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It’s hard to pinpoint when things began to change around here but you might start with the arrival of Yolanda Hadid in 2017. Ms. Hadid, a onetime regular on “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” bought a farm just outside New Hope, Pa., to be closer to her daughters, the models Gigi and Bella Hadid, who were then living in New York City.
The 32-acre property, with its stone farmhouse, horse barn and formal garden, became a family retreat, and the Hadids’ social media feeds filled with pastoral images: Gigi in a two-piece bathing suit, posing with a bowl of newly picked vegetables beside a patch of basil; Yolanda in black boots, bluejeans and a puffer vest, showing off a heap of fresh-cut lavender.
We ride horses, we have a vegetable garden, Yolanda told The Toronto Star in 2018, describing her life in the countryside with her famous daughters, who between them have 140 million followers on Instagram.
The presence of the Hadids attracted other famous people to Bucks County, a woodsy area known for its rolling hills and 12 covered bridges. In 2018, Zayn Malik, the British pop singer who was in a relationship with Gigi, bought a farm there. It is quiet, he said in an interview with British Vogue. There are no human beings.
Gigi gave birth to the couple’s daughter at home in Bucks County in 2020.
Tranquil Bucks County was back in the media spotlight the next year, when TMZ and Billboard reported on an altercation involving Mr. Malik, Gigi and Yolanda that took place at one of their country homes. Facing four charges of harassment, Mr. Malik pleaded no contest and was sentenced to 360 days of probation; he and Gigi broke up after the incident.
In 2023, the actor-writer-director Bradley Cooper, widely reported to have succeeded Mr. Malik as Gigi’s love interest, paid $6.5 million for a 33-acre gentleman’s farm close to Yolanda’s property. Then came local sightings of Leonardo DiCaprio and Justin and Hailey Bieber. Just across the Delaware River from New Hope, in Lambertville, N.J., Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney were filming a movie.
Suddenly, New Hope and the quaint neighboring towns were becoming a celebrity enclave. While a census might reveal fewer famous people per acre than in the Hamptons, Malibu, or Aspen, the area’s glamour quotient was on the rise.
Located between Philadelphia and Manhattan, New Hope has long been a haven for wealthy part-time residents. The surrounding countryside has been compared to that of the Cotswolds in England, and the artists and artisans living in the area add a touch of bohemia to the rusticity. But in past decades the weekenders tended to be lawyers and executives from Philadelphia, not supermodels, Hollywood actors and pop stars.
One of New Hope’s shops made the grade for Gigi Hadid: Ditto Vintage, on Brick Street. Last winter Ms. Hadid stopped in and bought a Nahui Ollin handbag, a leather jacket and a necklace.
There are some upscale shops in nearby Lambertville: Albucker Gallery sells contemporary art and an assortment of found objects; Ten Church offers vintage clothing; and Rago Arts and Auction Center sells works by Nakashima and other design goods. Lambertville is also on the foodie map: Canal House Station, which serves American fare in a converted 1870s train station, earned a Michelin star.
Back on the Pennsylvania side of the iron bridge, there are signs that New Hope is in the early stages of a makeover. The building that houses Farley’s Bookshop, which opened in 1967, was recently renovated into a bright, modern space. A few doors down, a scruffy indoor mini mall was turned into a Ferry Market, a food hall. A high-end eyeglass store, Kitto Optical, opened on the same block.
The French fries the restaurants serve are now truffle fries, joked Katsutoshi Amagasu, 21, a Nakashima family member who grew up in New Hope.
Some of the town’s structures date to the colonial era, like the circa.-1727 Logan Inn. But on the residential north end, beyond the protected historic district, a Victorian house overlooking the river was bulldozed and replaced with a modernist compound befitting Bel Air. On an adjacent empty lot, a builder promises four luxury condominiums, each with a terrace, elevator and private dock. The asking price for one unit is $3.5 million.
Lorraine Eastman, a real estate agent at Berkshire Hathaway, said the riverfront has been built up to the point that portions of the Delaware are no longer visible to passers-by. Ms. Eastman lived in New Hope back in the ’80s, before moving to Los Angeles and eventually returning seven years ago.
People are always looking for a place to go that’s a hidden little storybook town, said Ms. Eastman, who recently listed a renovated 1769 farmhouse with a pool and “party” barn on 37 acres for $4.5 million.
Celebrity residents aren’t exactly new, either: Paul Simon had a weekend house in Bucks County in the early ’70s; more recently, the “Eat, Pray, Love” author Elizabeth Gilbert lived in Frenchtown, N.J., 16 miles north.
But the presence of the Hadids and Mr. Cooper, who grew up in suburban Philadelphia, has lent glamour to the area and whetted the appetites of developers and entrepreneurs.
A few miles from Yolanda Hadid’s estate, in the hamlet of Carversville, Pa., another hospitality project is nearly complete.
Milan Lint and his husband, Mitch Berlin, each of whom have had finance careers in New York, are renovating the Carversville Inn, a circa.-1813 stone building that the couple bought in 2020.
The new Carversville Inn will be a European-style boutique hotel with six rooms priced around $500 a night, Mr. Lint said. Its 65-seat restaurant will have a French brasserie menu, in the Pastis or Balthazar style, Mr. Lint added, name-checking a pair of Manhattan stalwarts.
Asked why he and Mr. Berlin had chosen Bucks County as the place for their venture, rather than, say, the Hudson Valley, Mr. Lint shared a memory of a boring, rainy summer spent in the area.
The Hudson Valley is very pocket, and weather-dependent, he said. Here, the towns dot up and down the river. You can have a full weekend four seasons a year.
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