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Hale-Byrnes House

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c. 1750. c. 1772 extended north. Stanton-Christiana Rd., on White Clay Creek
  • Hale-Byrnes House

Samuel Hale was a potter who used White Clay Creek to transport his wares. In 1772, he sold the riverside house to Daniel Byrnes, a miller, who enlarged it. Flemish bond brick-work on the front facade (unfortunately sandblasted) contrasts with mingled English and common bonds on sides and rear. General George Washington convened a council of war with the Marquis de Lafayette and others here in September 1777. By 1961, the house was boarded up and about to be demolished for a highway realignment, but Mrs. Harry C. Boden of the revived Delaware Society for the Preservation of Antiquities successfully campaigned for its preservation. Her group restored the house (with G. Morris Whiteside II and Albert Kruse; landscape by Edward Bachtle), giving it to the state in 1971. The gnarled sycamore outside may be as old as the house. Nearby stands abandoned Stanton Bridge (1940–1942), unique in Delaware as a C-shaped concrete “rainbow arch,” with a span of 119 feet.

Writing Credits

W. Barksdale Maynard


What's Nearby


W. Barksdale Maynard, "Hale-Byrnes House", [Wilmington, Delaware], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—,

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of Delaware

Buildings of Delaware, W. Barksdale Maynard. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008, 170-170.



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