1836, Joshua S. Layton and Caleb B. Sipple. 1955 altered. The Circle
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Brick Hotel (W. Barksdale Maynard) -
(Photograph by Matthew Aungst)
Brick hotels were fashionable additions to early-nineteenth-century Delaware towns, as evidenced, for example, by the hotel in Odessa (LN9), but few were built in Sussex County, owing (it is usually said) to the scarcity of clay for brickmaking. Fortunately, a deposit was discovered just west of Georgetown. The two-and-a-half-story building was converted into a bank in 1955, at which time the picturesque nineteenth-century porch was replaced by an unpedimented portico of giant Doric piers, and unfortunate changes were made to the fanlit doors and window arrangement of the facade. The State of Delaware bought the old building in 1999 to demolish it for the Court of Chancery, but local residents lobbied successfully to save it.