Shortly after sailing up the Delaware River on the Welcome in 1682 to take possession of his land, William Penn issued a directive to his chief surveyor in the counties of Kent and Sussex to lay out the town of Dover. But Penn’s instructions contained no specifications as to its exact location. The selection of the site was not made until 1694 and when a courthouse was built in 1697 it was in advance of any settlement. In fact, it would be another 20 years before streets would be platted andand lots put up for sale.
It was during the American Revolution that Dover became the capital of Delaware Colony, which itself had been cleaved off of Pennsylvania as the Three Lower Colonies. With the threat of British raiders along the coast the state government was shuffled from New Castle to a presumably safer location here. The business of government - Dover is also the Kent County seat - propelled the settlement to its long-held status as the second city of the First State.
At the turn of the 20th century the Dover streetscape looked like most American towns its size with a diverse mix of popular Victorian buildings standing among older stock. That all changed in 1909 after the Old State House underwent a restoration. For the next 20 years Dover experienced a steady march to re-make as much of the surrounding area as possible in a similar Colonial Revival style. Ever since most new commercial and civic building projects have embraced a Neoclassical influence.
Our walking tour will begin on a lush square lawn that was once the site of fairs and markets under majestic elm trees, a stretch of ground that has been the historic heart of Dover for over 200 years...
Throughout the Colonial era, Sussex County business was conducted in Lewes. But in 1775 the boundary settlement with Maryland added wide southern and western chunks of land to the County, leaving the people there, accustomed to nearby county seats in Maryland, as much as 40 miles from the coastal seat of government. Two petitions signed by 979 inhabitants of Sussex County were presented to the General Assembly praying that the county seat would be removed from Lewes and be more centrally located.
On May 9, 1791, the commissioners met at the house of Abraham Harris and negotiated the purchase of 50 acres from him, buying also 25 acres from Rowland Bevins and one acre from Joshua Pepper. The 76 acres were located in what was locally known as “James Pettijohn’s Old Field.” The land was surveyed by Rhoads Shankland, who divided it into lots which were sold to defray costs associated with the establishment of the town. The most prominent feature of his design was this Public Square, known today as The Circle. The town was eventually laid out in a circle one half mile in all directions from The Circle and it was governed directly by the legislature until the mid 1800s. the Sussex County seat was named Georgetown in honor of George Mitchell, for several sessions Speaker of State Senate and prominent member of commission appointed to lay out the town.
The town developed slowly around the Sussex County Courthouse. Government was the main business in Georgetown and brick-making and tanning hides became the first small industries.
The Junction and Breakwater Railroad from Harrington to Lewes was built through Town after the Civil War and in 1917 the first 20-mile stretch of the paved du Pont Highway was completed between Georgetown and the Maryland line, furhter opening up the county seat to travelers.
This walking tour will begin in the cultural heart of Sussex County, the Public Square designed by Rhoads Shankland more than 200 years ago, known today as The Circle...
Laurel, at the head of navigation on the Broad Creek and a part of Maryland, was founded in 1683 and incorporated as a Delaware town 200 years later on April 13, 1883. In the interim it grew to 2,500 residents and wasconsidered one of the wealthiest towns in the state, with 2,500 residents.
Barkley Townsend, a wealthy Maryland landowner, arrived in1802 and laid out the town, soon selling off lots to merchants and tradesmen. Soon almost 50 businesses were lining Broad Creek and ships, canned goods, lumber, fertilizer and grains were floating out of Laurel en route to Eastern markets via the Nanticoke River and Chesapeake Bay. In the years before the Civil War, four Laurel me would serve as Governor of Delaware.
In the summer of 1899 an overturned kerosene lamp ignited the Great Fire of 1899. Before the flames were extinguished, entire blocks of downtown Laurel burned; 90% of the businesses gone. Many rebuilt but the town’s busiest days were not in its future. In the 1930s when the DuPont Company went searching for a downstate location for its new nylon plant - promising more jobs than any Sussex County town had residents - Laurel was apparently their first choice. But town officials proved less than enthusiastic and the plant with 4,600 new jobs landed up the road in Seaford.
The town experienced a steady decline of its business community. Nineteenth century industries became obsolete and retailers departed to chase new development along Route 13 to the east. Today you have to work hard to spend a dollar in downtown Laurel. Life as a bedroom community has its upside, however. Laurel is home to more historic buildings than any town in Delaware with 800 on the National Historic Record.
Our walking tour will start in Market Square Park, where crumbling commercial buildings have been replaced with a peaceful greenspace...
Dutch traders established the first European settlement in Delaware just inside Cape Henlopen on the banks of the Lewes Creek in 1631 as a whaling station to provide oil for the main Dutch trading post in New Amsterdam (New York). A wooden fort was built north of the present Town and named Zwaanendael, meaning “Valley of the Swans” after the many swans spotted in the area. All went well until a dispute over a metal coat of arms nailed to a pole triggered a dispute with the local Lenni Lenape Indians. One thing led to another and the thirty-two settlers were massacred. Subsequent Dutch explorations led to the conclusion not to re-establish the colony.
Lewes received its present name by William Penn, proprietor of Pennsylvania, sometime immediately after his acquisition of the land from the Duke of York in 1682. According to research, records do not exist to explain why the name Lewes was chosen, although it is believed that members of Penn’s family were from the prominent town in the southeast of England of that name.
Pronounced “Loo-iss” (not “Lose”), the Town is believed to be one of only three places in the world that bear the name; the original English town and the Lewes River in the Yukon Territory, Canada are the others.
Lewes was government seat of Sussex County until 1791 when a more central location was required. As Delaware’s only seaport, Lewes has the dubious distinction of being the State’s target of choice in times of conflict. Captain Kidd and other pirates were frequent visitors during the 1600s; the French attempted to sack the town in 1709 and during the War of 1812 the British bombed Lewes for twenty-two hours. During World War II, with Fort Miles operating at Cape Henlopen, a German U-boat marauding offshore surrendered at Lewes.
Blessed with an excellent harbor, Lewes is home to a large fleet of charter fishing boats and is base of the Delaware Bay and River Pilots Association, whose members guide cargo vessels into the ports of Wilmington and Philadelphia. Our walking of this seafaring town will begin at the distinctive building where the story of “the First Town in the First State” is told...
Middletown, Delaware, located about 24 miles south of Wilmington, is an early crossroads town, one of the old Delaware towns not existing on a navigable waterway. It was originally a tavern stop about half-way on the old cart road that extends across the peninsula between Appoquinimink Creek in Odessa and Bohemia Landing on the eastern branch of the Bohemia River in Maryland; thus the name, “Middletown.”
Oxen pulled carts loaded with produce and materials between the ports of Cantwell’s Bridge (Odessa) and Bohemia Landing. This was the shortest route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Chesapeake Bay before the construction of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal.
In 1675, Adam Peterson took on warrants for the land which later became the town of Middletown, the first survey being made in 1678. Later, his widow married David Witherspoon, a native of Londonderry, Ireland, and they settled upon the King’s Highway at the crossroads, first known as Mrs. Blackston’s Corner.
Middletown was incorporated on February 12, 1861. The first town council decided the town should be one mile square, commencing at the corner of the crossroads and extending one-half mile in each direction. Thus it was known as the “Diamond Town of the Diamond State.” As the town has grown, its boundaries have extended in each direction.
Due to its rapid growth in the second half of the nineteenth century as a railroad town and market center, Middletown has one of the best collections of Victorian architecture in Delaware. Large, distinctive Victorian houses are found along North and South Broad Streets and on Cass Street, three blocks west of North Broad Street. Although displaying the Italianate and Second Empire traits of Victorian buildings, the buildings of Middletown are restrained by Delaware architectural conservatism, rooted in long-term dedication to the earlier classically inspired colonial styles.
Our walking tour will begin at the crossroads known to travelers on the Delmarva Peninsula for over 300 years...
The Kent County side of Milford was settled in 1680 by Henry Bowan on what was known as the Saw Mill Range. A century later the Reverend Sydenham Thorne built a dam across the Mispillion River to generate power for his gristmill and sawmill. Around the same time, Joseph Oliver laid out the first city streets and plots nearby on a part of his plantation. Soon a number of homes and businesses appeared along Front Street and Milford, taking its name from the Thorne mill that was built at a narrow ford of the river, was born. The city was incorporated in 1807.
In the 1770s, a ship building industry was already flourishing on the Mispillion River. Shipbuilding continued to be the major industry of Milford through World War I, bringing considerable prosperity to the town. The high point came in 1917 when the four-masted, 174 foot long Albert F. Paul was launched from the William G. Abbott shipyard. When the last of the area’s giant white oaks was cut in the 1920s, the shipyards quickly went out of business, although the Mispillion ships sailed on for many years. (The Paul was sunk by a German torpedo in 1942 while sailing from the Bahamas.) The Vinyard shipyard was called into service in both WW I and II to build submarine chasers.
As Delaware’s largest town south of Dover, Milford’s downtown has long served as the commercial center of a large agricultural community. The serpentine Mispillion flows for 15 miles across a land distance of only seven miles before emptying into Delaware Bay, severing the Town in half. The North Milford side developed first and contains the oldest section of town; South Milford did not develop extensively until after 1870. Both sections have been designated historic areas.
Our walking tour will visit the Federal and Greek Revival buildings of North Milford and the Victorian-influenced mansions of South Milford beginning at the Milford Museum that ties it all together...
In 1651, Peter Stuyvesant, governor of the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam (Now New York City) sent a flotilla of eleven ships down the coast into the Delaware River where they established Fort Casimir. Sweden had colonized the river back in 1638 and the colony of New Sweden seized the lightly garrisoned fort in 1654. The next year Governor Stuyvesant sailed back down with seven ships and 317 soldiers. The Swedish settlers surrendered without a fight.
Pouring more resources into the settlement this time the trading post soon grew to more than 200 people and was named New Amstel. Dutch rule was to last less than a decade more, however. In 1664 the British overwhelmed the Dutch in New Amsterdam and the stubborn peg-legged Stuyvesant was forced to cede all Dutch land to England.
In 1681 William Penn, a devoted Quaker and one-time prisoner in the Tower of London was presented with a massive land grant from King Charles II to repay a debt of £16,000 owed to Penn’s father. He was now in possession of much of present-day Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. Penn came to survey his new land in 1682 and on October 27, first set foot in America in New Castle. He stayed a day before hurrying up to Philadelphia.
For more than 150 years New Castle thrived as a trading center and the second-largest town on the Delaware River behind Philadelphia. Delawareans, however, chafed under strict Quaker rule and in 1702 what would become Delaware was granted its own government under Pennsylvania law and was called “The Lower Three Counties.” New Castle was the capital city but after the governor was kidnapped the capital was moved further inland.
The business district was leveled by fire in 1824 and although the town was quickly rebuilt it was dealt a more lethal blow two decades later from which it could not recover: the main overland rail route bypassed New Castle in favor of Wilmington. Cut off from the commerce that followed the iron horse, a secluded New Castle began a long, slow decline. As commerce and people departed town, the historic brick buildings remained. The preservation movement in America began in the early 20th century and New Castle was rediscovered in the 1920s. In 1924 “A Day in Old New Castle” began a tradition of touring the town’s colonial homes and gardens. Unlike many colonial towns, New Castle is neither reconstructed or a preserved historical district. It is a fully residential town roughly five blocks wide by two blocks long. On this one day, residents open their private, historic homes to the public for tours.
Our walking tour of this authentic Colonial town will begin at the southeast corner of Second and Chestnut streets, near the site of the original Fort Casimir. There is a small park here and on-street parking...
In the early 1700s a small English, Scots-Irish and Welsh hamlet emerged along the fall line where the Christina and White Clay Creeks turn sharply eastward toward the Delaware River. In time, the area began to serve travelers on route from the Chesapeake Bay, Virginia and Maryland and colonial Philadelphia. The streams flowed with enough energy to power the grist and sawmills that soon dotted their banks. Rich soil meant wheat, corn and vegetables were plentiful, and the available ore from nearby Iron Hill fed the forges of a small country iron works. Soon a tannery and brickyard were added to the village. By 1758, the bustling local market and country crossroads received recognition in the form of a Charter from King George II, and Newark was officially born.
In 1765, a small preparatory and grammar school moved to town from New London, Pennsylvania. The school, renamed the Newark Academy, attracted little flourished during the years prior to the American Revolution -- Newark was described at the time as “suitable and healthy village, not too rich or luxurious, where real learning might be obtained.” During the war, however, the Academy was closed and its funds seized by the British.
Following the Revolution, the Academy reopened to little fanfare. Similarly the town grew slowly. In 1833, the State of Delaware -- recognizing the need for local higher education -- granted a charter to a new institution in the town, Newark College, later renamed Delaware College. Still the school generated barely a ripple in the local economy; by 1900 it still had only a couple hundred students and operated completely on a small parcel of land on Main Street. The railroad arrived in 1837 but the first bank did not organize until 1855. Industrial concerns like the Curtis Paper Company, reestablished in 1848 from the older Meteer Paper Company, Continental Fiber (1896) and National Vulcanized Fibre (1924) helped diversify the local economy.
In 1921 the University of Delaware was formally organized and began to expand rapidly. Major corporations like DuPont and Chrylser arrived after World War II and Newark blossomed, doubling in size. While other growth slowed down, the University never did, becoming a juggernaut by 2000 that has overwhelmed the City.
Our walking tour will begin, appropriately, at the first building of the University of Delaware and, in many ways still the most impressive, Old College...
Seaford is at the head of the deep Nanticoke River about 40 miles from its mouth in lower Chesapeake Bay. The Nanticoke Indians and their ancestors lived along its banks for over 6,000 years. The first record of a European to explore the head of the Nanticoke, however, was in 1608 when Captain John Smith set out exploring the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. Development along the Nanticoke River was slow partly due to friction that developed between the Nanticoke Indians and the English settlers.
Those who did settle the region were Marylanders until 1763 when, after many years in the courts of London, the boundary lines for Maryland and Delaware were established as the surveyors Mason and Dixon defined in 1763. The first record of any settlement in the area around Seaford was a very large tract of land identified as “Martin’sHundred.” This 1,750-acre plot of land, bordered by the Nanticoke river and Herring Creek, was granted to Jeremiah Jadwin of Virginia on January 22, 1672.
Seaford was laid out in 1799 at what was then Hooper’s Landing on the river; it was presumably named after Seaford, Sussex County, England, whence came some of the early settlers. Henry Adams opened the settlement’s first store, at Front and Water streets, the following year. As one of the two important Delaware towns on navigable streams flowing into Chesapeake Bay, Seaford is similar to the many towns on the Eastern Shore of Maryland that have depended largely upon water transportation and the seafood industry of the Bay. Oyster-packing was an important early industry with dozens of rake-masted schooners making weekly trips down the winding river to the oyster beds of the lower Chesapeake. Shipbuilding was also carried on in Seaford.
In 1939, the DuPont Company chose Seaford as the site of the first Nylon plant in the world. By the 1960s the plant was employing 4,000 workers and Seaford was the “Nylon Capital of the World.” The largest employer in Sussex County also drew those workers to the new developments surrounding Seaford and away from downtown.
In 2000 more than a million dollars was invested back in downtown Seaford and our walking tour will start at the culmination of this project, the new City Hall...
In 1716 the seeds of a tiny village sprouted on the southern bank of Duck Creek, the crooked river that defines the boundary between Kent and New Castle counties, near the fork of Green’s Branch. It was known to its inhabitants as Duck Creek Crossroads. The hamlet grew up along the King’s Highway that ran north and south through the Colonies and soon it was a thriving community of merchant vessels.
Duck Creek Crossroads, so the story goes, almost became the State capital in 1792. When repairs were being made to the Courthouse at Dover the General Assembly was unceremoniously put out on the street and at the tavern of Thomas Hale in this town to the north proposed a resolution to make the move permanent. At the end of the session a calmer Assembly repealed the resolution.
In 1806, the Delaware Assembly again butted into the town business with another change of far-reaching consequences, this time one that took. The name of the Town was changed to Smyrna, presumably after the chief seaport of western Asia.
By the 1850s the transport of grain, lumber, and peaches from the wharves at Smyrna Landing, a mile down the creek, made Smyrna the most important port between Wilmington and Lewes. The spectre of the new railroads threatened Smyrna’s prosperity and in 1855 a proposed line into Town was denied. Progress was inevitable and a branch line was run into Smyrna in 1861. Its decline as a shipping center was assured by then, however.
The next transportation marvel did Smyrna no favors, either. The DuPont Highway came through east of Town in 1923 leaving the businesses on Main Street, scarcely 100 yards from the highway, to go about their days in almost complete secrecy. But that road and its successor, Delaware 1, transformed Smyrna into a commuter town, 12 miles north of the State Capital of Dover and 30 miles south of the major business centers of Newark and Wilmington.
This walking tour will begin at the most striking building in Smyrna, the Opera House, one-time container of all public services, fire survivor and Town symbol...
After periods of Swedish (1638), then Dutch (1655), then British (1664) colonization, the area stabilized under British rule (with Quaker influence) and was granted a borough charter in 1739 by the King of England which changed the name from Willingtown (after Thomas Willing, the first ‘developer” of the land who organized the area in a grid pattern like Philadelphia) to Wilmington, presumably after Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, a favorite of the King.
From the granting of the charter until the Revolution, the town developed steadily into a prosperous business and residential community. During the Revolution, its milling industries, geographic location, key leaders and resources made Wilmington particularly strategic. Topography and soil conditions affected the residential development pattern in the City. Wilmington lies at the fall line that separates the flat coastal plain from the hilly areas to the west. East of Market Street, and along both sides of the Christina River, the land is flat, low-lying and marshy in places. The west side of Market Street is hilly and rises to a point that marks the watershed between the Brandywine and the Christina Rivers. This watershed line runs along Delaware Avenue westward from 10th and Market Streets. The hilly and therefore healthier west side, was more attractive for the original residential areas such as Quaker Hill, developed beginning in the mid 18th century.
During the Industrial Revolution era Wilmington products included ships, railroad cars, gunpowder, shoes, tents, uniforms, blankets and other war-related goods. By 1868, the city was producing more iron ships than the rest of the country combined and it rated first in the production of gunpowder and second in carriages and leather. The modern age of Wilmington began in 1905 when the DuPont Company’s headquarters came downtown.
As an historically conservative city, Wilmington generally adopted architectural “high styles” about a decade after the style was introduced. Nonetheless, the city has a fine collection of extant buildings, displaying popular styles from the Revolution through late 20th century. Federal, Queen Anne, American Four Square are found in quantity; examples of Second Empire, Richardson Romanesque, Italian Villa, Greek Revival, Georgian, Art Deco and International Style punctuate the urban landscape. The vernacular row house makes up many of the stable neighborhoods, augmented by stylistic detailing from the high styles of its period of construction.
This walking tour will begin in the heart of the city around Rodney Square...
Even before I-95 severed it from center city Wilmington, the west side of the city had developed its own sense of identity. A richly diverse population migrated to this residential area including pockets of Italians, Greeks and Irish, many of whom found work in the flour and gunpowder mills a short distance away on the Brandywine River.
When the trolley lines extended out west of center city in the late 1800s it became more convenient for commuters to live away from the downtown offices and long-time farms were converted into tony developments clustered around such wide parkways as Bancroft and Kentmere.
This walking tour will begin at the gateway to Wilmington’s West Side, a small triangular park at the intersection of Delaware and Pennsylvania avenues...