Above: Image source: The Dwellings of Colonial America, by Thomas Tileston Waterman, 1950, Internet Archive.
Quaker immigants to Darby named this area after the name of their former home in Derbyshire, England. John Blunston was a Quaker founder of Darby, and served as speaker of the Colonial Assembly. By 1700 the vast majority of the residents of Darby were Quakers.This ca. 1699 brick house was known as the Blunston Bakehouse. It was destroyed by fire in the 1950s.

“The most prominent characteristic of the new architecture [Pennsylvania Colonial] is the decorative use of horizontal projections called pent roofs, which were once employed to protect the walls from rain. …in the Rhine Valley, half-timbered construction was commonly employed and in this type of work protection from the rain was of great importance. In England the oversailing of the upper stories was undoubtedly done, to a large entent, for the same reason.”
“In the Palatinate, the scheme adapted to protect the walls from rain was usually that of projecting shed roofs at each floor line and across the gable, and by considerable oversailing of the roof at the eaves. A great many examples may be seen in Alsace, Rheinpfalz, and Baden. Many of these follow the lines of examples of Delaware River masonry… Pent roofs became almost typical in the Philadelphia area.” page 139.

he core Quaker values of Simplicity, Truth, Equality and Peace.