During the Revolutionary War, the story goes, a company of Morgan's Riflemen headed for Quebec stopped at an inn where today's Butler Avenue meets North Main Street and stayed a week. Chalfont Borough's own history page calls the account "allegedly" true. It also says the inn's first owner was Henry Lewis, and it names the spot the village grew up around.
The building on that corner now is 4 N. Main St., and its current business is Chalfont Tavern Pizza & Restaurant. The tavern held its ribbon-cutting on February 9, 2026, and in October it announced it would close in December. The corner's names have always changed often, and for a stretch of the 1800s the village was named after whoever ran it. December brings one more new name to a site that has been feeding people passing through Chalfont for more than 260 years.
Two roads, one door
The corner exists because of the roads. Around 1720, Simon Butler, a Welsh-born miller, settled near the North Branch of the Neshaminy Creek and opened a road that became Butler's Road, then Butler Pike, then Limekiln Pike. Today it is Route 152, and through town it is North Main Street. A second road ran from Swede's Ford on the Schuylkill to Coryell's Ferry on the Delaware at what is now New Hope. That road is now U.S. 202, and in Chalfont it is Butler Avenue.
The Chalfont Historic District record says a tavern "was soon established" where those two roads cross. Through the late 1700s and early 1800s, it says, the village was mostly the tavern, two mills and a few houses.
The same record makes a point anyone stuck at that light on a weekday afternoon will recognize. Heavy traffic moves through Chalfont because Route 202 and Route 152 both run through it. The traffic that slows a drive through downtown today is the same traffic that made an inn worth opening there in the 1700s.
The names changed. The corner kept its job.
Here is the corner's history by name, as the Borough, the historic district record, and local reporting tell it:
| Name on the corner | When | What the record says |
|---|---|---|
| Henry Lewis's inn | Before 1761 | The inn travelers stopped at, and where Morgan's Riflemen reportedly stayed a week |
| Kungle's Tavern | From about 1761 | George Kungle bought the land from his father-in-law, Henry Lewis, and built the tavern soon after |
| Barndt's tavern | From 1815 | John Barndt bought it, and the village became Barndtsville |
| Eagle Hotel | 1903 | Joseph Fretz owned it when it caught fire |
| Borghi's | From November 2002 | Opened by Dino and Scott Borghi |
| Pop Inn | About four years, closed by early 2023 | A pop-culture pub |
| Leonardo's Pizza & Pub | From early 2023 | Moved in from the shopping center behind the building |
| Chalfont Tavern Pizza & Restaurant | February 2026 to December 2026 | Ribbon-cutting on February 9, closing in December |
The village took its names from the tavern, too. Chalfont Borough lists the place as Butler's Mill, Barndtsville, Whitehallville and Kungle's Tavern before it became Chalfont. "As the hotel changed hands and names, so did the village," the Borough's history says. The name Chalfont came later. When the railroad built its station in the mid-1800s, it named it for Chalfont St. Giles in Buckinghamshire, England, where William Penn is buried.
The historic-district record also calls the building the Kelly Hotel. Next door at 12 N. Main St. are the Kelly Apartments, a Colonial Revival building designed in 1930 and built soon after.
The front you drive past dates from 1903
The 18th-century history belongs to the site. The building itself is younger. According to the Borough, the original tavern burned "many decades ago," and the building where Borghi's was, and where Chalfont Tavern is now, marks the spot where it was rebuilt in the early 1900s.
The historic-district record supplies the details. In 1903, the Eagle Hotel caught fire while Joseph Fretz owned it. Fretz hired A. Oscar Martin, a well-known architect with an office in Doylestown, to redesign it, and the building has had a Colonial Revival look ever since.
Martin's work is all over central Chalfont. He designed the Kelly Apartments and the old Chalfont National Bank, which now serves as borough hall. He also designed the Charles W. Baum House at 153 N. Main St., the Dr. Wesley Massinger House at 145 N. Main St., and the stone Chalfont School at 239 N. Main St., built around 1916. If you walk north from the tavern to the fire company, you pass a good share of one architect's career.
The same crossroads has gone through earlier rebuilding. In 1968, a 19th-century store at Butler and Main called Bartleson's was torn down. The gas station built in its place was designed in Colonial Revival style and later converted into a restaurant. The historic-district record says its architecture "fits in well" with the rest of the district.
Four names in about twenty years
The modern turnover is the part most people in town know. Borghi's opened at 4 N. Main St. in November 2002. Dino and Scott Borghi told Suburban Life Magazine in 2010 that they had worked at a restaurant in the same location before opening their own.
After Borghi's came Pop Inn, which the Bucks County Herald profiled when it opened in the former Borghi's Main Street Grille. As TAPinto Doylestown described it, Pop Inn was a "quirky, geek-friendly neighborhood pub" decorated with "Star Wars," "Harry Potter" and "Batman" memorabilia, and it hosted Magic: The Gathering games. It ran about four years and had closed by early 2023 after a hard stretch during the pandemic.
Next came Leonardo's Pizza & Pub. According to TAPinto, Leonardo's had spent years in a storefront in the small shopping center behind the restaurant before moving into the larger, older building in early 2023. The Bucks County Herald called Leonardo's a Chalfont fixture for more than a decade.
New management took over in fall 2025. Owner Rosa Jimenez took full ownership in January, and the building reopened as Chalfont Tavern Pizza & Restaurant with the February 9 ribbon-cutting. Jimenez also owns Rio Dulce Mexican Restaurant & Bakery in Lansdale, according to the Herald.
The tavern announced the closing on Facebook, and the Bucks County Herald quoted the post:
"Although December will mark the end of this chapter, we are still OPEN and look forward to seeing you until then! Come visit us, enjoy your favorite food and drinks, and help us make these last months together memorable."
North Penn Now reported that the owners plan to keep regular hours until December.
December along the old Limekiln Pike
The rest of Chalfont's holiday season runs up and down the same road the tavern was built on. If you want one more meal at the corner, plan it around these dates:
- Sunday, November 29, 4 to 7 p.m.: The annual Holiday Sing at Chalfont Fire Company, 301 N. Main St., listed on the Chalfont Borough calendar. It's a short walk north of the tavern along Main Street, past the Martin-designed houses at 145 and 153 N. Main.
- December, date to come: The fire company's December plant sale, also at the station, listed in the Borough's Fall/Winter 2026 newsletter. The fire company's number for questions is 215-822-3434.
- Friday, December 11, and Saturday, December 12, 5 to 7 p.m. each night: New Britain Township's free Santa House at North Branch Park, 207 Park Avenue, with photos with Santa, live music, hot chocolate, cookies and a holiday craft to take home.
Both the Holiday Sing and the plant sale raise money for Chalfont Chemical Fire Company No. 1, which holds its events at the station. Chalfont Tavern is at 4 N. Main St., where Route 152 meets Butler Avenue, and it plans to stay open through December.
If you own one of the older homes along North Main Street and want to know how its history affects what it's worth today, The Walton-Winn Team would be glad to walk the block with you. Let's talk about your Bucks County home.
