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.

St. Patrick's RC Church and the moon

At first, all we knew was that the pictures were taken along Ashland Clinton School (ACS) Road. This photo, with the half-moon beautifully framed above the cross, seems to be of a church or chapel. The only church site located along this road is that of the old St. Patrick's Catholic Church. Built in 1881, St. Patrick's was in use until the 1960's, when the new St. Mary of the Assumption (all successors to the original St. Mary's at Coffee Run) was built in Hockessin. I'm not sure when the church was torn down, but it was obviously still standing when our intrepid photographer came along in early '73. Below is a photo of the church from the 1920's, and a later painting of it. It looks like later on the bell was removed and replaced with a cross -- the one visible in our photo. I don't think there's any doubt about where we are.

St. Patrick's in the 1920's

A later depiction of St. Patrick's

Now that we do know where we are, we can move to the photo I started looking closely at before posting all this. Honestly, the first time I looked at the set, I only quickly glanced at this one. However, it turns out that this was the most important one of all. As you see below, it's a view looking across a cemetery, over the headstones and into the field beyond. In that field, barely visible, stands a very bare-looking barn. The cemetery is that of St. Patrick's -- still in place, still active (I mean that you can still be interred there, not that the people there are active...that would be a different kind of story), and located just north of the former church site, on the east side of ACS Road. I didn't think much of the barn at first look, but then the other day I decided to see if I could figure out what and where it was, and if it might still be standing.

The view across St. Patrick's cemetery

At first I looked behind the cemetery, towards the east, thinking the picture was taken from the road. I couldn't find anything there, either on maps or old aerial photos. Then I noticed that we're actually looking at the back of the headstones, so I looked across the road to the west. I turns out that the clue was there all along in another of the photos. Seen below, the then abandoned-looking stone house stands almost directly across from the cemetery, and was owned in the 19th Century by Caleb Sharpless and later by Michael Kane. The county lists its build date as 1850, but I think it's probably a good bit older than that. It was purchased in the early 1970's by Irenee "Mac" and Eugenie duPont. I don't know exactly when they purchased the old farm, but it was probably either just after the photo, or just before and it hadn't been renovated yet. Incidentally, they also owned (and Eugenie still does, if it hasn't sold yet) the David Taylor House up the road.

The Caleb Sharpless House

The barn seen in the background of the cemetery picture is actually the barn for this farm. And like the accompanying house (which is just out of frame to the right), it was soon repaired and renovated by the duPonts. Once I realized this and started looking at the pictures with a keener eye, I could see that all the barn photos were of the same structure. Below is the most complete view of it, likely taken from in front of the house. And to be honest, I'm a bit embarrassed that it took me so long to realize that this was not the Taylor barn. The bottom picture below of the Taylor barn (which was not included in the original post) was taken only a week after the May 1972 fire. As you can see, none of the wooden superstructure survived the blaze. This was clearly not the same site.

The Sharpless Barn

The burned-out remains of the Taylor Barn

Instead of being a record of the old Taylor Barn mere months after its destruction, these photographs are instead a record of the even older Sharpless Barn just before its rebirth. Rarely do we see pieces of history like this shown in quite this way. Below is another, closer picture of the barn showing the wooden framing and the stone foundation. I don't have the full history of the structure, but the large stone wall suggests that the original barn was much larger than what's there now. It's not unusual for barns to be modified over the years to fit the needs of the present owner. The final picture below shows the barn against what appears to be a foreboding sky. 

These are all beautiful photographs that wonderfully showcase the aesthetics of these old structures, not just their utility. But don't just take my word for it -- the picture of the barn at the top of the page won 2nd place in a Delaware Today contest later that year! My deepest thanks to the photographer for sharing these unique views with us.