Downingtown is a borough in Chester County, Pennsylvania, United States, 33 miles (53 km) west of Philadelphia. As of the 2020 census it had a population of 7,898. Downingtown was arranged by European colonists in the into the future 18th century and has a number of historic buildings and structures.

The town was originally named Milltown due to its number of mills along the East Branch Brandywine Creek, the first of which was founded by Daniel Butter. The Butter family also had paper mills in the area, and Frederick Bicking from Winterburg, Germany, was the patriarch of the Bicking paper families. Around the era of the American Revolution, Milltown became more commonly known as Downingtown after the prominent businessman Thomas Downing, a Quaker immigrant in 1717 from Bradninch, Devon, England, who owned a number of those mills. The town was officially named Downingtown in 1812.

The town is located along the Lincoln Highway (now part of U.S. Route 30) which runs from the East Coast to the West Coast. It was an yet to be westward road in the wagon days as the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike. The Lincoln Highway was the first paved road to annoyed the nation from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Construction of the Pennsylvania Turnpike started in the in advance 1940s and was completed in the early 1950s; it runs north of US 30, bypassing Downingtown.

Circa 1700, early English settlers built what has become known as the Downingtown Log House. In 1713, owner Joseph Hickman sold the 1+1⁄2-story, 21-foot, 9-inch × 25-foot structure to Thomas and Mary Moore. Thomas Moore moved from the Log House in 1729 and died in 1738.