75 North Main Street - "Turtle Soup"

The Paxson Estate was sold to developers in the 1890s, leading to the development of North Main Street. The 75 North Main Street property was acquired by next-door neighbors Joseph and Sadie Smith who erected the home in 1933. After two subsequent sales, Sherry Baker became the owner in 1973, and continues to this day.

It is somewhat similar in style to other Victorian homes on North Main Street. However, it was built approximately 30-40 years later than those Stick-style homes with different features.  A wrap-around porch exists on two sides of this corner property and features a porch swing loved by the owner’s young grandchild. The porch was lengthened and a new addition was added to the rear of the property in 1987 resulting in the loss of a separate rear porch. The addition houses a first-floor office and an expanded second-floor master bedroom with an ensuite bathroom. Many original features still exist including wooden columns on either side of a broad entrance between the living room and dining room.  Another upstairs bathroom features a soaking tub and Anaglypta thickly embossed ceiling. 

Ms. Baker has added wallpaper in the kitchen and other rooms, including the reproduction of a 16th-century wallpaper pattern in the master bedroom suite. The attic yoga and meditation studio are reached by a wooden staircase with curved sycamore branch railings. An outhouse rescued from demolition in Philadelphia now serves as a garden shed in the backyard. The owner had the exterior stucco painted yellow reminding her of her Southern roots. 


Water plays an important part in the history of many New Hope structures, and 75 North Main Street is no exception as related in an interview and tour with Ms. Baker. An artesian spring arises behind this property and at one point was routed underground into a swale in the basement. A previous owner, Mr. Lewis, loved turtle soup. The swale would be filled to about one foot deep, and turtles would be placed there until they were ready for use in soup.­­ That spring now drains directly into the Delaware River via a storm drain. 


Multiple Delaware River floods reached this house, in spite of its relative distance from the Delaware on the west side of Main Street. The 1955 flood reached above the first-floor windows. The next highest flood was in 2005, and it filled the basement to within an inch of reaching the first-floor planks. The basement ceiling beams were old enough that they did not warp. The owner was not home and was unreachable at the time of another flood in 2004. Friendly neighbors broke into the house and removed items to lessen the damage.


Prominent local artist Joseph Crilley’s oil painting of the home hangs in the dining room. Works by Solebury resident, Richard Zinn,  also hangs on the walls. Outdoors at the corner of the front yard is a Steven Snyder sculpture consisting of several small stones sitting on a pedestal, aptly named “Library.” Bucks County woodworker of note, Phillip Lloyd Powell, lived next door and kept Ms. Baker supplied with tools.

Many thanks to Sherry Baker for sharing her home with us as we continue to explore the history of New Hope through its buildings and its current residents. 

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.