Tinicum’s Beloved Summer Tradition

There are few spots in the River Towns more serene than the 126 leafy acres that comprise Tinicum Park, a green refuge beside the Delaware River where walking paths undulate past deep woods and open meadows and the surrounding din derives mostly from the park’s avian inhabitants (and the occasional pong of a polo mallet). But its serenity is punctuated yearly for two whirlwind days in July, when the Tinicum Arts Festival draws thousands of revelers to five-plus acres of the park. “There’s a local energy, of course,” says Lary Brandt, president of the Tinicum Civic Association (TCA), which sponsors the festival, “but we get people from northern New Jersey, from New York City.” That energy should be especially high this year, as the perennially popular festival celebrates its seventy-fifth anniversary.

The folks who make the festival run are purely local, from the twelve to fourteen board members of the civic association to the roughly 200 volunteers who spend months behind the scenes prepping for the event and then making sure everything goes according to plan on those two glorious days in July—this year, the 11th and 12th. It was always thus, if not in numbers, then certainly in civic spirit.

The precursor to the festival was a fashion show held in 1947 at the Erwinna Schoolhouse (circa 1861) on Headquarters Road. The fashion show, sponsored by the Tinicum Improvement Association, a group of local writers and artists and the forerunner to the TCA, was designed as a fundraiser for a swing set for the school. The event, whose door prizes included a dozen chicks and a bushel of corn, turned a profit of $98.30.

Following a second fashion show in 1948, the Tinicum Improvement Association launched the first arts festival the following year, held at the home of John Stover, a local landowner, farmer, and third-generation proprietor of the Stover Mill—on River Road, south of Tinicum Park—today the headquarters of the civic association and the Stover Mill Gallery. Since then, there have been only three years when the event did not run (once due to COVID-19). What all the Tinicum Arts Festivals have shared is a mission to support the community through money raised at the event, a celebration of the River Towns’ many artists, and a chance for attendees to enjoy a summer day in a beautiful setting surrounded by art, crafts, music, and friends.

In 1950, the second festival drew more than a thousand attendees and more than 100 artists and craftspeople, including Daniel Garber, Walter Baum, and Clarence Holbrook Carter, all of whose work remains highly collectible today. Initially, the crafts, which included handmade buttons, Christmas cards, and a gun, weren’t for sale. Local creatives helped run the festival: James Michener, the Pulitzer Prizewinning author of Tales of the South Pacific, told fortunes at the festival under the pseudonym “Mitch the Witch.” “He did it for many years,” says Ethan Perry, the historian and archivist for the TCA. “But he got freaked out by it because people would come back and say, ‘Oh my god, what you told me, it came true.’” Spooked, Michener packed away his metaphorical crystal ball and put his soothsaying days behind him. Other illustrious participants included the humorist S. J. Perelman, the novelist Pearl Buck, and the portraitist Jean Spadea.

We don’t know what roles they played, but it’s tempting to imagine the notoriously prickly Perelman high-kicking in the Tinicum Follies, an amateur variety show featuring local talent, which debuted in 1952. According to the Tinicum Bulletin, published by the TCA, the follies were so entertaining (or local summers so sleepy) that “several generations of young people grew up looking forward to the Art Festival Follies as their main summer entertainment.” By 1959, the festival, which by then was attracting thousands of attendees, had outgrown the Stover House property, and Bucks County officials offered organizers the use of the adjacent land that John Stover had donated to the county in 1955. (In 1970 that land would become Tinicum Park, the first county park.)

Those crowds translated into countless good works supported by the TCA, including the erection of road signs and the installation of electricity in local schools.

Today, the festival is a River Towns institution, drawing some 5,000 people over two days, including former residents who travel from as far away as Boston. The follies, alas, have faded into memory, but in their place are excellent live bands; strolling performers (including, last year, a barbershop quartet of high school girls known as the Trebletones); an authors’ table managed by the Frenchtown Bookshop and featuring local writers eager to talk with festival-goers about their work; a white elephant tent chockablock with collectibles and other potential treasures; a book “wagon” (formerly an actual wagon, now a tent) offering thousands of previously owned books for adults and children alike; and, throughout the grounds, artisans displaying and selling their wares, from furniture and mosaics to bonsai and birdhouses.

One of the festival’s most popular events is the silent auction. Previous items on the block have included massages; yoga lessons; tickets to Lenape Chamber Ensemble performances; dinners at some of the River Towns’ finest restaurants, and trips to Paris, Ireland, Iceland, Portugal, Tuscany, and California wine country. One year the nearby Van Sant Airport donated flights in their biplanes.

By far the most treasured item, Brandt says, is a local artist’s rendering of the Art Barn, the festival’s physical and metaphorical centerpiece. Festivalgoers can follow the featured artist’s progress throughout the day on Saturday. On Sunday, the work is donated to the auction, and the image will appear on festival posters and flyers the following year. This year’s featured artist is Douglas Sardo, a plein air landscape painter from Tinicum who will be capturing the barn in his signature pastels.

The Art Barn, constructed about 1860, exhibits some 200 works during the festival—oils, watercolors, pastels, acrylics, sculpture, photography, and other media—by mostly local artists (there are no geographic limitations on entrants), both amateur and professional. Works on the first floor all sell for under $200; those on the second floor can be considerably pricier, and though they’re not juried in—anyone can contribute a piece—those judged the best (by a pair of local artists) receive cash prizes. The show’s democratic spirit is what Jas Szygiel, a painter from Chalfont who’s shown in the festival for close to twenty years, treasures most about participating. “There are professionals like me, there are amateurs, there are hobbyists,” he says. “There’s a full range of people that are able to exhibit together, and that’s not always the case in other shows.”

Helena van Emmerik-Finn, an impressionist from Doylestown who works in pastels and oils, has exhibited at the festival since 2018, in part, she says, “because it’s so much fun.” At 78, she’s cut back on the number of shows she does, but she continues at the festival. “There’s great music, a great crowd, great food,” she says, “and I know a lot of the other vendors.”

In fact, in spite of its appeal beyond Tinicum, this is an event with strong local roots. Jane Lindley first attended the festival as a 6-year-old, when her mother was serving food with the now-defunct Ladies Auxiliary. “The festival at its core is truly a community event,” Lindley says. “That’s what really makes it different. The core, the people on the ground, at the cash registers, are local people who’ve been doing it for thirty, forty years.”

For Lindley, as for so many others, another major draw of the festival is its setting, with its acres of grass and its high-canopy trees. “The park itself is gorgeous,” she says. With its views of the river, just across River Road, and the adjacent polo grounds, the park would make for a pleasant outing even without a festival. “In the middle of the summer, you get in the car and everybody likes to drive River Road,” Szygiel says, “and on top of a nice drive you get to go to this very affordable event. It’s just charming.”

Music has become a big part of the event. “We try to get a variety of genres,” Brandt says. Previous performers have included Michael Arenella and his jazz quintet; the Latin fusion band De Tierra Caliente; Barefoot Bobby and the Breakers playing a mix of rock, pop, and country; the classic rock band Big Chill; and the Mike Montrey Band, celebrated for their mastery of Americana fusion.

Ethan Perry’s children refer to the festival weekend, collectively, as “the second-best day of the year,” bested only by Christmas. Among other things, it offers them a chance to chow down on festival favorites like freshly prepared pizza, burgers and hand-cut fries, kettle corn, and freshly squeezed lemonade. Adults may—or may not—prefer veggie wraps and a variety of coffee drinks.

At the heart of all the fun is the festival’s true mission, and that, too, is all about community—specifically, fundraising to support local causes. The money comes from the entrance fees ($10 for adults and $1 for kids 6 to 12; kids under 6 admitted free); revenue from the silent auction, book wagon, and white elephant tent; and a thirty percent commission on the sale of art.

Since 2000, the festival has raised nearly $1 million to help local organizations and nonprofits, including fire companies, youth groups, Meals on Wheels, and cultural, educational, and historical nonprofits like the Pipersville Free Library and Friends of the Delaware Canal. “A few years ago,” Brandt says, “we were able to give the local police department their first defibrillator, which they used within weeks.”

To ensure the fundraising—and the fun—go on without a hitch, the small army of dedicated volunteers somehow manages to seamlessly plan, prepare, and pull off an event with hundreds of moving parts. “The engine starts up in the late fall and then starts building, building, building,” Brandt says. “We have a great ecosystem of volunteers.”

Like many of those volunteers, Ros Cahill is something of a lifer. The Erwinna resident has been donating her time and energy to the festival for close to twenty years, many of them helping at the book wagon. “It’s just such an energizing, positive experience,” she says. “It’s been an opportunity to get to know neighbors and to meet new and interesting people.”

Each area of the festival, from the bands to the book wagon, has its own chair and group of volunteers—“and everybody’s running in these great little machines of their own focus,” Brandt explains. Overseeing it all is the festival coordinator, Erwinna resident Melissa Bottelier, who makes sure the many tasks on a multi-page punch list organized by month—dates to be decided, bands to be recruited, contracts to be signed, and so on—get done. On the day of the event, Brandt says, “It’s a group effort. Certainly, my phone’s ringing all the time, the coordinator’s phone’s ringing all the time, everybody on the board is all hands on deck.”

Three-quarters of a century after the inaugural festival, the mobile phones and outsized crowds of today might have surprised the festival’s founders. But there’s little doubt they would have found the modern-day mood and motivation of their beloved summer tradition heartwarmingly familiar.

Leslie Garisto Paff is a regular contributor to River Towns. She wrote about the lawyer, law professor, and activist Marci Hamilton in the Spring issue.