Newtown Historic District (Boundary Increase)

Along Sycamore Street in Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a group of eighteenth and nineteenth century houses, cabins, and commercial buildings lines the edge of the former Newtown Common. The extension contains fifty-five buildings dating from about 1800 to 1970, with three rated significant, forty contributing, and twelve intrusive. Most are two-and-a-half-story frame dwellings with gable roofs, and thirteen are stone, including settler's cabins of one and a half to one and three-quarter stories that survive from the earliest period. The common was divided and sold as fifty-five small lots in 1796, and the street grew as a residential and commercial route subordinate to State Street. Its significance rests on its surviving town lot and farmstead pattern and its ties to the Revolutionary War, including use as a headquarters for George Washington and the only recorded combat in Bucks County, in February 1778. Newtown also served as county seat from 1724 to 1813.