The du Pont Mansions: Winterthur and Longwood Gardens

May 2022

Italian Water Garden, Longwood Gardens

Many years ago, we visited Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA, and Winterthur Museum and Gardens in nearby Delaware. We wanted to return so we could see the spring-blooming flowers, and Longwood did not disappoint. The flower photos below were all taken at Longwood in early May. The lilacs smelled heavenly, especially the white ones! There were many different colors and varieties of tulips, and the wisteria was at its peak.

The fountain show was set to music and was stunning. We watched another show later that morning, and were surprised to hear different music with a different pattern of movement in the fountains.

Part of the conservatory area was under construction and was closed. But the part that was open was filled with plants.

In the back of the conservatory building was an exhibit of a pipe organ that has 10,010 pipes, over 5300 of which are displayed behind 2-inch-thick glass. We wonder what that organ would sound like! Below is just one room of pipes.

This is just a portion of the organ. It has 240 keys and 460 controls for the hands, and 32 pedals and 40 controls for the feet.

The Italian Water Garden’s blues and greens were so serene.

The next day, we visited Winterthur Museum. Henry Francis du Pont grew up in this house, and in adulthood, he built a huge addition in order to house his ever-expanding collections. Part of the addition has 9 floors! There are 175 rooms holding around 90,000 objects of American decorative arts. Only a small part of the house is open to the public for tours. H.F. du Pont wanted his collections of American furniture and art to be displayed as they would have looked in a home. He would take guests on tours of the house, in which most of the rooms were only “for show”. Some of the furniture is on display in the gallery rather than the home.

The gardens are extensive, and we did not see them all. Many azaleas were in bloom at the time of our visit.

View from the hill behind the mansion.

This side of the house is where the original house is, although the conservatory was added later. The original house, which H.F. du Pont inherited, had 50 rooms.

There is more of the house extending beyond this photo to the right.

H.F. du Pont liked to have everything color-coordinated, including the china, linens, and flowers on the table. He had 54 sets of china and 70 sets of linens. For years, he took notes of each meal, and how the table was set and what foods were served.

Below are some rooms the du Ponts actually lived in. H.F. du Pont would have the slipcovers and curtains changed out 4 times a year to match the colors of the season. The silver tankards on the sideboard (bottom row, left) were made by Paul Revere. The Chinese room (middle row, left) had Chinese hand-painted wallpaper from the 1780’s.

We wish we’d had time to visit the Hagley Museum, which is the first du Pont family home, built by Eleuthere I. du Pont, the founder of du Pont de Nemours & Co., a gunpowder manufacturing firm that made the family fortune, and which later became the DuPont chemical company. Here we could have seen the restored powder mills, more gardens, and blooming wisteria covering the front of the house, and learned more about the fascinating du Pont family.