The Delaware History Museum is a museum. Longwood Gardens is a garden (albeit a huuuuge garden). The Brandywine Zoo is a zoo. But Hagley, much like Winterthur, has so many facets that it’s impossible to wrap them all into a single descriptive title. Hagley is a 235-acre historic site, a history museum, a world-class industriall history library, a garden, an education center, the ancestral home of the du Pont family and company in America, and one of the most beautiful riverfront landscapes on the east coast.
You enter the Hagley Visitor Center complex from Barley Mill Road which intersects Route 141 just east of scenic Montchanin Road (Route 100). Make a left turn into Hagley at the Brandywine River! The center houses a small but interesting museum shop and a museum offering visitors a look at 200 years of DuPont Company history. It features some of the company's most innovative products from nylon stockings to its Nomex fiber that insulates firemen’s coats all over the world. And, like Winterthur, the property is so large that you’ll need to take a bus from the Visitors Center to the various historic sites and exhibits.
E. I. du Pont built the first du Pont home in America, which he called Eleutherian Mills, in 1803. It sits on the crest of a hill overlooking the Brandywine River at Hagley. The Georgian-style residence is furnished with antiques and memorabilia of the five generations of du Ponts associated with the property. And next to the home there is a French-style garden created by Mr. du Pont, who was an avid botanist.
The first company office and a nearby barn are also open to the public. The office was constructed in 1837 and remained the nerve center for the company for more than fifty years. The barn features nineteenth century domestic, farm, and powder yard vehicles, a collection of weather vanes, agricultural tools and implements, as well as a Conestoga wagon. On the lower level of the Barn an antique automobile exhibit highlights the du Pont Motors company, featuring a 1928 Du Pont Motors Phaeton and contrasting it to a 1911 Detroit Electric car that also belonged to a family member.
In the Powder Yard, stone mills, storehouses, and a waterwheel recall the time when waterpower was the source of energy in America. Millstreams at Hagley still channel water to operate machinery. Exhibits and working models tell the history of the economic and technological expansion of the Brandywine region. It’s one of the “must see” exhibits as powdermen and machinists demonstrate a water turbine, a steam engine, a powder tester, and a working machine shop.
The sites on Workers' Hill focus on the social and family history of the workers who operated the powder mills. Costumed interpreters reflect life during the late nineteenth century in the Gibbons House, home to powder yard foremen and their families. In the Brandywine Manufacturers' Sunday School, constructed in 1817, children of mill workers learned to read, write, and cipher before Delaware provided public education.
In the Part 2, we’ll explore more of Hagley’s treasurers and special events.
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