Views of Christiana Hundred in Winter '73

A prize-winning photo

If you’ve ever noticed, most of the old photographs (and I’m defining “old” as anything before digital cameras. Film. Remember film? That used to be a thing, kids!) showing historic buildings tend to fall into one of two categories. They’re either cold documentary photos for some report, or fuzzy things in the background of photos showing something else. (The exception to this would be postcard pictures.) Well, here we have another exception – beautiful artistic shots, taken several decades ago, of a few different historic structures.

In January 1973, a University of Delaware student participated in a Winterim project to take pictures of “Delaware in Winter”, photos that would be graded on their artistic merit. An afternoon spent driving around Ashland Clinton School Road produced the pictures seen here. I was sent these pictures (and given permission to share them) primarily because the barn shown in several was thought to be the David Taylor Barn, subject of a recent post. I was all set to post them as such, but before I did I took another, apparently closer, look at them. When I did, I quickly realized they weren't what I thought they were. To explain what these photos actually are, the easiest place to start is with the picture seen below, which once identified will help place the rest.

The Faulkland Lyceum and the Faulkland Quiz

February 7, 1890 -- The Lyceum is born

Unbeknownst to most (and by "most", I mostly mean "me"), the not-quite-village of Faulkland seems to have had something of an intellectual golden era in the late 19th Century, at least for a few years. Probably owing to the presence of several specific local residents, Faulkland had two ventures visible as outgrowths of this "Renaissance" -- the Faulkland Lyceum and the Faulkland Quiz. They both seem to have only lasted a few years before disappearing almost forever, but as we'll see these two were both fairly unique and examples of what seems to have been a trend at the time. I have a fair amount of information one, and not much on the other (yet), but here's what we know.

In case it's not familiar to you, the area of "Faulkland" is essentially the region directly around Brandywine Springs park, near Newport Gap Pike and Faulkland Road. At this time (late 1880's to the early 1890's), Brandywine Springs was in a transition phase. The existence of a hotel at the site dated back to 1827, and at the time the so-called "Second Hotel" was in humble operation. The amusement park was a few years off, but the foundations for it were beginning to be put in place. One of those foundations was the man brought in to run it beginning in 1886 -- Richard W. Crook. He, Dr. (and future US Senator) L. Heisler Ball, and Red Clay Creek Presbyterian's Rev. John D. Blake seem to have been the core of the intellectual society of the area.

On February 2, 1890, it was reported that, "The people of Faulkland and vicinity have organized a lyceum which meets every two weeks." A lyceum is defined as "an association providing public lectures, concerts, and entertainments", and that is precisely what the Faulkland Lyceum did, with a heavy leaning toward formal debates. I hope they'll forgive me for this, but somehow I get the feeling that a lot of people were bored in the winter and looking for something to do.