Kenton Historic District
Commerce St., Kenton, DEThe Kenton Historic District represents a crossroads community that developed as a result of its location astride important transportation routes and its ability to provide services to the surrounding agricultural population.
Kenton developed very slowly at first and its oldest surviving structures actually pre-date the existence of the town. However, under the guidance of Philip Lewis and the Wilds family and later with the help of John Green and other merchants, the town became a necessary and useful secondary economic center in Kenton Hundred. Before the automobile, travel was restricted to a more immediate area. Located within its borders were the immediate services of blacksmiths, wheelwrights, general stores, and post offices that were important in a farmer's life.
When the railroad was put through Kenton, the town became even more important as a shipping point for goods in and out of Kenton. It enabled the rural farmer to get his crops to market quicker and more reliably, and it also enabled him to receive goods that could not be easily produced in the immediate area. Mail-order catalogs and traveling salesmen became necessary parts of a farmer's existence.
The houses in the town that date from its first 40 years are vernacular structures that fall into two categories. The first is the substantial brick dwellings of the Wilds family and the plain tenant houses that are now combined into one dwelling. Around 1850 a small group of homes was built to the west of the Wilds houses and these were used by the merchants and tradesmen who were finding the town a good place in which to do business. The 3 Lamb houses are plain vernacular dwellings, while the Guessford House and the Graham House were both influenced by the Italianate style that was popular during the 1850s and 1860s in Delaware. The next housing boom in Kenton occurred after the Delaware and Maryland Railroad was run through on the western edge of town. The houses built during the 1870s and 1880s represent the most advanced thinking in housing design in the area bet Dover and Smyrna. Many of the houses were built with the Queen-Ann building grammar squarely in mind. The use of the projected bay is the most common way of expressing this new style and can be seen in a few houses. The most elegant Queen Ann House in town and one of the most interesting houses of its type in rural Delaware is the "Spindle and Spool House" on the south side of the street. While it starts off with a basic 3-bay, center hall plan, it branches off from this traditional porch with the use of cross gables projecting bays and recessed bays. Also, this house has a full porch on two sides of the house with elaborate carvings and decorative sawn work along the porches on the first and second floors.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.