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 Baltimore Railroad. Only a handful of colonial buildings can still be found in this community of just over one thousand people, including a long brick house with gables on Market Street and a vinyl-sided brick gambrel-roofed house on John Street. The two other colonial houses mentioned in the WPA Delaware Guide (1938) are gone. St. James Episcopal (1948–1949, William Heyl Thompson, with William E. Grancell) at 2 Augustine Street is Colonial Revival, with stained glass by Frank Schoonover. The Newport vicinity was industrialized by the coming of Krebs Chemical and Pigment Company on the riverfront and, after World War II, the modernist brick General Motors Plant on Boxwood Road (1945–1946).
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