Tag Archives: Delaware

Mid-Atlantic Majesty

This has happened to me before: I have this notion of Boston/Salem pre-eminence in all material Federal, and then I see something from Philadelphia or Baltimore, or on my most recent trip New Castle, Delaware. I visited three museums on my recent spring break trips to the Delaware River Valley: at the Court House Museum in New Castle I learned all about Delaware’s nearly simultaneous separation from Great Britian and Pennsylvania, at a return visit to Winterthur I saw some old favorites and learned some things from new perspectives in the galleries, and at the Read Museum and Gardens I was quite simply blown away by the magnificence of a mansion built and embellished by Philadelphia craftsmen in down-river Delaware. The Read House, a National Historic Landmark owned and operated by the Delaware Historical Society, was built by George Read II, the son of a signer of the Declaration of Independence and Delaware Constitution, between 1797 and 1804 on New Castle’s the Strand, running alongside and overlooking the River. Its size (14,000 square feet) and scale and surrounding gardens give it a majesty that rivals the grandest urban townhouses of the era, evident even before you step inside. And then you step inside! The Gardner-Pingree House here in Salem used to be my standard for Federal perfection, but now I think it has been surpassed.

There’s just something about the scale of this house: everything is about a foot  or two bigger than you expect it to be, or I expected it to be, with my Massachusetts standards. But it’s not just about size, of course, it’s the details that make this mansion truly majestic: the plaster, the woodwork, the hardware. Mr. Read had to have the best of everything, and that meant everything Philadelphia. And as he didn’t really have the brilliant career of his father and namesake, this mansion represents something quite beyond his means, and something that could not remain in the family for very long after his death. It passed to a succession of owners, but fortunately remained relatively intact. In 1920 Philip and Lydia Laird acquired the property and installed a “ye olde British pub” for prohibition entertaining in the basement while also amplifying a Colonial Revival image for the rooms upstairs. Mrs. Laird bequeathed the house and grounds to the Delaware Historical Society in 1975, and a comprehensive (and ongoing) restoration ensued. My tour began in the prohibition pub, but I’m going to leave it until the appendix as I want to showcase the house as a contemporary visitor might have entered it, but it is a great cue that you’re about to enter a house which has both “Colonial” and Colonial Revival elements. (I’m putting Colonial in quotes as all the Colonial Revivalist authors I know extend that period up to about 1820, very conveniently).

Double Parlor: just a complete WOW. I couldn’t catch my breath! Fortunately I had a charming guide who told  me everthing I wanted to know because I couldn’t manage to ask. This was your not-so-standard convertible double parlor which served many occasions and capacities: Mr. Read set up his office in what is now the dining room across the hall, so the front (peach) parlor served as a dining room in addition to other functions. Amazing “punch and gouge” carving by Philadelphia craftsmen EVERYWHERE. The (nearly) floor-to-ceiling windows in the rear (green) parlor open up at the bottom, creating doorways to the garden outside. Across the hall (featuring more punch & gouge and unfinished floors to facilitate clearning, according to my guide is the Lairds’s Colonial Revival dining room.

The Dining Room: features a scenic hand-painted mural of a romanticized “Colonial” New Castle from the 1920s with the “three flags” messaging that I also saw at the Court House Museum. William Penn landed in New Castle in 1682, very close to the Read House, and he is pictured being greeted by Dutch, Swedish, and English settlers as well as a members of the native Lenape tribe. On (back) to the kitchen…………..where there was a surprise!

The Kitchen: has a variant Rumford Roaster! My guide explained to me that Mr. Read had to have the best of everything, and the latest technology, so of course he had to have a Rumford Roaster, but somehow the original Rumford design was adapted: the second photograph is the Read House and the third is Hamilton Hall’s roaster right next door to me in Salem: as you see the firing compartments (for want of a better technical term) have been moved over to the main hearth. This was tremendously exciting to me as we have SEVEN Rumford Roasters in Salem and this was quite different! The first photograph in this group shows the bell display for service; the last,  a warming station for dishes and plates, also quite ingenious. And on to a few singular shots and details:

Details, a model New Castle house, and Mrs. Read’s bedroom: how to summon servants, door hardware, stair detail, a model of another New Castle house (and more of the unfinished floors), and lots of soft furnishings in Mrs. Read’s bedroom. Regarding service and the many hands that must have been required to maintain this large house, I did ask about slavery, which was legal in Delaware right up until the ratification of the thirteenth amendment (which it notably did not participate in—OR the 14th and 15th!). Reseach is still ongoing, but account books indicate that the Reads’ cook was a free woman of color.

Appendix: the taproom downstairs, which I prefer to call the “Prohibition pub,” and back in its heyday.


Little Brick Houses

Last week was my spring break, and I was determined to get away after spending the past three right here at home during the prolonged Covid Time. I wanted to drive off alone so I could indulge myself with days of endless historic house-spotting: my husband needs a destination and a drink after too much of that! First I planned an extensive trip around revolutionary taverns along much of the east coast, and then I narrowed down my target area to the short-lived colony of New Sweden, incorporating areas of New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania (and even a bit of Maryland, I think). This trip was further restricted by a delayed departure and the big snowstorm that hit many parts of the northeast: I ended up snowed in at my brother’s house in Rhinebeck, New York. And then I was off, bound for New Castle, Delaware, a small historic city that I had always passed through too quickly. This would be the center of my exploration, but along the way, right before I passed over the Delaware Memorial Bridge, I decided to get off the turnpike and explore Salem County, one of the counties of southern New Jersey that borders Delaware Bay. The sun was shining and it was warm: it seemed as if I had passed from winter into spring, and from the North into the South. I had never been in this region of Jersey, but I had heard about some of its revolutionary history and seen pictures of some of its distinct 18th century houses built of patterned brick, dated and decoratively embellished on one side. I wanted to see one, and I did, and then I wanted to see more: and so I drove down rural roads for hours to do so. Before I knew it, it was dusk, and then I had to drive over that damn bridge in the dark (I have a mild bridge phobia issue and a much stronger tunnel one). New Castle was charming at night and the next morning, when I saw rows of little brick town houses. So forget about any theme of history or function: my spring break (or what was left of it) was just going to be all about little brick houses—and some big brick houses too.

The Dickinson and Oakford Houses, Alloway Township, Salem County New Jersey; the collage is all New Castle houses, with the exception of the conjoined houses in the center–which are in Salem TOWN, New Jersey (more about this other Salem below); New Castle’s old library; this 18th century map shows my travels–on both sides of the Delaware.

Established in 1651 by the Dutch, New Castle was at the center of shifting colonial sovereignties in the middle of the seventeenth century: it became part of a the short-lived colony of New Sweden in 1654, but was recaptured by the Dutch within the year, and in 1680 it was included in the land grant of William Penn, along with the rest of Delaware. New Castle was the capital of the Delaware colony until the Revolution, but before and after it was a center of trade and transportation due to its strategic location on the river. Its pre-revolutionary and pre-industrial wealth created a beautiful city that survives today relatively intact. I don’t really agree with its chamber-of-commerce description: thanks to preservation efforts, this vibrant, fully occupied community remains one of the most important Colonial/Federal villages in America—second only to Williamsburg, Virginia in the number and authenticiy of its historic structures. Williamsburg is a creation, an open-air museum: New Castle is a living city. Though they both have that fixed-in-time feeling, I saw the residents walking around engaged in all sorts of tasks as I walked the streets of New Castle, and they weren’t in colonial costume, like the “residents” of Williamsburg. New Castle is real, but almost too perfect: perfectly-preserved buildings, perfect signage, perfectly laid and -maintained brick sidewalks (it’s like an opposite-word of Salem: they seem to be letting their asphalt sidewalks languish as they replace with brick!), no litter in sight. And while late colonial and federal houses rule, they come in different sizes and were built with different materials: rows of modest brick and wooden houses were just as perfectly maintained as more stately structures. And there are new houses too, built with an obvious mandate to integrate with the old.

Just perfect New Castle, on a perfect day! These are all residences: I’m going to show the museums in my next post. The last two photos show a new house rising on the Strand, and the very old Anglican/Episcopalian Church, Immanuel on the Green, the parish of which has been operating continuously since 1689.

I spent a couple of days in New Castle and then drove lightly northeast into the Brandywine Valley, ostensibly to do some research at the Winterthur library, but I spent more time in the museum and (you guess it) driving around looking for little stone houses. And on my way back home, I turned off the bridge right after I crossed into Jersey rather than before I crossed into Delawar: I wanted to go back to Salem County to hunt for more houses and see the city of Salem as well: I had driven through it days before but didn’t stop. It’s somewhat blighted, with boarded up houses on the main street, but other houses were perfectly restored: it seemed to have quite a bit of integrity and potential. Of course, this Salem has a historical society, and a completely over-the-top but unfortunately former city hall: I wonder what will become of it?

Salem, New Jersey: historical society, murals, and the “exuberant Queen Anne” former municipal building.

One last stop in old New Jersey and then I turned northward. Most of the patterned brick houses are in private hands and hard to find, but one has been turned into a state park: the Hancock House, in Alloway Township, or more particularly a little village within called Hancock’s Bridge. On this very day in 1778, raiding British rangers under the command of Major John Simcoe raided the house and bayoneted as many people as they could find inside: at the very least ten Patriot milita men and also the owner of the house, Judge William Hancock, who was a Loyalist and also, as a Quaker, a pacifist. This became known as the Massacre at Hancock’s Bridge, and just as I was arriving at the house on Saturday morning regiments of reenactors were as well, for the annual commemoration of the massacre. I couldn’t stay around, unfortunately, but I have borrowed a photograph from the HM 17th Regiment of Infantry in America’s facebook page, below. Then I drove home to Massachusetts, making just one stop along the way: at Guilford, Connecticut to see another very old stone house, the 1639 Henry Whitefield House.

Above: The Hancock House, 1734 and members of the HM 17th Regiment of Infantry in America, 1775-1784 on Saturday. Just two streets over, the Quaker Meeting House, built on land donated to the community by Judge Hancock, who was slain on March 21, 1778.

Below: Bonus round. Two little stone houses in Pennsylvania and Connecticut: the John Chads House in Chadds Ford, and the Whitefield House in Guilford.


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