These are from a little town I drive through sometimes called Downingtown. I don’t really pay much attention but it was all gussied up for the Holidays so I thought I’d snap some photos.  I was in a moving car but I could make out that the top one was a doctor’s office from 1815. So old! I wonder what it was like, who went there, what were their ailments? Downingtown was an old mill town, so the doctor’s clients were probably mill workers, farmers, and shopkeepers.

Dr. George Fairlamb ca. 1815

John W. Webster House ca. 1830

The road that I was on, Lancaster Avenue, was “first used in 1795, [and is considered] the first long-distance paved road built in the United States.”

Old Lancaster Turnpike. Painting by Carl Rakeman

1795 – The Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike Road, US Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration

“The privately built Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike Road was the first important turnpike and the first long-distance broken-stone and gravel surface built in America according to formal plans and specifications. The road’s construction marked the beginning of organized road improvement after the long period of economic confusion following the American Revolution.”

Live and learn. I wonder what their bread tasted like.