Two New Castle County nominations for the National Register of Historic Places were approved at the county and state levels last week. They now seek approval at the national level, where they could be added to the National Register of Historic Places.
Both nominees date back to the 1700s. One is Homestead Hall, a historic family home near Middletown. The other is the England-Red Mill Historic District, an old flour mill and several accompanying buildings in Newark.
Catherine Morrissey, assistant director of University of Delaware’s Center for Historic Architecture and Design, presented the nomination of Homestead Hall, a home built in the 1770s by what she says was one of the wealthiest families in the area.
She says it’s one of just two surviving 18th-century buildings in Appoquinimink Hundred. And its architecture is what makes it unique.
“The house is a transitional architectural style between older, traditional architecture to that of a fancier Georgian house,” Morrissey said.
Michael Emmons, Historic Preservation Specialist at the Center for Historic Architecture and Design, presented the mill complex at the historic review board hearings this week.
“If you drive around that area there in Newark, there’s lots of names with Redmill in it. Redmill Court, Redmill Plaza,” Emmons said. “And it came from that mill.”
Emmons says the mill is in unusually good condition, with the millrace, or channel of water that powered the mill, still intact.
Morrissey thinks the nominations will likely be approved at the national level, because she says most problems with nominations are usually ironed out as they pass through the county and state historic review boards.
Morrissey notes a National Register of Historic Places designation could protect the properties from development that uses federal grants — like highways or housing complexes — but doesn’t ensure it’ll be preserved.
Emmons adds that the day after a property is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the owner could decide to bulldoze it. However, there are federal and sometimes state or local tax incentives for owners to preserve and even rehabilitate designated buildings, he says.
According to Morrissey, the Center for Historic Architecture and Design is planning to nominate several other places for the National Register of Historic Places this year, including a reworking of the historic district at Hagley Museum in Wilmington.
The state has about 700 properties on the National Register of Historic Places, according to Madeline Dunn of the state’s Division of Historic and Cultural Affairs. Roughly 400 of those are in New Castle County.
