Smyrna Historic District

The Smyrna Historic District encompasses most of a well-preserved nineteenth-century rural town of moderate size that quietly speaks of the "presence of the past" in Delaware. The large portion of the town forming the district is a veritable cornucopia of nineteenth-century buildings that clearly illustrates the full range of American architectural thought as expressed through Delaware building practices in the course of the century. Numerous examples of Federal, Greek Revival, and the several distinct architectural types collectively termed "Victorian" are present within the district, in combination with several hundred homogenous vernacular frame houses forming the cohesive fabric of Smyrna's relatively unchanged streetscapes. As the economic and social focus of the surrounding countryside, Smyrna's growth and fortunes were a direct reflection of the region's general agricultural prosperity. These buildings survive to document the life and times of Smyrna's inhabitants who participated in and influenced Delaware's historical development.

Smyrna originated in the third quarter of the eighteenth century to capitalize on the demand for goods and services by numerous plantation owners and yeoman farmers populating the agricultural hinterlands of the area. The pursuit of trade and commerce and the quest for fortune were the very basis for its creation. However, Smyrna was not the first settlement in this general locality. In 1720, the village of Salisbury was formed where the King's Road, Delaware's principal north-south thoroughfare, crossed the headwaters of tidal Duck Creek. Salisbury was later renamed Duck Creek Village and by mid-century, it had become a thriving, if small, milling community with two churches, blacksmith shops, a tannery, several stores, and a tavern, in addition to the grist mill, and some simple frame residences. The creek was navigable up to the village and it enjoyed the steady grain trade of shallops plying the Delaware River coast. But as time passed the creek began to silt, blocking the wharves at Duck Creek Village and making it necessary to establish new docking facilities downstream, two miles to the east, on the south bank of the creek at Green's Landing. The Maryland road, the principal transpeninsular route running east and west, passed just south of this landing to link the marshy Delaware coast with the headwaters of the Chester River draining into the Chesapeake Bay.

In 1768, Samuel Ball, a Philadelphia merchant and land speculator, purchased fifteen acres of land where the Kings Road crossed the Maryland Road. Ball realized the commercial potential of the crossroads, with a strategic command of prevailing overland trade routes and proximity both to Green's Landing a mile east, and to Duck Creek Village, a mile and a half to the north. The crossroads straddled the boundary line between "Gravesend," a large tract of land granted to William Green in 1680, and "Sherwood's Fortune" conveyed in 1684 to William Sherwood. Ball's investment quickly paid off and within two years an active settlement with several small shops sprang to life. Known as Duck Creek Cross Roads to distinguish it from declining Duck Creek Village whose prosperity it had sapped, the town grew rapidly and by 1790 it contained more inhabitants than the state capitol, Dover, some ten miles to the south. The full range of contemporary occupations was reflected in a roster of the townspeople including three doctors, four merchants, five tavernkeepers, two coachmakers, and an assortment of saddlers, leather breeches makers, potters, filmmakers, shoemakers, tanners, blacksmiths, a cabinetmaker, in addition to servants and laborers. In 1792 the members of the General Assembly, disgruntled at being temporarily displaced from the Kent County Courthouse in Dover, voted to move the state capitol to Smyrna. Later that day they regained their composure and the act was repealed. The crossroads, also known throughout the years as the Four Corners, formed the commercial nucleus and axis of the town, just as it does today. At some point, the course of the Kings Road was changed to form a right angle with the Maryland Road. The initial course of the road is still clearly delineated by the diagonal rear property lines of houses in the north and south quadrant of town.

The late-eighteenth-century commercial vigor of the town intensified throughout the course of the nineteenth century in direct response to the burgeoning agricultural prosperity of the area. The large grain merchants, typified by John Cummins, held positions of wealth and prestige in the community and constructed the grand early-nineteenth-century federal mansions that survive in the historic district.

Cummins built a number of large granaries at Smyrna Landing, and owned several large vessels, by means of which he shipped his grain to Philadelphia, Wilmington, New York, and Boston. These vessels, on their return, brought merchandise, and a great number of the merchants on the Peninsula were supplied with their goods from Smyrna by the wagons of John Cummins. His business interests continued to increase, and by the time he attained middle life, he was the most extensive individual grain dealer in Delaware. He purchased a large mill on the Brandywine at Wilmington, which was superintended by Samuel Shipley for many years. The corn-meal ground at this mill was shipped to the West Indies and flour to Liverpool England.

In 1806, the Delaware legislature passed an act that changed the name of Duck Creek Cross Roads to Smyrna. Two plausible theories have been advanced to explain the motivation for the change. Since Duck Creek Cross Roads had lately achieved prominence as a grain port, many of the townspeople thought it would be appropriate to rename it after the great Turkish grain port, Smyrna. Another suggests that Smyrna was chosen because of a remarkably inspiring sermon delivered in town by Methodist circuit preacher, Francis Asbury, based on St. John's letter to the church at Smyrna, Turkey. Whatever the reason, the name was changed and Green's Landing, the town's port, came to be known as Smyrna Landing. In a parallel economic development, the grain port of Cantwells Bridge, on Appoquinimik Creek ten miles north, in 1855 adopted the name of the world-famous Russian grain port, Odessa.

As a prerequisite to incorporation, Smyrna's streets were officially surveyed and formally laid out in an intersecting grid pattern in 1817, and the town was incorporated that year by an act of the assembly. Increasingly large volumes of grain were transported through town to shallops and schooners waiting at the docks of Smyrna Landing, to carry their agricultural cargoes to destinations both near and far. Some historians have maintained that the port at Smyrna Landing was second only to Wilmington in grain shipments in the early nineteenth century, an achievement also claimed by other Delaware coastal towns at various times during the century. By 1820, Smyrna had matured into a bustling commercial town with many of the cultural amenities of larger urban areas. The Mechanics Academy (1817) and the Southern Boarding School (pre-1825) operated as private boarding schools and the Female Union School provided free education for those unable to pay tuition at the private schools until 1829 when two school buildings were opened in Smyrna as part of the new statewide public school system. The manufacturing activity in the town involved small-scale craft-oriented operations such as basket making, tanning, blacksmithing, harness making, and other enterprises geared to fill the needs of the local agricultural economy. Other commercial enterprises were service-oriented inns and taverns, such as The Delaware House and the Smyrna House, which provided food and lodging to those brought to town on business.

To meet the demand for capital to generate expanded commercial endeavors, prominent members of the town, including John Cummins, Robert Patterson, and Presley Spruance, participated in the formation of the Commercial Bank of Delaware in 1812. In 1822, the Bank of Smyrna was founded and for many years these institutions handled most of the banking business in southern New Castle County, northern Kent County, and much of the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

Smyrna's commercial vigor attracted a number of skilled artisans who established shops in town. Three generations of McDowell's produced excellent Hepplewhite, Sheraton, and Empire furniture that found a ready local market. In 1824 John H. Pennington advertised that he had commenced the manufacture of "Piano Fortes" and wished to introduce his products to the more discriminating members of the community. Silversmiths Ephriam Jefferson and Piner Mansfield were also two of the more notable craftsmen of the town. In the 1860s, stone cutter David Stevenson established a marble yard on Market Street and demonstrated his artistry by adding a marble stoop, facade entrance benches with pillars, and cellar window encasements to his residence on Delaware Street at the rear of the marble yard.

In 1855, the Delaware Railroad was completed, passing two miles west of Smyrna at Smyrna Station. Initially fearful that stiff rail competition would ruin the highly profitable shipping enterprises at Smyrna Landing, the powerful and influential businessmen of Smyrna had refused to allow the railroad any closer to town. By 1861 they realized that a rail connection could benefit the town and a spurline was built linking Smyrna to the statewide rail network, apparently with no adverse effect on the community's financial well-being. By this time, Smyrna boasted over 1,800 inhabitants. Smyrna was one of the first Delaware towns to use gas lighting to illuminate the principal thoroughfares. The Smyrna Coal, Coke, and Gas Company, incorporated in 1857, generated gas from rosin until 1875 when it was made by coal conversion.

The decades following the Civil War witnessed commercial and residential growth every bit as energetic as in the preceding decades. It was a time of numerous civic improvements, including a new brick town hall built in 1869 and enlarged in 1887, a multiple-story cruciform-plan brick public school built in 1884, and a municipal water system with over four miles of pipe laid out in 1886. In addition, the Citizens Hose Company No. 1 was formed in 1886 in response to a series of fires that seemed to plague the small industries in the town.

Much of Smyrna's commercial and residential development can be followed closely through a series of town maps and views produced in the mid-and late-nineteenth centuries. The earliest, Byles Map of Kent County, Delaware, was published in 1859 and contains a street plan of Smyrna that depicts property boundaries, building locations, and the names of owners and includes a business directory. J. D. Beer's Atlas of Delaware, published in 1868, features a similar map of the town as it appeared immediately after the Civil War. third graphic source of information is a "birds-eye-view" of Smyrna, an engraving published in 1885, offering an oblique, low-level aerial perspective of the town as it then appeared. This series reveals a pattern of development wherein empty lots between buildings were built upon at various intervals from the 1850s through the 1880s, resulting in the present appearance of the historic district. The remarkable accuracy of the "birds-eye-view" is confirmed by comparison with recent photographs of the streetscapes. It captures Smyrna at the height of its prosperity and explicitly illustrates the cohesiveness of commercial, residential, municipal, and ecclesiastical structures that remain largely intact today. Not depicted in this view are the substantial houses individually sited on large lots developed just at the end of the century on South Street and West Mt. Vernon Street. These, too, are contained within the historic district. Modern intrusions within the historic district are generally confined to the first commercial block of West Commerce Street (west of the "Four Corners") and Market Plaza, which was not created until the 1960s.

The streetscapes in the historic district convey a genuine sense of time and place for a turn-of-the-century rural Delaware town. Along Smyrna's streets exist a rich mixture of buildings representing the full range of vernacular and diagnostic nineteenth-century architectural styles. These range from the one-room-plan plank worker's dwelling through to the high-style Italianate mansions of the town's elite. Together with the various forms of public and commercial buildings, outbuildings, and religious edifices, they provide a comprehensive view of a nineteenth-century Delaware town in every aspect of its daily life.

Most of the houses within the historic district, especially those on side streets, are vernacular frame dwellings of single-pile, two-story construction. Though generally similar in appearance, it is possible to discern among them differences in use of plan, fenestration, materials, and detailing indicating a loose evolution of this basic form of housing throughout the nineteenth century. It is likely that some of the earlier ones are of plank construction, concealed by weather-board and modern sidings. Others are of braced frame timber construction, others use a hybrid combination of braced frame and balloon framing, while the ones built in the last quarter of the century, typified by the speculative housing on Lincoln and East Street, largely utilize balloon framing techniques. With few exceptions, the buildings feature interior end chimneys venting fireplaces or stoves. The respective skills of the builders and preferences of the clients are evidenced by the widely ranging variations that make each house an individual, within the general limits imposed by the building practices of their respective eras. Of particular rarity in Delaware are the several unaltered one-room-plan workers' houses in the historic district. Difficult to date with precision, some of them appear on the 1859 Byles Map of Kent County and were likely built in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. They represent a remarkable survival of a typical housing form once quite prevalent for tenant farmers, mechanics, and laborers: For the most part, as these small buildings have become obsolete as dwellings, they have been demolished, incorporated as wings to larger residences, or converted into outbuildings and consequently few are around today to document the lives of their inhabitants.

Within the overall vernacular fabric of the historic district are dozens of residential, commercial, and ecclesiastical buildings with diagnostic architectural attributes. Georgian architecture is best represented in the district by the Cummins-Stockley House, c.1770, and the Enoch Spruance Mansion, c.1780 with an 1810 wing. Both are of brick, with Flemish bond facades, heavily pegged mortise, and tenon window architraves with wooden keyed false lintels above those on the ground story. A projecting belt course defines the second floor of both and the eaves feature heavy molded box cornices with bed molding. Other Georgian examples built before and after the American Revolution were altered by their prosperous owners to render them more fashionable, according to the current architectural mode of the time. In the 1850s, a low hip roof with bracketed projecting eaves was added to the Pope-Mustard Mansion, giving an Italianate air to an eighteenth-century dwelling. In a similar fashion, Dr. B. S. Gootee added a mansard roof to the McLane-Spearman House in 1871, and the newspaper the Smyrna Times noted that he made "such other improvements as will make it one of the most handsome residences in town." The Presley-Spruance House, originally of side passage configuration, was enlarged in the 1840s by the addition of a two-bay wing on the gable end to impart symmetry to the facade. A bracketed cornice and a front portico with heavy wooden Tuscan columns rounded out the exterior modernizations.

Federal architecture is also prevalent throughout the historic district. Many of these exist in a relatively unaltered condition. The John Cummins Mansion was built in the early nineteenth century, with a general lightening of the Georgian architectural elements from which the Federal forms evolved. The facade is of pressed brick with thin, regular mortar joints, narrow architraves, a large fanlight over the central facade entrance, paired chimneys linked by a parapet on both gable ends, and round-headed dormers on the facade slope of the roof. The Ayres-Stockley House built later in the century, probably around 1830, is another excellent example, though a projecting Arts and Crafts wooden bay was added above the central facade entrance in the late-nineteenth century. The Academy, c.1810, represents a transition between two styles.
Commercial buildings in the district representing Federal stylistic forms are Commerce Cleaners, Daniel Cummins Tavern, the Colonial Hotel, and the present Symrna Times news office.

Greek-Revival architecture enjoyed limited popularity in Delaware during the nineteenth century. Examples of fully developed "temple" architecture are uncommon. The Odd Fellows Building, c.1855, represents one of the more exuberant uses of the style, with its pedimented gable end facade, circular attic window, and square pilasters framing the second-story windows of the three-bay facade. The "Chicken Factory", c.1815, though severely altered on the interior, still demonstrates the Greek Revival through its low gable roof and ashlar-scored stuccoed exterior. The more typical Delaware uses of the form are evident in many of the residences and commercial buildings within the district built during the 1840s and 1850s. On South Main Street stands a series of brick residences constructed by Van Gaskin Builders of Smyrna. Their most diagnostic features are the abbreviated third-story windows and heavy columned porches with wide entablatures. Today these brick buildings are known as the John Bassett Moore and Denney-Blackiston House, and Dr. John M. Clifton's residence. A large frame version of these houses is found in the adjacent Jones House. Ward's Hall, built in this theme, was used as a social hall from the early 1850s until the 1880s, with large storefront windows on the first floor of its eight-bay facade.

The most popular building style used in the nineteenth century in Smyrna was the Italianate. Many of the residences and businesses built between 1860 and 1890 are characterized by low-hipped roofs with heavily bracketed projecting eaves resting on a two- or three-story frame or brick structure. The J. R. Clement's Mansion exemplifies the Italianate mode in Smyrna. Of salmon-colored pressed brick, it is three stories high with a cupola surmounting the low-hipped foof with elaborate scroll-bracketed eaves and a detailed frieze. The central bay features arcaded windows on the upper levels, surrounded by heavy moldings. On South Main Street are several other Italianate mansions of more typical materials. The west side of the 100-block of North Main Street is dominated by a grouping of three-story frame Italianate townhouses built between 1880 and 1890. On the southeast corner of the "Four Corners "is a three-story brick commercial building with a five-bay Main Street facade built in the 1860s.

The Second Empire style was not widely used in Smyrna. The Alfred Hudson Mansion with its mansard roof and projecting central pavilion extending above the rest of the house was praised in 1887 by the Smyrna Times: "It is pronounced by most persons to be the showiest house in town." However, the French influence reflected in this building was little adopted by others. Most preferred the Italianate. The Town Hall, built in 1869, had a slate mansard roof that was destroyed by fire in 1948. The streetscapes of the district developed late in the nineteenth century, particularly West South Street and West Mt. Vernon Street, contain several types of late-Victorian architecture reflecting restrained Queen Anne and Arts and Crafts characteristics. The Smyrna historic district is also distinguished for the architectural excellence of its several churches of various denominations. The ecclesiastical buildings in the district are built according to several architectural styles. The Bethel African Methodist Church, built in 1867, is of Federal design with Gothic influence in the arched and hooded windows. The Presbyterian Church on Commerce Street is of serpentine stone and Gothic in form. St. Peter's Episcopal Church was built in 1827 and enlarged in 1857. The Dr. Samuel M. Fisler Memorial Chapel associated with it was built in 1872 as a Sunday school building and is considered by many to be the finest Carpenter Gothic religious structure in Delaware. Essentially Romanesque in style is the brick Asbury United Methodist Church, extensively rebuilt in 1872 after a severe fire.

Since the origins of the town just prior to the American Revolution, Smyrna has produced a significant number of Kent County's leading businessmen and politicians. Smyrna was also the home of several individuals achieving national and even international prominence. Colonel Allen McLane, patriot and daring partisan ranger of Revolutionary War fame was by trade a leather breeches maker working in Smyrna. Local historians have determined that he and his family lived in the now heavily altered brick house at 40 Mt. Vernon Street before the war. At the conclusion of the conflict, he purchased the brick house on the southwest corner of Mt. Vernon Street and Market Street.

John Bassett Moore (186-1947), his home located on South Main Street, was a jurist and diplomate who devoted half a century to international law as a university professor and government advisor to international commissions and inter-American conferences. He was also a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague and a judge of the World Court. In 1966, the U.S. Postal Service issued a five-dollar commemorative stamp bearing his portrait in tribute to his outstanding contributions to international law.