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DOVER , the capital of Delaware,
struggles to attract visitors as they bypass the city en route
to the beach resorts of Rehoboth and Maryland's Ocean City. Located
in the mostly agricultural center of the state, just west of US-13,
Dover is basically a very small town, with a low-rise business
district hemmed in by blocks of suburban houses. South of Lockerman
Street , the main route through town, a few strangely
somnolent governmental buildings center upon the 1792 Old
State House , its old legislative chambers now restored
as a museum (Tues-Sat 10am-4.30pm, Sun 1.30-4.30pm; free) and
furnished with early American antiques. To the west, around the
oval town green , lawyers and insurance brokers
have taken over historic buildings such as the Golden Fleece Tavern
, where Delaware's early legislators agreed to ratify the Constitution.
In the same building as the friendly visitor
center (Mon-Sat 8.30am-4.30pm, Sun 1.30-4.30pm; tel 302/739-4266),
at the corner of Duke of York and Federal streets next to the
Old State House, the impressive Biggs Museum of American
Art (Wed-Sat 10am-4pm, Sun 1.30-4.30pm; free) has historical
and art displays downstairs, while the upper floor is given over
to paintings, furniture, silver and other period housewares. The
Delaware State Museums (Tues-Sat 10am-3.30pm; free; )
includes the trio located a short walk west of the green; the
Archaeology Museum and Museum of Small Town Life
contain fairly tedious displays of anthropological detritus -
Native American shell necklaces, wooden water pipes from early
Wilmington and the like - but not to be missed is the
Johnson Victrola Museum . The outwardly unassuming building
houses a large collection of phonographs, dedicated to the memory
of Dover-born engineer Eldridge Reeves Johnson, who helped to
invent the Victrola . The layout is like a 1920s
music store: dozens of "talking machines," from early
wind-ups to prototype jukeboxes, play period recordings, and comical
photographs document early, pre-electric recording techniques
- entire orchestras crowd together around huge megaphones. Pride
of place goes to a painting of a dog, Nipper, listening to a Victrola,
an image made familiar as "His Master's Voice." In 1929
Johnson sold the rights to his machine, and to his trademark dog,
to RCA for $29 million.
