Over 100 Threatened Buildings were reported between the 1990s and early 2000s by the Center for Historic Architecture and Design. Explore the map to find out more!
What are Threatened Building Surveys?
Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the Center for Historic Architecture and Design (CHAD), University of Delaware, received matching funds grants from the Delaware State Historic Preservation Office (DE SHPO) to provide documentation of threatened resources in Delaware. Surveying occurred throughout New Castle County, Kent County, and Sussex County with the intent of documenting the history, significance, and associated threats related to each resource. This Story Map will focus on the Threatened Buildings recorded in Sussex County.
What is a Threatened Building?
Threatened buildings can include structures that are listed or eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places. They can also be ones that could likely yield significant information. These types of resources are considered "threatened" when their integrity appears to be compromised or lost.
What are the Threats?
Threats can be categorized as active or passive. Oftentimes, resources face both threats.
Passive Threat: includes compromising all actions which leave historic properties vulnerable to long term deterioration such as abandonment, neglect, disuse, and vacancy.
Active Threat: includes announced intention to demolish or alter the architectural integrity of a property through alterations, renovation, or other action. Event damage, such as a fire, is also considered an active threat.
Map showing threatened buildings in Sussex County.
Hopkins Complex
Year Threatened: 1989
Reason Threatened: Passive threat-the complex was abandoned and suffering from neglect. Active threat-the owners planned to demolish the property.
Historical Significance: The Hopkins Complex was potentially eligible for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places as a historic crossroads district.
Current Condition: Not standing, replaced with new residential developments.
No Images Available
John Hosea House
Year Threatened: 1990
Reason Threatened: Passive threat-the building was abandoned and neglected. The interior finish had been removed and the structure was deteriorating.
Historical Significance: The John Hosea House was a rare example of a wrought-nailed, timber-framed, Sussex County house of the late 18th or early 19th centuries. It represented one of the earliest examples of the region's durable building tradition.
Current Condition: Not standing, replaced with vacant lots.
J. Layton House
Year Threatened: 1990
Reason Threatened: Passive-the dwelling was in poor condition. Active-the structure was condemned and was demolished.
Historical Significance: The J. Layton House was a significant example of an early 19th century, one-story, hall-parlor-plan plantation house, which was a type associated with the area throughout the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Current Condition: Not standing
Hudson Farmstead
Year Threatened: 1990
Reason Threatened: Passive threat-planned renovations and improvements.
Historical Significance: As a one-and-one-half-story dwelling, the Hudson House exhibited an atypical form for Sussex County. The property was determined eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places and exhibited an extremely high level of architectural and site integrity.
Current Condition: Not standing
Barber Granary
Year Threatened: 1990
Reason Threatened: Passive threat-the Granary faced abandonment and neglect. Active threat-was scheduled for demolition at the time of survey.
Historical Significance: The Barber Granary was representative of small-scale agricultural buildings constructed in the early 20th- century.
Current Condition: Not standing, demolished.
Flood House
Year Threatened: 1990
Reason Threatened: Passive threat- the Flood House faced abandonment and neglect. The structure was partially gutted. Active threat-proposed demolition at the time of the survey.
Historical Significance: The Flood House was significant as an example of the late 18th-century advent of durable building practices in the old Cypress Swamp district of southeastern Delaware. The mid-19th-century expansion of the house from one to two rooms is also consistent with historically documented local practices.
Current Condition: Not standing
Hitchens Store
Year Threatened: 1990-1991
Reason Threatened: Passive threat-abandonment and demolition by neglect. The house was isolated, overgrown by vegetation, and weakened by collapsed joints and broken windows.
Historical Significance: The Hitchens Store was an excellent example of an early nineteenth 19th-century small-scale southern Delaware commercial structure with an exceptional degree of integrity.
Current Condition: Not standing, replaced with vacant lots.
Hunter Farm Complex
Year Threatened: 1991-1992
Reason Threatened: Passive threat-the house and a number of the outbuildings were dismantled and removed from the site in the summer of 1992.
Historical Significance: The Hunter Farm Complex was a rare and unusually well-preserved 19th-century farmstead that represented a type of agricultural complex that was once common in Sussex County.
Current Condition: Not standing, moved.
Ross Mansion Quarter
Year Threatened: 1992
Reason Threatened: Passive threat-at the time of documentation the Mansion was vacant for many years and suffering from abandonment and neglect. The Seaford Historical Society acquired the building and proposed to move it back to its original location near the Governor Ross Mansion.
Historical Significance: The building is Delaware's only documented surviving example of an antebellum slave quarter. Built as a one-story, roughly 16 by 24 foot log quarter, the structure was moved from its original site behind the mansion of Governor Ross and placed as a tenant house in a copse of trees. Governor Ross was one of Delaware‘s last slave owners.
Current Condition: Standing, moved.
Current Condition
Current Condition
Dashiell & Moore Commerical Buildings
Year Threatened: 1993
Reason Threatened: Active threat-the block of commercial buildings was demolished in 1993.
Historical Significance: The Dashiell and Moore Buildings were fine examples of an early 20th-century in-town commercial block. While the interiors of all the buildings were heavily altered, the exteriors retained much of their original ornamentation and appearance
Current Condition: Not standing
Isaacs Cannery
Year Threatened: 1994
Reason Threatened: Passive threat-the structure was vacant and seriously deteriorated. Active threat-at the time of documentation, the cannery was slated for demolition.
Historical Significance: The Isaacs Cannery was the only surviving example of an industry that once ranked second in the number of manufacturing establishments in Delaware. The building was significant not only for its rarity but also for the presence of its processing equipment that illustrated technological advances in the food processing industry from circa 1900 to 1950.
Current Condition: Not standing, demolished, and replaced with vacant lots.
Anderson Farm Complex
Year Threatened: 1995
Reason Threatened: Passive threat-the complex faced abandonment and neglect. Active threat-the owner planned to demolish the summer kitchen, small barn, and corn crib.
Historical Significance: The complex represented a typical middle to a late 19th-century farmstead that reflected the diversified agricultural interests and reform processes that occurred in the Indian River Hundred. Its outbuildings reflected innovation in barn construction.
Current Condition: Not standing
Waples Tenant House
Year Threatened: 1995-1996
Reason Threatened: Passive threat-due to lack of maintenance and a period of vacancy, the house deteriorated. Active threat-recorded due to its planned demolition.
Historical Significance: Built in the late-18th-century as a dwelling, the Waples House is most readily understood as the product of three distinct building episodes. The property represents a scale of housing shared by approximately 90 percent of the local population in the 1770 to 1830 period.
Current Condition: Standing, in response to the documentation process, the owner stabilized the 18th and 19th-century portions of the building.
Toomey Strawberry Picker's House
Year Threatened: 1997
Reason Threatened: Passive threat-at the time of documentation the house was vacant and deteriorating. It developed a significant sway to one side.
Historical Significance: A common building form found on many Sussex County farm complexes in the early 20th-century, the survival of a strawberry picker's house is rare. The Toomey picker's house was one of only two that have been documented at any significant level, and one of only for or five that survive with little alteration.
Current Condition: Not standing
Cannon-Plummer House
Year Threatened: 1997-1998
Reason Threatened: Passive threat-the house was vacant for several years, suffered from deterioration and vandalism through demolition by neglect.
Historical Significance: The Cannon-Plummer House was significant as an example of a 19th-century farm dwelling that underwent at least one major cycle of rebuilding.
Current Condition: Not Standing, replaced with vacant lots.
Ryves Holt House
Year Threatened: 1997-1998
Reason Threatened: Passive threat-restoration and renovation. The house was leased from the St. Peter's Episcopal Church by the Lewes Historical Society for use with interpretative programs.
Historical Significance: An exceptional survival of first-period domestic architecture in the lower Delaware Valley, the Ryves Holt House exemplifies the rising commitment to durable buildings in the late-17th and early-18th-centuries.
Current Condition: Standing
Current Condition
Current Condition
Causey Kitchen/Slave Quarter
Year Threatened: 1997-1998
Reason Threatened: Passive threat-due to lack of maintenance and a period of vacancy the house had deteriorated by the time of documentation. Active threat-recorded due to its planned demolition.
Historical Significance: The kitchen/slave quarter stands as one of few buildings in Sussex County that relates to the experience of African-American slaves in the area.
Current Condition: Standing, in response to the documentation process, the owner stabilized the 18th and early 19th-century portions of the building.
R. D Stevenson House
Year Threatened: 1997-1998
Reason Threatened: Passive threat-the vacant and deteriorating house was purchased so that the frame portion could be moved to Ship Carpenter’s Square in Lewes, Delaware. Active threat-demolition occurred in the summer and fall of 1998.
Historical Significance: The Stevenson House was an excellent example of the evolution of braced-frame construction in the 18th and early 19th-centuries.
Current Condition: Not standing
Evans House
Year Threatened: 1999
Reason Threatened: Passive threat-faced abandonment and neglect. Active threat-demolished due to encroaching development.
Historical Significance: Constructed as early as the last quarter of the 18th-century, the original portion of the Evans House consisted of a one-and-one-half story, one-room-plan dwelling. Although almost completely concealed by modern additions, the Evans House was significant as one of the county‘s oldest dwellings.
Current Condition: Not standing, replaced with vacant lots.
No images available.
Morris Pleasure
Year Threatened: 2001
Reason Threatened: Active threat-fire damage destroyed the interior and west wall. Passive threat-restoration.
Historical Significance: Morris Pleasure, comprised of the Daniel Morris House, two barns, and surrounding agricultural lands, is part of the lands granted to the Morris family from Lord Baltimore in 1640.
Current Condition: Standing
Current Condition
Wheatley-Davis Barn
Year Threatened: 2001
Reason Threatened: Passive threat-renovations to modify it from a barn to a garage occurred.
Historical Significance: The Wheatley-Davis Barn featured an unusual truss system and illustrated the variety of construction methods used in agricultural buildings in southern Delaware. The barn was the only surviving agricultural outbuilding on the property to mark the 19th-century agricultural history of the farm.
Current Condition: Not standing
Findings:
Most of the threatened buildings that were surveyed in Sussex County are no longer standing.
When looking at all 126 threatened buildings that were recorded between 1990-2002, 77 of those buildings are no longer standing, 48 of those buildings are still standing, and one is currently in the process of being demolished.
Although about 40% of the surveyed buildings are still standing, some of them are in extremely poor condition. Most of the recorded buildings are still standing as a result of the surveys conducted. The surveys served as a call to action for many neighborhoods, historic districts, and communities. As a result, owners attempted to rehabilitate and renovate their properties, or third-parties began to take over in an effort to save the threatened resources.
The other 60% of the surveyed buildings were demolished or destroyed. The most common cause of demolition was development, encroaching roadways, and event damage. The properties that once housed the threatened resources have been developed commercially and residentially.
