Doylestown's Mercer Museum opens a wing for collection overflow

Since 1916, every nook and cranny of Henry Mercer's seven-story Doylestown museum - including the concrete walls and ceilings - have been crammed with 50,000 artifacts of life in pre-industrial America. There's everything from a whale boat to baby carriages, wagons to apple peelers.

And yet, Mercer's eclectic collection overflowed into a warehouse and a gallery, with little chance of being seen - until Saturday, with the opening of a $12.5 million, 13,000-square-foot wing.

Following the playing of bagpipes, the firing of flintlocks, and the ceremonial ribbon-cutting, more than 100 adults and children streamed into the new exhibition gallery and Learning Center on South Pine Street.

Most of the 175 artifacts, including a lock of George Washington's hair, paintings by Bucks County folk artist Edward Hicks, and a Ku Klux Klan robe and hood, have never been on public display.

"This is a sampler exhibit," curator Cory Amsler said. "There's a range of items."

Some, such as Hicks' painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware, "couldn't be displayed because the museum's environment was not sound," Amsler said. "Others didn't fit the scale of the objects on display, or the period."

The exhibit, "A World of Things: The Mercer Museum A-Z," shows life in the county, from Native American tools dating to 6,000 to 8,000 B.C. to a mid-20th-century refrigerator from Levittown. It will be followed in December by the museum's first traveling exhibit, the family-oriented "ToyTime."

Speakers at the opening festivities included Lt. Gov. James Cawley, a former Bucks County commissioner; former U.S. Rep Jim Greenwood of Bucks; and County Commissioner Robert Loughery. The state paid about $5 million toward the project, with the county, foundations, and individuals providing the balance.

Admission to the Mercer Museum, owned and operated by the Bucks County Historical Society, is $10 for adults, $9 for seniors 65 and older, $5 for children 6 to 17, and free for children under 6. For more information, call 215-345-0210 or go to www.mercermuseum.org.