Why these curious houses in Pennsylvania have two front doors (also—where to eat in Bucks County!)
We took a little weekend trip. As it turns out, the answer lies in medieval Germanic architecture!
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I would like to publicly apologize to the friends I was with in Bucks County last weekend. There was no shortage of gorgeous farmhouses, and I made us break (or at least, quickly slow down) for nearly all of them.
While the rambling 18th and 19th-century stone houses in rolling Pennsylvania landscapes often get the most airtime (especially the one rumored to be Bradley Cooper’s retreat—John called it “absolutely perfect”), I was most intrigued by a more modest and quirky architectural style I kept noticing everywhere we went, tucked right up against streets and in village centers. These homes had symmetrical facades with two front doors. I assumed they were a 19th-century version of a two-family house.
After doing a little research, I learned that I couldn’t have been more wrong. The answer lies in the 15th-century German countryside.