Henry Chapman Mercer (June 24, 1856 – March 9, 1930)[1] was an American archeologist, artifact collector, tile-maker, and designer of three distinctive poured concrete structures: Fonthill, his home, the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works, and the Mercer Museum.

Henry Mercer was born in Doylestown, Pennsylvania on June 24, 1856. Mercer first traveled to Europe in 1870. He attended Harvard University between 1875 and 1879, obtaining a liberal arts degree. Mercer went on to study law at University of Pennsylvania Law School between 1880 and 1881, and he read law with the firm of Freedley and Hollingsworth. The same year he began studying at the University of Pennsylvania, he became a founding member of the Bucks County Historical Society.[2][3]

Mercer, however, never practiced law;[2] he was admitted to the Philadelphia County Bar on November 9, 1881, but departed for Europe the same month.[4] From 1881 to 1889, he extensively traveled through France and Germany.[3]

The University of Pennsylvania Museum appointed Mercer as the Curator of American and Prehistoric Archaeology in the early 1890s. Leaving his position with the Museum in the late 1890s, Mercer devoted himself to finding old American artifacts and learning about German pottery. Mercer believed that American society was being destroyed by industrialism, which inspired his search for American artifacts. Mercer founded Moravian Pottery and Tile Works in 1898 after apprenticing himself to a Pennsylvania German potter. He was also influenced by the American Arts and Crafts Movement.

Mercer is well known for his research and books about ancient tool making, his ceramic tile creations, and his engineering and architecture. He was among the paleontologists who investigated Port Kennedy Bone Cave. He wrote extensively on his interests, which included archaeology, early tool making, German stove plates, and ceramics. He assembled the collection of early American tools now housed in the Mercer Museum. Mercer's tiles are used in the floor of the Pennsylvania State Capitol Building in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and in many other noteworthy buildings and houses. In the Pennsylvania State Capitol, Mercer created a series of mosaic images for the floor of the building. The series of four hundred mosaics trace the history of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania from prehistoric times, and is the largest single collection of Mercer's tiles. Other collections of tiles by Mercer can be found at Kykuit, the Rockefeller estate in Pocantico Hills, New York; Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, California; the Casino at Monte Carlo in Monaco; and the St. Louis Public Library.

Mercer was an outspoken opponent of the plume trade.[5]

Henry Ford stated that the Mercer museum was the only museum worth visiting in the United States, and the Mercer Museum was apparently Henry Ford's inspiration for his own museum, The Henry Ford, located in Dearborn, Michigan. The Mercer Museum houses over forty thousand artifacts from early American society. Mercer died on March 9, 1930 at Fonthill, the house he designed and constructed from reinforced concrete in 1908-1912.

The Bucks County Historical Society now owns Fonthill, which is open to the public, and the Mercer Museum. The Moravian Pottery and Tile Works is owned by the Bucks County Department of Parks & Recreation and operated as a working history museum by The TileWorks of Bucks County, a non-profit organization. These three buildings make up "the Mercer Mile". All three buildings were designed and constructed by Henry Mercer in the early part of the 20th century.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Chapman_Mercer

Who was Henry Chapman Mercer?

A polymath history buff, who was also an explorer, collector, self-taught architect, trained lawyer, businessman and maker of ceramic tiles, Henry Chapman Mercer (HCM) was an old fashioned man who spent a lot of time traveling in Europe and loved castles. Apart from his pioneering use of cast concrete as a building material (fueled in part by the fear of fire that could burn the place down), his taste skewed historical. His castle, which was his home from 1912 until his death in 1930, evokes the Gothic era; he collected Colonial-era artifacts; and led archaeological expeditions to Mexico. He hated the writing of Ernest Hemingway and his newfangled, no-frills prose.

Born in 1856 in Doylestown, HCM grew up in comfort but not in great wealth in a family, whose lineage included soldiers, lawyers and statesmen. His mother, Mary Rebecca, taught Sunday school and painted for pleasure. His father, William, was a commissioned Naval officer who loved history and horticulture. Mercer graduated from Harvard (1879) and from the University of Pennsylvania Law and was admitted to the Philadelphia Bar (1881), but never practiced law.

His passion was history and anthropology and after graduating he traveled in Europe and Egypt and spent much time in Germany, where his sister, Lela, was married to a German military man and lived in Bavaria. Later on, Mercer collected ancient archaeological artifacts and tools of a more recent era, the American Colonial. The kitchen tools, farming implements and other objects were not generally deemed worthy collectibles at the time but to Mercer they were valuable links to the past. His fieldwork was serious and he was appointed a curator at the Penn Museum and contributed articles to scholarly journals and gave a talk at the Franklin Institute in 1897.

Later, his interest in tools and in making things in an historical, non-industrial way turned him to pottery. He studied in Bucks County and in England, where he met acolytes of William Morris, the Arts and Crafts Movement leader. Ultimately, Mercer created the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works as a business for decorative tile for home and commercial use (The word “Moravian” was added to the business’s name as a nod to the story tiles that came out of the Moravian Church, some of which Mercer adapted for his use.) And of course, the Tile Works was created out of cast concrete, same as Fonthill.

Mercer was a social person and did a lot of entertaining, including opening the castle as a showplace to potential clients to see the tile in situ and imagine it in their spaces. But he never married and when he died, he gave the Moravian Tile Works to his business associate, Frank Swain, who he allowed to live in Fonthill with his wife until they died.

Some considered the man a puzzle, a bachelor, an eccentric who built a castle in Doylestown. During World War 1, his many ties to Germany — friends, family — caused him to be critical of U. S. foreign policy, a stand most likely not popular with his neighbors. Mercer died in 1930, at age 74, of Brights disease and myocarditis. Active in the Bucks County Historical Society, he had already gifted the Mercer Museum (made of concrete and housing Mercer’s Colonial-era tool collection) to BCHS in 1916. His will created a trust for Fonthill to become a museum. Fonthill is now administered by BCHS, by agreement with Fonthill’s Board.

Source: https://www.theartblog.org/2017/10/obsessed-with-collecting-and-mak...