Over the years the massive estate, museum, gallery, garden, library, graduate school, conservation center, steeplechass race course, wild goose habitat and farm known as “Winterthur,” has had several institutional names – Winterthur Museum, Winterthur Museum & Library, Winterthur Museum, Library & Gardens, and Winterthur: An American Country Estate. It’s not because they don’t know what they are at Winterthur – it’s because they really are all those things…and more. In fact Winterthur has its own post office, fire company and security force which is more than many small cities can claim!
For starters, the estate is soooo large (1,000 acres) that you not only can’t see the museum from any of the surrounding access routes, you can’t see it even after you’ve entered the property, parked and made your way to the visitor center! And once you’ve paid admission (be sure you have lots of credit available on your card because a one-hour tour can cost as much as $30) you still have to take a shuttle bus to the museum complex. In addition to the museum, the complex includes a two-story, 20,000 square foot gallery, a lobby area that is literally as large as a ball room, a library, conservation labs and a separate 26-room building housing one of two museum stores on the property.
The massive collection of American fine and decorative arts that Henry Francis du Pont amassed at Winterthur is quite simply the finest collection of American furniture, fine art, silver, ceramics, pottery, carpets, and fabrics anywhere in the world. It takes 175 rooms on 13 floors to exhibit just a portion of it! Henry wasn’t your ordinary collector, you see. To get what he determined to be the very best of America's decorative arts, he purchased entire rooms from home owners all over the east coast - not just the furniture and accessories but walls, floors, fixtures, everything! Then he re-installed the entire package at Winterthur. As a consequence, there are entire floors at Winterthur that have almost nothing but bedrooms or nothing but parlors.
But Henry Francis didn’t stop with interiors. He wanted the grounds to complement the collections inside. So he set aside a mere 200 acres for his "garden." He selected the choicest plants from around the world to enhance the natural setting, carefully orchestrating a succession of bloom from late January to November. If you’re into Azaleas, a visit to Winterthur's "Azalea Woods" in the spring is an experience of a lifetime -- literally hundreds of thousands of white, pink, lavender, salmon, and red azalea and rhododendron blossoms that create a sea of undulating color.
There’s so much more to tell you about Winterthur – the Enchanted Woods, Magnolia Bend, the Quarry Garden, a world class conservation program, the Delaware Antique Show, the rare merino sheep, the research library, steeplechase races, etc. – that I’m going to have to publish a second piece to do justice to this epic American institution IN WilmINgton, Delaware. Until then Happy Travels!
A complete list of articles by the Wilmington Tourism Examiner can be found at
http://www.examiner.com/x-25324-Wilmington-Tourism-Examiner
SUBSCRIBE to get complimentary notifications each time a new article is published.
Comments