Milford: Sampling the Sights in North Milford

The main section and right wing of Parson Thorne Mansion in North Milford

Milford is the largest town along the Delaware Bayshore Byway, so big that it has not one but three historic districts: North Milford, South Milford, and the shipyards. We explored the shipyard district when we wandered Milford’s Mispillion Riverwalk. We recently returned to explore North Milford Historic District.

I quickly realized that, with about 100 historic buildings, North Milford Historic District has far too many interesting buildings to cover in a single blog post. So we focused on just two blocks of NW Front Street, between North Walnut Street and North Church Street. North Milford developed before South Milford, and this was once Milford’s main business district. But a fire in 1891 destroyed many buildings here, so quite a few buildings here are from the late 1800s or early 1900s.

Central-New Windsor Hotel at 24 NW Front Street was built in 1892, replacing a hotel built in 1808 that burned in the fire.

Central-New Windsor Hotel in North Milford

When it was built, Central Hotel was the largest and most modern Delaware hotel south of Wilmington, with plumbing, central heat, and a shuttle service from the train depot! It was renamed New Windsor Hotel in 1908. At one point Milford’s hospital was on the second floor.

The Towers at 101 NW Front Street has so many elaborate Victorian details that it looks like it was built in the late 1800s. But it was built a hundred years earlier, around 1783-1793.

The Towers in North Milford

Rhoda Roudebush, daughter of Governor William Burton and a wealthy widow, remodeled it in 1891 with what one expert calls a “riot” of Queen Anne details. This is one of those buildings where the longer you look at it, the more detail you see. I’ve read that there are sometimes fender benders on NW Front Street from people stopping to stare at it!

There’s even more to see on the side, including the date of the remodeling marked in the chimney bricks

Side view of The Towers in North Milford

Messick House, across the street from The Towers at 102 NW Front Street is another Queen Anne, built around 1890.

Messick House in North Milford

Messick House, in other words, was built around the same time that The Towers was being renovated. I wonder how the Messick House owners felt about their nice new house being immediately overshadowed by the renovation across the street!

Lofland-Abbott House, also known as Abbott/Lofland House, is at 115 NW Front Street.

Lofland-Abbott House in North Milford

It’s a simple Federal style house built around 1810-1820, of brick covered by stucco. It was built by Purnell Lofland, a merchant, for his son Dr. James Lofland, a highly respected physician. Sylvester Abbott bought it in 1905. I wonder if Abbott added the little gable on top.

Vinyard House at 118 NW Front Street was built in 1920 in Colonial Revival style.

Vinyard House in North Milford

Colonial Revival houses were popular in the early 20^th century. They can sometimes be hard to tell apart from houses built in the late 1700s or early 1800s. I’ve found that a great clue is they often just look newer! The bricks, mortar, and wood siding and trim of older houses often look more beat up.

In my blog post on Port Penn, I note that historic houses often have names, and sometimes there are multiple names, which can be confusing! Historic houses that have names are typically named after the first person who owned them. But sometimes a more significant person lived in the house later, and sometimes people simply remember a longtime owner and refer to the house that way.

The last house we saw on our two-block tour of NW Front Street, at 127-141 NW Front Street, is an example of this. I’ve seen it listed as Governor Tharp Building, Jewell’s Store-Tharp House Property, and Williams-Tharp-Jewell Home!

Governor Tharp Building in North Milford

The left third of the building is brick, now painted to match the rest of the building. John Williams built it in 1814 as a store for his son, and the building has spent most of its life as a grocery store. I’d bet the bay window and gable were added much later.

The rest of the building was added around 1840. Gothic Revival first became popular in the 1840s, so the Gothic details on the gables and porch may have been built then or added later. Governor William Tharp bought the entire property when he moved to Milford to run for governor in 1847. After his death, the property continued to change hands. The Jewell family operated a grocery store here from 1925 to 1990.

We visited two other historic buildings in North Milton. The Old Fire House is a block south of Governor Tharp Building, at 13 N Church Street, just north of the Mispillion River.

Old Fire House in North Milford

It was built in 1925. The arched doorways for fire trucks (now windows) are so small that I wonder how quickly the building became obsolete as fire trucks became bigger.

We also saw the oldest house in Milford: Parson Thorne Mansion at 501 NW Front Street.

Parson Thorne Mansion in North Milford

A rear section (which we didn’t walk around to see) was built around 1725-1735 (sources give varying dates) by Joseph Booth. The property was sold in 1746 to John Cullen, who built the main brick building in the Georgian style that was popular then. The lintels over the first floor windows and the triangle-shaped pediment over the front door are some of Parson Thorne Mansion's Georgian details.

The house was sold in 1787 to Reverend Sydenham Thorne, who lived there until he died in 1793. As I note in my first Milford blog post, Parson Thorne built a dam across the Mispillion River to power his mills, creating Silver Lake and launching a milling industry that was a major economic driver here for decades.

Silver Lake, as seen from Lakeview Avenue in South Milford

After Parson Thorne died, the house changed owners several times. By 1860 it was owned by Henry Fiddeman, a banker and owner of a shipbuilding and railroad company. In the 1870s Fiddeman remodeled the house  in Gothic Revival style. He added steep Gothic Revival gables to the main house and side wings and Victorian trim to the arcades (open-air passageways) on either side of the main house.

Parson Thorne Mansion, showing the detail of the left arcade

Fiddeman also added a front porch that’s now gone. 

In the 1960s Parson Thorne Mansion was donated to Milton Historical Society, which hired Albert Kruse, a noted architect specializing in Georgian architecture, to restore the building. The decisions on how to restore the building must have been difficult! Do you return the house to the way it looked when Parson Thorne lived there, removing all of Fiddeman’s Gothic Revival embellishments? Or do you keep Fiddeman’s changes, recognizing that they’re now also historic, even if they’ve been called "a monument to insanity" by the Society of Architectural Historians? In the end, the porch was removed, letting visitors enjoy the Georgian doorway, but many of Fiddeman’s other alterations have been preserved.

Parson Thorne Mansion is a museum, but it was closed when we visited because of the pandemic.