1:30 p.m., Dec. 17, 2002-- The Newark Historical Society recently presented its award for “Outstanding Service to the Community through Historic Preservation” to the University of Delaware for its efforts in preserving Bayard Sharp Hall. It is only the second time the award has gone to an organization. The first also was given to UD in 1996 for its preservation work on Daugherty Hall and other general work in historic preservation.
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| Bayard Sharp Hall |
The most recent award was presented to John R. (Rick) Armitage, UD director of government relations, at a special ceremony Dec. 3 in Bayard Sharp Hall.
“The theory behind the award is to recognize efforts in historic preservation and commend and encourage more of it,” Bob Thomas of the Newark Historical Society said. “It’s amazing that this is the second local church the University has saved in the past five years.
“We will always be indebted to the University. It gave us the technical assistance we needed to get the Historical Society off the ground, and it gave us a meeting place in our early years,” Thomas said. “And, a full 50 percent of all of the buildings in Newark that are on the National Register of Historic Buildings belong to UD.”
During the award presentation, members of the historical society enjoyed a tour of Bayard Sharp Hall and listened as Thomas told the story of Rathmell Wilson, a wealthy industrialist, who served as an early president of Delaware College and who, along with his brother, funded 40 percent of the original construction of what is now Bayard Sharp Hall in 1844. At the time, the building was an Episcopal Church and the Wilsons were members.
Wilson’s tenure as president of Delaware College was a strange one, Thomas said, as the college was not open during his 20-year term. The school was bankrupt. It’s endowment had dwindled to nothing and one by one families withdrew their sons as they received news of an accidental stabbing of a student named John Roach and his resulting death.
“Wilson was a college president who never entered a classroom or hired a faculty member,” Thomas said. “But with his business savvy he kept the Board of Trustees together until late 1860 when the Morrill Act made it possible for states to fund colleges through federal funds. It would have been easy to let the college die a natural death during the Civil War but Wilson persevered. If it weren’t for him, UD might not be the institution it is today.”
Wilson made his fortune in coal, iron and insurance and called his Newark mansion Oaklands. The building, burned as an exercise by the fire department in the 1960s, sat where the development of Oaklands is today.
Article by Beth Thomas
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