American estate and museum housing one of the most important collections of Americana in the United States

How to Get There

Overview

Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library is an American estate and museum in Winterthur, Delaware. It houses one of the most important collections of Americana in the United States. It was the former home of Henry Francis du Pont (1880-1969), a renowned antiques collector and horticulturist. Until recently, it was known as the Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum.

Museum

H.F. became a highly prominent collector of American decorative arts. He established Winterthur's main building as a public museum in 1951 and moved to a smaller building on the estate. By 1959, the museum has been enlarged to accommodate a library, lecture halls, and additional period rooms. The museum ultimately consisted of 200 rooms and held H.F.'s collection, conservation laboratories, and administrative offices. By the time of his death in 1969, H.F. had amassed a collection of between 50,000 and 70,000 objects.

Present day

Today, Winterthur is situated on 979 acres (396 ha), near Brandywine Creek, with 60 acres (24 ha) of naturalistic gardens.

The museum has 175 period-room displays and approximately 90,000 objects. Most rooms are open to the public on small, guided tours. The collection spans more than two centuries of American decorative arts, notably from 1640 to 1860, and contains some of the most important pieces of American furniture and fine art.

In 1992, additional galleries opened in a new building adjacent to the main house. The galleries host special rotating and permanent exhibits.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0