History

Winterthur was named for the ancestral Swiss home of Jacques Antoine Bidermann, who in 1837 purchased 450 acres of Delaware land with his wife, Evelina Gabrielle du Pont. They bought it from her father, the founder of the E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Co. black powder manufacturing firm. The Bidermanns built a three-story, twelve-room Greek Revival home above Clenny Run.

The property passed to their son, who then sold it to his uncle Henry du Pont in 1867. Henry’s son and daughter-in-law, Henry Algernon and Pauline du Pont, inherited Winterthur in 1889.

Henry Algernon made substantial improvements to the estate and enlarged the house twice. By the early twentieth century, Winterthur was a self-sustaining agricultural community. Up to two hundred tenant farmers and their families living on the property raised turkeys, chickens, sheep, pigs, and cattle and grew vegetables and grains in the field. Gardens and greenhouses provided flowers year-round. Winterthur also had a sawmill, machine shops, milk-bottling plant, post office, and its own train station.

Henry Francis du Pont ( short bio ) was born at Winterthur in 1880. He studied horticulture at Harvard’s Bussey Institution, then returned to Winterthur to manage the farm.

Du Pont married Ruth Wales in 1916. As was fashionable at the time, the couple favored European furniture. That changed dramatically in 1923, when du Pont, on a trip to Vermont, spotted an American pine dresser filled with pink china. Apparently, he was smitten with the sight and resolved to turn his attention to early American objects.


		This pine dresser full of English pink transfer-printed dishes made in Staffordshire inspired H.F. du Pont to become a collector of American antiques when he saw it in 1923 at the home of a fellow collector and dairy farmer in Vermont.

Henry Francis du Pont collected with a vengeance. Over the years, he purchased more than sixty thousand objects—supplemented since his death to total eighty-five thousand—made or used in America between 1640 and 1860. He acquired furniture, textiles, silver, clocks, needlework, porcelain, oriental rugs, and paintings, as well as architectural features and sometimes entire buildings to serve as backdrops.

Originally, du Pont intended to outfit his Long Island home with the items, but there wasn’t enough space. The solution was to use some of the existing spaces at Winterthur as display areas, then put a nine-story addition on the mansion and furnish the whole thing with the world’s premier collection of early American decorative arts.

Du Pont’s discerning eye, artist’s sensibilities, and penchant for massing similar objects together creates maximum visual impact. He took entire rooms, interpreted them according to his own sensibilities, and lived in them. Appropriate woodwork and other architectural details provide context that would be absent in a typical museum setting. Taken as a whole, Winterthur is a tribute to early American artisans and their useful, beautiful products. Du Pont used his settings, vignettes, and architecture to create a home and museum that continues to inspire, especially when it comes to his ideas of balance, color, and decorating with textiles.

The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum opened to the public in 1951. Ruth and H. F. du Pont moved to a Regency-style “cottage” on-site, now the Museum Store on Clenny Run. Ruth died in 1967, H. F. two years later.


		The Montmorenci staircase, inspired by one in a home built in North Carolina about 1822, spirals upwards for two flights. Du Pont redesigned the staircase as an oval (rather than circle) and chose items that compliment the stair, most noticeably the repeated ovals in the settee below. The oval shape repeats via the looking glasses, the semi-circular sofas, and other objects in the room. Though subtle, the choice of objects provides clear evidence of H.F.'s ability to bring together objects that harmonize beautifully to create an ideal setting.

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