Buckmanville Historic District

Buckmanville is a small village of frame houses, stone farmhouses and outbuildings along the west side of Street Road in Upper Makefield Township, Bucks County. Most of its buildings date from about 1820 to 1875 and stand close to the road on narrow village lots with uniform setbacks. William H. Ellis began selling village lots in the 1840s, and George Buckman established a plow manufactory here in the 1840s, producing plows designed by Benjamin Wiggins. Barclay J. Smith later acquired most of the village lots, ran a general store that housed the post office, and built many of the surviving houses, including a double house dated to about 1863. The buildings show vernacular Federal, Greek Revival, Gothic Revival and Italianate features, such as eyebrow windows, paired doors and bracketed cornices. The district is regarded as a cohesive example of a mid-nineteenth-century rural hamlet. Its architecture and layout are the reasons for its listing.