Residents hope for historic home rescue on the Brandywine

Two centuries ago, laborers who powered Delaware's industrial economy worked in the mills along the Brandywine River, often living nearby in dwellings like the Walker's Bank house, an 1814 stone structure that still overlooks the river. 

Now, preservation-minded neighbors and local history buffs are asking New Castle County government to delay a plan to demolish the crumbling row of residences off Rising Sun Lane, downstream from the Tyler McConnell Bridge. 

The property is owned by the Ashford family, which operates the Ashford Capital Management firm in a historic mill building near the house. Tim Ashford has told county officials that he's skeptical his family can make money off any plan to rehabilitate and reuse the structure they've owned since 2002.

"There's just no way to justify the (rehab) expense given that it could take us more than a generation under optimal rental conditions just to break even," Ashford,told the county's Historic Review Board last month. 

Both Ashford and John Tracey, his attorney, declined comment for this article. 

After recent citizen complaints, the Ashfords were hit with two dozen code citations for the home's ragged condition in September. They responded by applying for a permit to raze the building. 

And so some two dozen interested citizens attended an uncharacteristically packed meeting of the county's Historic Review Board last week lobbying regulators to delay the demolition permit. 

The government has no legal right to deny the permit but can withhold its issuance until late summer. Residents hope that delay will make time for a change of heart, last-ditch plan or monied benefactor to swoop in and save the piece of history. 

They say the building is an incomparable artifact from the lives of early Delawareans, many of them immigrants, who toiled in the Brandywine's famous mills — places like the Eleutherian Mills, the gunpowder birthplace of the DuPont Co. across the river, and the recently demolished Bancroft Mills further downstream.

"It is an important piece of Delaware history," said John Lindtner, who grew up in the home. 

Left to deteriorate for at least a decade, the building threatens to collapse on its own. Gaping holes can be seen on the roof. Rotting windows, porous walls and unsecured entranceways also invite deteriorating elements inside. 

The whitewashed building is tucked into the steep slopes overlooking the Brandywine, just across Wilmington's northern border and feet away from the mill. While its condition today is dire, the relic represents "a pure early 19th-century industrial scene," reads a 1972 document nominating the property for the National Register of Historic Places. 

The 10-acre property where the structure sits was first developed around 1814 after Philadelphia merchant Joseph B. Sims established the Simsville Cotton Factory, a cotton spinning outfit aimed at serving a growing domestic market starved of European imports by the War of 1812. 

The structure now subject to the demolition debate was built around the same time to benefit of those who worked at the mill — a common way that early industrialists "sweetened the pot" for laborers, said Lucas Clawson, historian at Hagley Museum and Library.

At the time, textile and other mills along the Brandywine fostered thriving communities of workers along the banks of the river. Like the mills, those associated neighborhoods faded with time with minor reminders on local street signs and historic buildings.

The building to be demolished is now referred to as Walker's Bank, after the associated mill building. But in the 1800s, Walker's Bank referred to a collection of dozens of workers' residences near the mill. 

Such worker housing came in different sizes and shapes. Clawson said many were attached residences like Walker's Bank, an oblong, three-story structure that originally contained eight attached homes in two rows of four.

"That is the only block building left on the Brandywine," Clawson said. 

Gabi Lindtner, John's sister, also grew up in Walker's Bank house. Her family was the last to live there, calling it home until 1993. She remembered playing among the stone ruins of similar buildings that litter the wooded hills there. 

"It is the last of them," Lindtner said. "I hope they realize the value of history." 

The property has changed hands numerous times with the du Ponts playing a regular role. Midway through the 19th century, the property was purchased by Alfred du Pont, the eldest son of the DuPont Co.'s founder. 

The land is roughly sandwiched between the DuPont Co.'s historic gunpowder mills upstream on the Brandywine's opposite bank and the company's experimental station up the hill. 

Alfred du Pont rented Walker's Mill to various operators including Joseph Walker, the property's namesake. The house eventually also became home to workers from other companies. 

Walker's Mill operated until 1936. After that, the DuPont Co. used it as part of the experimental station before it was acquired by Hagley in the '50s. Hagley used the property as storage and to develop their exhibits, but the mill and the home didn't fit the gunpowder focus and cost money to maintain, according to reports published in The News Journal at the time. 

Legend has it that in the 1950s, Walker's Bank resident Madeline Ferraro, an Italian immigrant and DuPont Co. seamstress in her 70s at the time, saved the house from demolition by refusing to leave, said the Lindtner matriarch, also named Gabi, who lived there with Ferraro. 

"She said 'I was born in this house I will die in this house,'" the elder Gabi Lindtner said. "She had a broken hip. I don't think they expected her to live as long as she did."

Ferraro died at 97 in 1977. The Lindtners lived in the home because the family's patriarch worked at Hagley. They continued to live there until the DuPont Co. reacquired it from Hagley in a 1993 land swap deal.

"It was really just such a joy to be there," the elder Gabi Lindtner said. "We thought we were living in a separate part of the world."

The mill and associated bank house were acquired by the Ashfords in 2002. The family, led by Tim's late mother, Jane, used millions in historic tax credits to renovate the mill building into an office for their business. 

While other mills had been converted into museums, the restoration of the iconic white mill building was hailed by local preservation groups as a creative reinvention of history for commercial uses. 

Meanwhile, the bank house up the hill was left to fall apart. 

"I think that's just a poor way to manage a property," Historic Review Board Member Karen Anderson told Ashford at a recent meeting. 

It was the prodding of a local activist that started the current demolition debate. 

Michael Melloy, who grew up in the nearby Highlands neighborhood of Wilmington, compiled a report documenting damage he could photograph from the exterior, set up a Facebook group and pressured New Castle County to inspect the building for code violations.

He worried that the Ashfords might have been effectively demolishing the property through neglect. It is a common concern expressed by preservation-minded residents in New Castle County who see oldschools and farmhouses fall apart on ground eyed for new-build suburban sprawl. 

County code officials inspected the property on Sept. 19. The next day, they issued two dozen property violations ranging from illegally storing debris or refuse outside to numerous items reflecting the "extremely poor condition" of the building, records show. 

The order instructed the owner to "make all necessary repairs" by Sept. 30 to avoid $50 fines for each of the violations. 

Tracey told county officials in December that the violation notice prompted the demolition application and the owner has no plans to develop the property further. 

"It was a laundry list of items that was quite frankly beyond the means for what use we have for the existing building," Tracey said. 

Since that meeting, Tracey told advocates his client plans to stabilize the building by tarping the roof and sealing collapsing windows and boarding unsealed entrances.

Melloy and others consider that an incremental victory. 

"That stabilization will prevent the other kind of demolition, by weather," Melloy said. "Ultimately, there has to be an economically viable way out (for the owner)." 

John Lindtner said the step should have been taken some 10 years ago. 

"I wish we could rewind," John Lindtner said. "Now it is in desperate condition." 

Ashford told the board he has spent "thousands" of dollars pondering how to repurpose the building for a commercial use. 

Concerns about bureaucratic hurdles — particularly that there is no more room for legally required parking spaces — as well as the math comparing construction costs to potential profit halted those considerations, Ashford said. 

Deed restrictions applied to the land when the DuPont Co. sold it to the Ashfords explicitly ban residential development. Ashford told the board the restriction was tied to concerns about liability over potential ground contaminants. 

Emails by company officials circulating among activists indicate the company is studying lifting those restrictions. DuPont Co. spokesman Dan Turner would not comment on that prospect. 

In one of Delaware's priciest zip codes, some hope a residential rent or flip might be the answer. Tracey said his client also has concerns about people living at the entrance to the family's capital management business.  

Board member John T. Brook replied: "Sometimes you have to, you know, bend a little bit in order to protect something that is very important to the history of the state." 

The historic review board will meet again in February. All parties say they expect the demolition permit will be delayed. 

County Councilman Bob Weiner, who represents the area, said he is confident that a solution can be found over the coming months. 

He said repurposing the property into a commercial use is "preeminent" but that many would like to see it come back under Hagley's "Aegis." 

"That would take multiple benefactors," he said. 

He said he's confident the building will not go down because the community's passion for the property — as well as the owners' — has been "rekindled." 

"It is iconic," Weiner said. "It tells the story of how we came to be what we are today." 

In his testimony to the review board in December, Ashford seemed pessimistic.

"The reason we hesitate (to secure it) is because we feel like the reasons why we can't do something with the building are fundamental and won't change in the next 10 years," Ashford said.

Contact Xerxes Wilson at (302) 324-2787 or xwilson@delawareonline.com. Follow @Ber_Xerxes on Twitter.