Belmont Hall is a

Georgian Georgian may refer to: Common meanings * Anything related to, or originating from Georgia (country) ** Georgians, an indigenous Caucasian ethnic group ** Georgian language, a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians **Georgian scripts, three scrip ...

house located in

Smyrna, Delaware Smyrna is a town in Kent and New Castle counties in the U.S. state of Delaware. It is part of the Dover, Delaware Metropolitan Statistical Area. According to the Census Bureau, as of 2010, the population of the town is 10,023. The international j ...

, built about 1773 by Thomas Collins, who would become the eighth governor of Delaware. The front façade faces

US 13 U.S. Route 13 (US 13) is a north–south U.S. highway established in 1926 that runs for from Interstate 95 (I-95) just north of Fayetteville, North Carolina to US 1 in the northeastern suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in Morrisville. ...

Description

The brick house front is five bays wide and three stories tall, surmounted by a flattened gable. The crown of the gable is flattened to form a

widow's walk A widow's walk, also known as a widow's watch or roofwalk, is a railed rooftop platform often having an inner cupola/turret frequently found on 19th-century North American coastal houses. The name is said to come from the wives of mariners, who ...

, accessed by a projecting stair tower to the rear of the walk. The house is wide but shallow, one room deep with two rear wings projecting to the north, which were built before the front. The front portion is wide by deep. The interior plan is oriented around a central hall, flanked by parlors on either side. A stair rises from the hall, and is flanked by bedrooms on the second and third floors. Extensive interior woodwork is located primarily in the entrance hall and the west parlor. The interior was renovated during the Victorian era, but was restored in the 1920s.

History

Six hundred acres () were granted to Henry Pearman by

William Penn William Penn ( – ) was an English writer and religious thinker belonging to the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, a North American colony of England. He was an early advocate of democracy a ...

in 1684, and became known as "Pearman's Choice." A small brick house was built on this property. This house and two hundred acres were sold to Andrew Love in 1691. The property was bought by Thomas Collins, who would become High Sheriff of Kent County and later a brigadier general in the

Continental Army The Continental Army was the army of the United Colonies (the Thirteen Colonies) in the Revolutionary-era United States. It was formed by the Second Continental Congress after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, and was establis ...

, eventually rising to the governorship of Delaware. He added the present front about 1773. In 1777 a British party attempting to capture Collins shot a sentry posted on the widow's walk, who died in the room below. His death is commemorated by a plaque in the front hall presented by the Daughters of the American Revolution. Thomas Collins, the only person to be unanimously elected by the Assembly, had the honor of serving as the 8th President/Governor of Delaware from 1786 until his death in 1789. Collins died at Belmont Hall in 1789. In 1827, John Cloak acquired Belmont and farmed the land according to scientific principles. Belmont brand canned tomatoes became popular in the late 19th century. A fire in 1922 gutted the third floor. The existing east and west dormers were added during repairs. The Cloak/Speakman family retained the property into the 1980s. It was sold to the State of Delaware in 1987, as part of a deal to acquire for the Route 13 bypass around Smyrna.

References

External links

Belmont Hall
website * {{National Register of Historic Places in Delaware Houses in Kent County, Delaware Houses completed in 1753 Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Delaware Historic American Buildings Survey in Delaware British colonial architecture in the United States Colonial architecture in Delaware Georgian architecture in Delaware National Register of Historic Places in Kent County, Delaware