Delaware - Winterthur

One of the highlights of our visit to Delaware, was the wonderful afternoon spent at Winterthur (yes, there's a place with the same name in Switzerland, for those of you with good geographical knowledge... I'm sure you all knew this).

Winterthur is the equivalent of an English Country Estate, smack in the middle of Delaware's countryside, and choke-full of American antiques, from the earliest European settlements in the mid-1600's to 1840. The house is the former home of Henry Francis du Pont (1880-1969), an avid antiques collector and horticulturist. In the early 20th century, he and his father, Henry Algernon du Pont, designed Winterthur in the spirit of 18th and 19th-century European country houses. It is an enchanting place. And there's actually an Enchanted Garden where Georgie spent many fun moments.

The du Pont name originated in France (Nemours). The first du Pont de Nemours moved to Delaware in 1800. His son, Eleuthère Irénée (I want a name like this too!!), started a gunpowder factory there in 1802. The family would rise to become one of the more important industrialist families in the US in the early 20th century.

The Estate was named Winterthur by Jacques Antoine Bidermann, an investor in Eleuthère's company. Biedermann married Evelina, Eleuthère's daughter, on a visit to Delaware to check on his family's investment in the du Ponts. He later purchased the property from the other siblings of Evelina and began the construction of a twelve-room mansion. They named it Winterthur after Bidermann's ancestral home in Switzerland.

Anyway, to cut a long hi(story) short, the man behind the beauty of Winterthur is Henry Francis du Pont, the only son of Henry Algernon and Pauline du Pont. Here is a summary profile of the man taken from Winterthur's website, with a tiny bit of editing on my part:

"In 1906 du Pont's father was elected to the United States Senate. Soon afterward, he ceded responsibility of supervising the garden at Winterthur to his son. (...) During these years before World War I, du Pont traveled extensively to study the great gardens of Europe, especially those in England. Henry Francis du Pont married Ruth Wales in 1916. Shortly thereafter, he became interested in American antiques and began amassing his renowned collection of early American decorative arts. He continued to develop Winterthur's farmland, raised a prizewinning herd of Holstein-Friesian cows, and worked with landscape architect Marian Cruger Coffin to blend the garden into the rural landscape. By 1925 Winterthur had its own turkey, chicken, sheep, pig, and dairy farms as well as vegetable and flower gardens, greenhouses, a sawmill, a railroad station, and a post office.

Between 1928 and 1932, du Pont doubled the size of the existing house at Winterthur and converted it into a showplace for his collections. Throughout the next two decades, du Pont and his family lived in a museum-in-progress. (...) In 1951 du Pont turned his house over to the Winterthur Corporation, a nonprofit educational institution, and moved into a smaller home on the estate, as the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum opened to the public.

In 1961 the first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, visited Winterthur and invited du Pont to head the Fine Arts Committee, which oversaw the restoration of the White House."

(L)

photo credits: Gary