Bristol Historic District

Bristol Historic District covers 28 acres along the Delaware River in Bristol Borough, southern Bucks County, and contains 350 buildings, most of them residential. The original town was laid out in 1697 after Bristol became a market town, and the district extends northeast into neighborhoods built through the 1930s. Bristol's early growth came from a ferry, a market, and a 1701 mill, and it later became a canal terminus and a nationally known spa. Its buildings include a 1711 Friends' Meetinghouse, Greek Revival houses on Radcliffe Street, and worker housing from the canal and mill periods. The district is significant for its concentration of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century architecture and for documenting Bristol's shifts from transportation hub to industrial center.