Gray stone, red brick arch, and yellow boxcar.
Went up to Wilmington DE to see Hagley Museum in early spring – March is one of the nicest times to go because it isn’t crowded, even though very little is in bloom.
Managed to catch Hagley on a “Dollar Day” – admission was $1 instead of the normal $11.00. This was appreciated because the tolls between Maryland and Del\aware are $11.00 now - $2.00 at the Baltimore Tunnel, and two toll stops in Delaware that are $5.00 and $4.00 – I don’t have the EZ Pass, and the cash lines are so long on a weekend that I’m really starting to think I ought to get one.
Hagley is the most intimate of the DuPont museums - the guidebooks mention this, and the authors are right. It’s a lovely place to wander around, although there is some pressure to stay on the shuttle bus (which is exactly where you don’t want to be on a weekend with a whole bunch of screaming kids and a group of moms who have pretty much given up). The grounds are so peaceful – stone ruins and water everywhere, cogs and drills everywhere at the machinist shop, more wheels and a piston at the Steamroom, pipes and spinning water wheels scattered on the property – it lulls the visitor into forgetting how many working men died on this site.
Duck swimming along in a canal - the peacefulness of this place is the first thing the visitor notices.
Hagley has a great organic cafe/restaurant which serves a very reasonably priced lunch - a bowl of turkey chili, a pasta entree, and dessert cost me only $13.00. The other DuPont museums don't have anything organic. This is definitely the best museum at which to buy lunch on-site.
Docents at Hagley and also at Winterthur are enthusiastic and highly knowledgeable. It is considered an honor to be chosen as a volunteer docent, and they go out of their way to make it a good experience for visitors.
The house is nice – it is the least spectacular of the DuPont homes because the owners were actually engaged in running operations when they lived here,
and not just hugely wealthy trust-funders who sat on corporate boards but were better known for conserving the entire history of American interior design ( which is what the visitor sees at Winterthur). A lot of DuPont wealth still influences this region, but the families now have various other names. For example, the Carpenter family who owned a major sports team in Philadelphia is actually a DuPont family under a different name.
Brief recap on the history – this is the oldest of the DuPont properties, and the place where the family really started to make a fortune during the Civil War. They made a “black-powder” for use in the gun that every 19th century rural man owned. The DuPont paterfamilias was the son of watch-makers who managed to persuade his parents to pay for an engineering education before the French Revolution.
Beautifully constructed doors and windows on a stone barn addition.
By the time of the French Revolution, he had apprenticed his own son to Antoine Lavoisier, the famous chemist, and had already become a very wealthy man in France. DuPont figured the Jacobins would have his head, so he took his own money, raised a lot more money, and left France.
Blackpowder was a highly explosive mixture of saltpeter, potassium nitrate, and charcoal developed by medieval Chinese alchemists who were probably trying to develop an elixir of youth but ended up with a mixture that could kill people instead. Prior to the Civil War, hunters and soldiers encountered huge problem with shot that misfired or didn’t fire at all. This was the only business the DuPonts made any money on during the 19th century, but they made so much money that their other business failures are largely forgotten.
A reminder that "steampunk" was cogs and gears long before it turned into jewelry on etsy.com.
Blackpowder production came at a huge price – some 2000 explosions were recorded on the property, and the deaths or severe injuries of working men are associated with many of the incidents. The city of Wilmington would no longer allow the DuPonts to transport blackpowder within the city limits after a huge explosion rocked the city, setting off many small fires.
Trunk of a 350 year old osage orange tree, the second largest of its species in the U.S. Hagley has some famous old trees that the DuPonts consciously preserved, even though the working portion of the estate was denuded because blackpowder explosions could set off forest fires.
As a result, the DuPonts built a road around Wilmington so that blackpowder could be transported to the Atlantic – 19th century trains would not transport blackpowder, for obvious reasons. The DuPonts were also among the first American companies to establish a "widow and orphans" fund.
Gorgeous stone construction on the side of a barn, with red brick portholes along the bottom. Right from the beginning, there was a big interest in home design, and these barons had a lot of skilled help who could make the vision a reality.
Speaking of Wilmington – it reminded me of a small-scale version of Philidelphia – very working-class and pretty rough. You can see its past splendor in the museums and the restored Opera House (gorgeous exterior) and the 19th century churches scattered all over the city – but the city is poor and looks it. Downtown reminded me of a Cincinnati without hills, but Cincinnati has more money than Wilmington. There’s a strong Jersey Shore influence, too – you can see it in the appearance of some white folks, and hear the accent in their voices.
Wilmington is home to a lot of people that have lived in the city their whole lives and never lived anywhere else.It’s insular, with strong working-class values. I drove through on the weekend before St. Patrick’s Day, and watched a whole group of young adults all decked out in green (top hats, face paint, the works) on their way to the pub for some early drinking. Two of them were pushing baby strollers – I kid you not – I don’t know whether the bar was providing baby care for tipsy parents, or what.
This is the simple house that the foreman and his family lived in, yet it was one of the nicest houses for a working man on the property.
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Stove in the foreman's home.
My friend Joan actually lives in Wilmington, and I got to see her on this little weekend getaway. She acknowledges the sleaze factor in her adopted city, but she also points out that the phamaceutical companies attract a lot of well-educated outsiders who move to Wilmington for jobs in the labs. These folks add a cosmopolitan mix to the city - she says it is more of a balancing factor in Wilmington than in nearby Philadelphia.
This is the machinist and blacksmith workspace - the heart of the operation.
