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Augustine Inn (Augustine Beach Hotel)

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Augustine Beach Hotel
1814. 0.7 miles south of Port Penn on DE 9
  • (Photograph by Matthew Aungst)

This two-and-a-half-story brick hotel facing the Delaware River, its tall original windows remarkably intact, was built by Messrs. Grier and Aiken to serve ship travelers. Later in the nineteenth century, St. Augustine Piers became a popular pleasure ground, with beach, bath houses, and amusement park, the excursion boat Thomas Clyde bringing Philadelphians here as late as the 1920s. During the Great Depression, the place was the scene of the Farmer's Day Picnic in late summer. World War II brought a slump, but the resort revived somewhat in the 1950s. In 1963, the state Board of Health closed the beach due to bacterial pollution and the hotel was sold by sheriffs sale. Today, it houses a bar popular with motorcyclists.

Writing Credits

Author: 
W. Barksdale Maynard
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Citation

W. Barksdale Maynard, "Augustine Inn (Augustine Beach Hotel)", [Middletown, Delaware], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/DE-01-LN4.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of Delaware

Buildings of Delaware, W. Barksdale Maynard. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008, 209-210.

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