“Well, while we’re here, let’s do it!” My twin sister and I agreed wholeheartedly that we may as well check one off on the bucket list while in the Brandywine Valley.

After an informal lunch on a patio at a Main Street local eats place in Centreville, Delaware, onward we went to Winterthur “America’s artistic, cultural, social, and intellectual history and home to the DuPonts, a dynasty of entrepreneurs, engineers, collectors, and horticulturalists.”

Even though I already knew a little about the home/museum, library and gardens of Henry Francis du Pont (1880–1969), and his two succeeding generations. I was overwhelmed by the property’s expansiveness. The mansion has 190 rooms and on the 2600 acres, at one time they had their own post office, dairy and butcher, gardens and orchards which fed 250 workers who also resided there. I was completely astonished at the overwhelming spans of the grounds, home and library which houses over 100,000 volumes of “rare books, trade catalogs, manuscripts, ephemera, and photographs related to the study of art, decorative arts and design, everyday life in America, and Winterthur’s estate history.”

The estate has 25 miles of walking trails through woodlands which spring forth with seasonal blooms such as azaleas, dogwoods, hellebores, daffodils, trilliums and redbuds. But that is only some of the most notables in spring. There are stars in every season. Rather than spend the day walking, we opted for the garden tram which took us all over the estate and it is included in the admission price.

The museum has furniture, china, silverware and fine art paintings befitting and collected by the influential, wealthy family of DuPont industrialists who saw it as their civic duty to drive industry for the prosperity of our country.

Photos – Two distant views of DuPont Dynasty’s 190 room mansion at Winterthur.

The DuPont’s legacy story continues with each generation of DuPonts who have a variety of interests and passions. We only touched part of what was there to see at Winterthur, and there is so much more in the Brandywine Valley for next time I visit. I’ll return for a tour of artists N.C. and Andrew Wyeth’s home and studios, and the Nemours Estate and Hagley Museum, also DuPont properties. I’ll keep an eye on upcoming art exhibits which strike my fancy at the Somerville Manning Gallery and will draw me back to the Brandywine Valley so very willingly.

Photos from through the lens of a cellphone could never capture the expansiveness of Winterthur so I’ve posted a small glimpse. Visit their website for more information and for professional images, taken by their professional photographers.