History Comes Alive

Greater Wilmington and the Brandywine Valley is rich with history.  Early settlers date back to the 1600's and the area offers some of the finest examples of 18th and 19th century living.  Use the examples below to create your own itinerary or visit them all.  Most attractions are within a 10-mile radius of each other. 

Learn about the history of the First State at the Delaware History Museum, located in a renovated Art Deco Woolworth store in Wilmington, with three galleries of changing interactive exhibits including displays of rare items of everyday life, costumes, children's toys, regional decorative arts, and paintings.

Take a walk through the past at the Read House in historic New Castle, a 22-room Federal-style mansion where elegant and spacious family parlors contrast with cramped servants' quarters, advanced cooking systems show the owner's fascination with technology, and several rooms are restored to capture the gentility of the Colonial Revival movement and the gaiety of the Roaring '20s.

Get a unique glimpse into 19th-century American life and work at Hagley Museum and Library, the site of the original Du Pont powder mills, estate, and gardens, with live machinery demonstrations in the powder yard, changing exhibits in Henry Clay Mill, the homes and school on Blacksmith Hill, and the Georgian-style Eleutherian Mills mansion.

Tour Rockwood, a Rural Gothic mansion built by Quaker merchant banker Joseph Shipley between 1851 and 1854, with rooms restored to the way they looked in 1895 at the height of the Victorian Era when Shipley's descendants lived here.

Download this
itinerary here.