How to use the Plat Book

The book divides New Hope into four zones, and each zone into numbered lots. You can read it like a county plat book: start from the index, pick a lot, walk to it.

The four zones

The Town covers the streets themselves: Main Street storefront by storefront, Ferry Street down to the landing, the playhouse block and the landmarks between them. The River covers the water: the Delaware, the canal and its towpath, the bridge to Lambertville, the boat ride at Lock 11. Tables is where the town eats: breakfast counters, dinner on Main, the bar rooms. Staying Over is beds and arrivals: the inns, the porches, and how to reach town without a car.

The marks

Three marks recur on every lot. The lot number, in a red circle, is the permanent address of the entry inside the book. The cote, a measured line under each title, gives the walking distance from the corner of Main and Mechanic Streets, the old visitors center corner, which we treat as the origin of the book. The date on the entry is the book date, not a promise about tomorrow; the margin of each entry lists the sources the book drew on.

The sources

Entries are written from walking the town and reading what is published about it: the borough's own pages, the Delaware Canal State Park materials, the playhouse and ferry schedules, regional newspaper coverage, and the archive of the old visitors center itself, which mapped these same streets from 2002 to 2018. Where two sources disagree, the entry says so. Where a fact could not be checked on the ground, the entry says that too.

A suggested first route

If this is your first visit, one entry does the work of an itinerary: A first walk in New Hope loops the whole book in about a mile. Read it once before you arrive, then put the book away and walk.