Kennett Square began as an eighteenth-century crossroads market town on the Baltimore Pike (its meeting was Old Kennett; CH1). It grew rapidly after the Civil War with its connection to the railroad. Though good building stone is in the vicinity, Kennett Square, like other nearby towns, is mainly built of brick, suggesting cultural continuity with the brick-building groups of Quakers who came from Penn's home territory in central England. Kennett Square's proximity to Philadelphia brought its architects to the village. Walter Ferris Price of nearby Rose Valley ( DE26) designed the modest stone Gothic Revival church for the Baptist congregation at West and Garfield streets in 1926. The town's restored main shopping street is now a leisure destination with the requisite mix of dining, gifts, and domestic wares that successfully fills its late Victorian buildings (notable for their serpentinite stone accents) and early-twentieth-century shops.
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