Preservation of the Rock Creek valley as an extensive and varied public park, where the natural landscape was to be used for recreation, sports, and the simple enjoyment of nature, had its genesis in plans of the 1860s to find a healthier location...
In 1904 a promotional booklet, real estate agents Moore and Hill boasted, “Cleveland Park is unquestionably the handsomest and most desirable suburb of the national Capital.” The area just north of the Washington National Cathedral was a favored locale for summer...
The buildings of Georgetown can be followed in a time line from the oldest along the shores of the Potomac River to later development on the steep heights as far north as Dumbarton Oaks, Montrose Park, and Oak Hill Cemetery. Founded in 1751, forty years before Washington,...
Culturally, Brandywine Hundred in extreme northern New Castle County is oriented almost as much toward Pennsylvania as toward Wilmington. William Penn's Quakers established a seventeenth-century meeting house at Carrcroft, northeast of Wilmington (the current building dates from...
For the colonial traveler, arrival in Delaware meant paying a toll at Naamans Creek Bridge, twenty miles from Philadelphia (still indicated by a highway stone). Blue rock was quarried along the creek and transported widely via the Delaware River. Nearby Claymont had charm and...
The “experimental village” along colonial Grubb Road was founded in 1900 with the purchase of 162 acres of farm and forest by two Philadelphians, decorative artist G. Frank Stephens and architect William Price. Stephens was a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and...
The northern two-thirds of this rolling Piedmont hundred include what is known as Chateau Country, among the most expensive real estate in Delaware. The less scenic southern third, however, consists of dense suburbs and, at the lower edge, the former colonial highway of Newport...
The village served the Conestoga trade along the Wilmington and Kennett Turnpike (1811–1813), which is still marked by milestones. Its growth stalled when railroads supplanted wagons. In 1918–1920, DuPont Company president Pierre S. du Pont bought the turnpike, widened the roadbed...
Founded in 1735, the town was described by The Traveller's Directoryin 1804 as occupying “a pleasant situation, and [it] has a considerable trade with Philadelphia in flour,” owing to its location on the Christina River. Later it became a stop on the Philadelphia, Wilmington and...
West of this pleasant rural crossroads along Red Clay Creek stands Ashland Nature Center (established 1976), where modern buildings (Cooperson Associates) blend with an old farmstead. Along the brow of a hill curves the Center's award-winning Lodge, a crescent-shaped wooden...
With a population of approximately 73,000 in 2006, Wilmington is Delaware's largest city, twice as big as its nearest rivals. (Only four states have smaller leading cities, however.) Founded along the Christina River, Wilmington's history is long and colorful, going back to Swedish...
The riverfront district was settled extremely early. Here the Swedes gained a foothold in the New World in 1638, just three decades after Jamestown; here Willingtown was founded; here the shipbuilding industry thrived. The bustling nineteenth-century riverfront...
Nearly a century passed between the landing of the Swedes at the Rocks (see Fort Christina Park, WL2) and the founding of Wilmington (1731). The latter settlement was located on the Christina, too, but...
Quaker millers spurred the growth of Wilmington in its first decade, the 1730s, and settled on the slopes of a hill west of the town center, where they built a meetinghouse in 1739. A handful of colonial buildings survive on Quaker Hill, including 310 West Street (c. 1750). The...
Brandywine Village Historic District, north of Brandywine Creek, preserves the flavor of early-nineteenth-century Wilmington, when the city was famed for its many mills. A dynasty of millers established itself downstream from North Market Street Bridge (...
Samuel H. Baynard opened up the Ninth Ward with his North Side Improvement Company in the 1890s. Baynard Boulevard Historic District commemorates those streetcar suburb days, when the newly wealthy were attracted to the area. It is an excellent place to study the variety of...
Ethnically diverse, this extensive residential section contains two historic districts, 8th Street/Tilton Park and Cool Spring. Farther west is the hilltop neighborhood of Little Italy, recently marked by special signage and streetscape improvements (Design Collaborative)....
Joshua T. Heald opened northwest Wilmington to development with his horse-drawn railcar line along Delaware Avenue in 1864. Today, the area is divided into two sections by the tracks of the former Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The eastern section comprises dense, relatively...
The low-lying region south of Wilmington, bounded by the Delaware and Christina rivers, was long agricultural but is now laced with divided highways and densely built-up. There were a number of country seats in this fertile area, but they have nearly all been destroyed. Eden Park...
This time capsule of a riverfront town (pop. 4,862) was founded by the Dutch in 1651 as Fort Casimir, later New Amstel; its current name dates from the British takeover in 1664. The fort has long since vanished, but Dutch dikes are obvious at Wilmington Road (Broad Dyke) and 2nd...
Mill power was long a key to the prosperity of hilly Mill Creek Hundred, its technologies having been transformed nationwide by the innovations of Oliver Evans of Newport, Delaware, author of Young Millwright and Miller's Guide (1795). Mill Creek...
Old-timers still call this tiny village “Christine.” The crossroads settlement remains largely intact, although highways and developments have ringed it. It is hard to conceive of this inland village as a port, but it does lie at the head of navigation on the Christina River. Although...
Situated at the northwest corner of the state, Newark has grown to be Delaware's third-largest town (population 28,500), nearly as large as Dover and dominated by a sizeable university. Historically, the community was exclusively strung along Main Street. Its...
The town's Main Street has several buildings of note. The former Rhodes Pharmacy (1916–1917, Richard A. Whittingham) translated Gothic architecture into concrete, complete with gargoyles. Wilmington Trust Bank (1926, originally Farmers' Trust Company; 82 Main St.) is neo-Roman with big...
This section of Delaware roughly corresponds to the boundaries of two historic New Castle County hundreds, embracing fertile agricultural land on the upper margin of the Coastal Plain. Along its southern edge runs the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal; at its northern...
Originally named Aikentown, this unincorporated historic village is bisected by the maelstrom of a modern highway, but still retains a short stretch of north–south colonial road (DE 896 north of U.S. 40), along which 4,000 British troops marched to the Battle of Cooch's Bridge. A brick...
Before envelopment by sprawl, this was northern New Castle County's least-changed settlement, partly as a result of its having been bypassed by the highway bridge of 1940. Some streets are still paved with their first concrete surface. A mill dam stood on a creek here...
Unique in the state as an antebellum boom town, Delaware City (pop. 1,453) was born of the Chesapeake and Delaware (C&D) Canal. The Newbold family, proprietors of Newbold's Landing, drew a town plan and invented the optimistic title of “city.” The main street was named for Erie...
The Dutch settled in the seventeenth century along the Appoquinimink River at present-day Odessa, starting the local pattern by which towns sprang up along river wharves from which produce could be shipped to larger markets. Agriculture was intensive in this fertile region of...
