History--Site

The Read property bears the name of a prominent Delaware family who made their home here between 1767 and 1845. The Historical Society of Delaware has combined several historically discrete lots into the current Read property. Stretching from "The Strand" along the Delaware River back to New Castle’s market green, the Read property contains several acres. Our interest presently centers on the 2-acre property currently housing the garden first laid out by the Coupers in the mid-19th-century and the 22-room brick "mansion" built by George (II) and Mary Read in the first years of the 1800s.

The European-American history of the site begins within a few in ãyears of the Dutch settlement of New Amstel (later New Castle). In the 1650s, Foppe Outhout constructed a tavern on the property, presumably on the site of the existing Read house. Early in the 18th century, Robert French built a house next door (or rebuilt an earlier one), in what is now the parterre section of the garden. George (I) and Gertrude Read began renting this house in 1767. Over the next several decades, the Reads expanded the house, added outbuildings, and reworked the landscape as George’s political reputation grew. Trained as a lawyer, he signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution for Delaware, and held numerous important political offices. After his and Gertrude’s deaths the years between 1798 and 1802, tenants rented the house—including at least one of the Read children, widows and their families, and, for a time, New Castle’s bank. After the "Great Fire" of 1824 destroyed the house, the lot lay vacant for 20 years.

Upon his father’s death, George (II) Read purchased the houselot on which he lived, and the adjoining lot . There, between and 1804, he directed the construction of New Castle’s largest, most expensive and most elaborate brick house. Ten years after his death in 1836, his heirs finally sold the property to William Couper, a merchant in the China trade whose father had managed the bank in the old house next door. Couper, a bachelor, lived in the house with his mother, sisters, and their families. 1798 Soon after moving in, they began the transformation of the landscape, creating the formal garden that survives in general form today.

Philip and Lydia Laird purchased the property from the Couper estate in 1920. Spurred by the historical consciousness-raising engendered in the Colonial Revival era, they preserved and reinterepreted the house and garden. Lydia Laird willed the property to the Historical Society of Delaware upon her death. For the past 20 years, the Historical Society has engaged in the restoration of the house and, now, the gardens. The Read House Museum [click here] is open to the public.