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WILMINGTON may not be the most
compelling place in America, but this medium-sized city can make
for a refreshing break from the tourist trail: not only does it
boast the excellent Delaware Art Museum and some pretty waterside
parks, but the surrounding Brandywine Valley holds the manor homes
and gardens (and factories) of the du Ponts, all open to the public
and providing an inside look at the First State's First Family
and America's de facto aristocracy.
If you arrive in Wilmington by train, on the Amtrak
line between New York and Washington, you'll pull in to the quirky
1907 terracotta station on the somewhat dangerous and run-down
south side of the city. From here, the two main streets, Market
and King, run north for about a mile to the Brandywine River.
Their partly pedestrianized lengths hold a standard array of stores
and other small businesses, as well as a handful of restored eighteenth-century
rowhouses clustered around the Georgian Old Town Hall
, 512 Market St (March-Dec Tues-Fri noon-4pm, Sat 10am-4pm; free),
now a small museum of local history. The faceless gray monoliths
that tower over the cityscape house the headquarters of hundreds
of national companies.
A short walk north of the downtown commercial district,
at the top end of Market Street, Brandywine Park comes
as a welcome relief from the concrete pavement, with its grassy
knolls lining both banks of the Brandywine River. In the residential
districts to the north are some of the city's oldest and most
elegant houses, many dating from the Revolutionary War, when Wilmington's
flour mills fed the American forces. The nearby Delaware
Art Museum , 2301 Kentmere Parkway (Tues & Thurs-Sat
9am-4pm, Wed 9am-9pm, Sun 10am-4pm; free; ), has a good range
of works by American painters like Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer
and Edward Hopper, as well as a comprehensive collection of English
Pre-Raphaelite painting and drawing.
Most of Wilmington's surprising number of important
colonial sites are hidden away amid the decrepit and heavily industrialized
waterfront to the east of downtown. A poorly signposted "Historic
Wilmington" loop stops first at the foot of Seventh Street,
where a small monument marks the site of Delaware's first European
colony, Fort Christina , set up by Swedish settlers
in 1638. Nearby, at 606 Church St, the Hendrickson House
Museum andOld Swedes Church (Mon-Sat 10am-4pm; free)
is one of the oldest houses of worship in the US, built in 1690
and still retaining its impressive black walnut pulpit.
