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New Castle Not a reconstruction of replicas, New Castle is a living museum of superb restorations virtually unchanged since the mid-1800s. "The spirit of the town is not that of an antiquarian society at all," says the definitive book New Castle on the Delaware, a federal WPA writers' project compiled in the 1930s and revised in the 1970s. "The dwellers are as preoccupied with their own affairs as are Americans elsewhere. They take the town as a matter of course, a part of the background of their business, and like it as it is....The distinction of New Castle today is due to the busy daily life that has gone on in it without break through the centuries, achieving a fairly congenial blending of old and new in activity and interests. This is something rather rare in our country, rarer than in parts of Europe where a town normally has not only length, breadth and height, but also an imposing time dimension accepted as one of the realities of the place." New Castle Heritage Trail. Most of the structures in the long two square blocks in the center of old New Castle are detailed in a brochure available at the municipal office. Walking is the best way to see the sites. Join New Castilians as they walk or jog around The Battery park beside the Delaware. Poke along the undulating brick sidewalks of The Strand, pausing to look at the vestiges of the old store with an early Ivory Soap billboard painted three stories high on the side of a brick dwelling along Packet Alley. Cut through a garden walkway beside the historic Presbyterian Church to the shady Green. Prominent Delawareans are buried in the graveyard at Immanuel Episcopal Church, which since 1924 has sponsored the famed A Day in Old New Castle the third Saturday in May on the Green. Other sights worth noting are the Old Town Hall and Markethouses with an unusual open archway connecting Delaware Street and the Market Place, the 1789 Academy, the 1809 U.S. Arsenal, the original ticket office for the old New Castle-Frenchtown Railroad, and the Town Wharf, where little remains to validate the claim that New Castle was once an important shipping and transportation center. New Castle Court House, Delaware Street. The Dutch House, 32 East Third St. Old Library Museum, 40 East Third St. Shopping. Although this has always been a working town, most of the commerce has moved with suburbia up to Route 13. The Visitors Bureau guide to old New Castle cites sixteen places of interest, four lodgings and ten places to shop, one of them a realty office and others seeming to change every year or two. Biggest of the stores is O'Donalds Variety & Souvenir Store, one of the old school, with an ice cream parlor at the side. Antiques and collectibles are featured in the adjacent Opera House Antiques Center. High tea is served weekend afternoons in the Victorian tea room of the opera house in which Jenny Lind and Enrico Caruso once sang. Specialty stores of interest are Lauren Lynch Antiques & Co., four Colonial rooms with furniture, linens, art and such; the exceptional rare bookstore Oak Knoll Books, and Gifts-n-Stuff Ltd., where the emphasis is on the latter. Extra-Special George Read II House and Garden, 42 The Strand, New Castle. "The grandest mansion and oldest gardens in New Castle," says the sign outside. Actually one of the outstanding Georgian house museums anywhere, this was completed in 1804 by the prosperous lawyer-son of a signer of the Declaration of Independence. It's a huge house with an unimpeded view of the river, towering above its neighbors along The Strand. Now owned by the Historical Society of Delaware, it is a living museum of the decorative crafts from the Federal period. An iron balcony and palladian window surmount the handsome doorway, itself topped by a fanlight. Inside are incised marble window sills and lintels, a stunning Greek key trompe-l'oeil cornice decoration in the entry hall, and elaborately carved detailing in the woodwork, masonry and plastering. The house and its attached servants' wing are surrounded by formal gardens designed in the style of Andrew Jackson Downing, foremost landscape architect of the mid-19th century. The Colonial Revival taste of later owners is preserved in three rooms that contrast with the restored Read interiors. There is a small museum shop in the basement entry. (302) 322-8411. Open March-December, Tuesday-Saturday 10 to 4, Sunday noon to 4; weekend hours in January and February. Adults, $4. Material excerpted from Inn Spots & Special Places / Mid-Atlantic, by Nancy and Richard Woodworth. Copyright 2003. Wood Pond Press E-mail feedback to: Home
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