. Rev. Joseph F. DiPaolo was also interviewed. He was pastor of the church from 1992 to its last service on Main Street in 1999 and was the first pastor after it then moved to Aquetong Road in Solebury. Rev. DiPaolo wrote lengthy and well-documented histories (1,2) of Methodism and other religious entities in New Hope and nearby areas covering the years 1818-2003. These sources, coupled with the archives of the New Hope Historical Society, provided the content of this article. Rev. DiPaolo writes in his book that in the early years of Bucks County’s development, residents were largely Quakers, with a local meeting house built on Sugan Road in Solebury by 1805. In addition to Quakers, Bucks County was home to Scots Irish Presbyterians. They formed the first New Hope Sunday school in 1818 and met in what was known then as the Academy, still standing at 129 Bridge Street. It was in the Academy that the first Methodist congregation in New Hope also met by 1818: the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church which later took the name Mt. Moriah and drew congregants from the African American community. In 1830, another Methodist group began meeting at the Sutton home on W. Mechanic Street, drawing from the White community. By 1837, a simple wood-frame church building had been built at the southwest corner of West Mechanic Street and New Street, the first such structure in New Hope. The second great awakening in America (1795-1835) was occurring and by 1845 there were 12 churches in the area of New Hope, Solebury and what was then called Lambert’s Ville. The building at 15 South Main Street was built 1873-1874 on land between the Logan House (now the Logan Inn) and the then newly constructed Crook home (now the Mansion Inn). The land was purchased for $600, having once been part of tracts owned by well-known New Hope historical figures: Richard Heath, Benjamin Canby, John Coryell, and Joseph Stockton. The church architect was James Bird, and the stone mason was Peter S. Naylor. By the time it was completed it was valued at $14,000. It replaced the Methodist church on Mechanic Street, for which no known photos exist today. A newspaper at the time reported the prior church was in a bad location and in dilapidated condition. The old Methodist cemetery still exists adjacent to the parking lot driveway from Mechanic Street to the New Hope Borough Municipal Office. Rev. DiPaolo reports that a cemetery clean-up in 1959 resulted in some gravestones not being placed in their original location.

Buttonwood Street Home was Once a Stable across Bridge Street at the Old Hip-Roof House

January 17, 2025
Buttonwood Street in New Hope is just one block north on Chestnut Street from Bridge Street. This article will focus on one home on Buttonwood, but also remark on other interesting properties nearby. The subject home on Buttonwood was once a stable located on the Bridge Street property now known as the Wedgwood Inn Bed and Breakfast. The inn is clearly visible from Buttonwood Street. At a recent visit to the property on Buttonwood the current owner related that the stable was built in 1833, and at least partially supporting that assertion was the hand-hewn post and beam construction found under the walls during modern renovations. Such construction was most common from the mid-17th to the mid-19th centuries. As stated in our earlier "Beyond the Door" article about the Wedgwood Inn, the building now housing the inn was constructed in 1870 on the stone foundation of an earlier "old hip-roof" house built in 1720. The Buttonwood property owner says the stable was moved to its current location in the 1940's or 1950's and then was used by a blacksmith, and later an upholsterer. In 1958 it was converted to a home. If the stable dates to 1833, it must have been present during the time of both the original 1720 house as well as the still extant 1870 building now housing the Wedgwood Inn. 

Parry‘s General Provisions Store

October 30, 2024
Situated directly across Main Street from New Hope Historical Society’s Parry Mansion is one of the oldest surviving buildings in New Hope, now housing several commercial ventures including Farley’s Bookshop. The New Hope Historical Society (NHHS) archives include a copy of Margaret Bye Richie’s extensive and well-documented review of historic buildings in New Hope for her 1987 academic dissertation in the University of Pennsylvania Department of American Civilization. In it, she noted that the northern portion of the building was built circa 1748 and was represented on Benjamin Parry’s 1798 map as “No. 21”, while the southern portion was built circa 1830 near the time of the canal construction. Her 1980’s conversation with local architect Donald Hedges quoted him that in 1940 a sign stating “Parry’s General Store” still hung on the building. The Parry Store was likely the first provisions store in New Hope.