VAF Chesapeake Chapter Fall 2026 Tour - New Castle Co, Delaware
On October 3, the VAF–Chesapeake Chapter will be visiting Delaware for the first time! We’ll be exploring two sites in New Castle County, Delaware, in a part of the state that was not featured during the national VAF conference held in Delaware in 2025. This visit offers an opportunity to explore a different corner of Delaware and see some of the state’s distinctive vernacular architecture and landscapes.
Registration will be limited to 50 persons and requires current VAF membership. VAF Members can register up to two guests. Sign up deadline - Fri. Oct. 2. We look forward to seeing you there!
10 AM – 12 PM Weston, 4677 Summit Bridge Road, Middletown, DE
Weston is an excellent example of an intact late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century farm complex located south of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, within the agriculturally rich lands of central Delaware. The main dwelling, constructed in multiple phases beginning circa 1830, exemplifies the widespread practice of rebuilding and enlarging older dwellings during the mid-nineteenth century. In the late 1850s, the then-owners of Weston constructed a substantial new house in front of the earlier dwelling, effectively transforming the original portion into a rear service ell. The rear ell retains significant Federal-era elements, including a full paneled end wall. The 1850s addition is a grand two-and-a-half-story, double-pile, center-hall house designed in the Italianate style. Its construction also reoriented the dwelling toward present-day Summit Bridge Road.
This type of mid-nineteenth-century “rebuilding” was widespread in central Delaware, where cultural change and increasing prosperity among wealthy agriculturalists prompted substantial investments in fashionable new houses and improvements to existing farmsteads. The resulting transformation of the rural landscape was documented by Bernard Herman and his colleagues in the 1980s through a series of National Register nominations and was subsequently examined in Herman’s Architecture and Rural Life in Central Delaware: 1700–1900. Weston is particularly illustrative of this pattern, retaining both the earlier Federal-period fabric and the substantially larger, stylistically fashionable house that functionally replaced it.
In addition to the main dwelling, Weston retains a significant collection of historic agricultural and domestic outbuildings. Of particular note is its (artificial) bank barn, an uncommon building type in this area because of the exceedingly flat topography of Delaware’s Coastal Plain. The farm complex also includes a twentieth-century milk house and calf barn, as well as a granary, icehouse, smokehouse, and tenant house. Together, these buildings illustrate the agricultural evolution of a central Delaware farmstead from the nineteenth into the twentieth century. Weston was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1986 as part of the “Rebuilding St. Georges Hundred” multiple-property nomination. Today, the property remains in private ownership and has been maintained by the Robb family for 74 years.
12 – 1:30 PM Lunch on your own
**It is recommended that those traveling from Weston to Linden Hall should consider taking the Delaware Bayshore Byway from Middletown, through Odessa along DE Route 9. This scenic route passes through largely undeveloped marshlands along the Delaware River and provides an opportunity to experience the region’s distinctive historic and cultural landscape.
1:30 PM – 3:30 PM Linden Hall/Cleaver House, 2 South Congress Street, Port Penn, DE
Our second stop of the day will also be a circa 1830 dwelling, Linden Hall. The house was commissioned by prominent landowner and merchant Joseph Cleaver, whose unique needs for the building are still legible in its design. Cleaver intended one portion of the building to serve as a residence for himself and his family, while the other was dedicated to office and retail space for his mercantile business. These distinct functions are cleverly disguised on the exterior behind a unified Federal-style façade, giving the building the appearance of two connected urban townhouses—an unusual sight in the small village of Port Penn.
The building itself, however, speaks to the economic ambitions of both Cleaver and the village of Port Penn. The village was established as an early commercial settlement around 1760 by David Stewart, who sought to capitalize on the prosperous river trade along the Delaware River by connecting the fertile agricultural lands of central Delaware with the river and, ultimately, the larger Atlantic trade network. Port Penn's economic prospects changed dramatically in the nineteenth century. The opening of the Chesapeake and Delaware (C & D) Canal in 1829 connected the Delaware River to the Chesapeake Bay, rendering many existing overland trade routes ineffective. The arrival of the railroads in the late 1850s delivered a further economic blow, bypassing Port Penn and contributing to its decline as a commercial center. As a result, many of the village's historic buildings survive today, providing an unusually intact record of its nineteenth-century history. Those interested in exploring further are welcome to take the self-guided walking tour through Port Penn; more information about the tour will be provided on site.
Today, Linden Hill is unoccupied and is part of the Delaware Division of Natural Resources and Environmental Control's (DNREC) Resident Curatorship Program. The property is not normally open to the public. As part of the curatorship program, and in anticipation of identifying a future steward for the property, the dwelling has been returned as closely as possible to the form built by Cleaver. Evidence of later additions remain visible on the exterior, while the interior has been stripped back to expose the building's original construction and historic fabric.
We look forward to seeing you there!
