NFS Form 10-900 0MB No. 1024-0018 (Rev. 8-86) United States Department of the Interior ' \ l j National Park Service " 06 NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES REGISTRATION FORM 1. Name of Property historic name: Lewes Historic District, amended other name/site number: S-290_______________ 2. Location street & number: Pilottown Road, Shipcarpenter Street, Fourth Street, Savannah Road, McFee Street and Railroad Avenue______ not for publication: NA city/town: Lewes, Lewes and Rehoboth Hundred vicinity: NA state: DE county: Sussex___________ code: 005 zip code: 19958 3. Classification Ownership of Property: private, public-local and public-federal Category of Property: district___________________________ Number of Resources within Property: Contributing Noncontributing 637 112 buildings 5 17 sites 0 1 structures 0 0 objects 642 130 Total Number of contributing resources previously listed in the National Register: 122______________________________________________ Name of related multiple property listing: NA_________________ NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number ——— Page ——— ADDITIONAL DOCUMENTATION APPROVAL Lewes Historic District NFS Form 10-900-a OMB No. 1024-0018 (8-86) « United States Department of the Interior National Park Service NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES CONTINUATION SHEET Section 8 Page 1-Amendment REGISTER name of multiple property listing AFRICAN-AMERICAN RESOURCES IN DELAWARE LEWES HISTORIC DISTRICT, S-290, LEWES, SUSSEX COUNTY, DELAWARE Eligibility Criterion: A Area of Significance: Social History Period of Significance: 1665-1942 Level of Significance: local While the Lewes Historic District is eligible for its architecture and for the social history embodied in its development and its history, it is also eligible for the small African-American community that is included within its boundaries at the north end of the town. The exact date which this community was established is not known. While the central buildings to the community, its churches, were constructed in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a historic cemetery, associated with an earlier location of a house of worship dates to the early part of the nineteenth century. The St. Paul's ME Church (.680) was constructed in 1882 in the Gothic Revival style. This church was built to serve an African-American community that lived on the northwest edge of Lewes and who had remained with the Methodist faith rather than following the worship of the African Methodist-Episcopal Church. Also constructed in the Gothic Revival style, the St. George's AME Church (.667) was built in 1930. This congregation built their first church on Pilottown Road and laid out a cemetery adjacent to it. The St. George's AME Church Cemetery (.6) consists of simple headstones laid out in rows on an elevated rise with a large tree acting as a focal point. Both of these communities of African-Americans served the same relationship of proximity and economics to the Lewes community that was typical of such settlements throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Delaware. The residents provided a steady work force for the farms, shops, and factories of the community as well as a labor pool for domestic activities that might be carried out within the community. Research on the exact jobs held by African-Americans in Lewes has not been conducted but some educated assumptions can be made based on patterns that have existed to the present time. 4. State/Federal Agency Certification As the designated authority under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1986, as amended, I hereby certify that this X nomination __ request for determination of eligibility meets the documentation standards for registering properties in the National Register of Historic Places and meets the procedural and professional requirements set forth in 36 CFR Part 60. In my opinion, the property X meets not meet the National Register Criteria. __ See continuation _______ Signature of certify^n^ ^official Date Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs State or Federal agency and bureau In my opinion, the property ___ meets ___ does not meet the National Register criteria. __ See continuation sheet. NA ____________________________________________ Signature of commenting or other official Date State or Federal agency and bureau 5. National Park Service Certification I, hereby certify that this property is: V^ entered in the National Register __ See continuation sheet, determined eligible for the National Register __ See continuation sheet, determined not eligible for the National Register removed from the National Register other (explain): ______________ Signature of Keeper Date of Action Function or Use Historic: domestic________________ Sub: single dwelling___ commerce________________ specialty store___ religion________________ religious structure recreation and culture museum Current : domestic________________ Sub: single dwelling___ commerce________________ specialty store___ religion________________________ religious structure recreation and culture museum 7. Description Architectural Classification: Colonial early Republic mid-19th century late Victorian late 19th and early 20th-century revivals________________ Other Description: __________________________________ Materials: foundation brick______ roof asphalt shingle walls weatherboard other wood___________ shingle_____ Describe present and historic physical appearance. X See continuation sheet. This nomination is an amendment to the Lewes Historic District nomina­ tion of 1977. The intent of the amendment is to expand the area and period of significance of the original nomination to include the entire historic community of Lewes, and to broaden the time period to include the entire nineteenth century and the first four decades of the twentieth century. Specifically, this amendment rectifies the exclusion of the southeast and southwest portions of the city of Lewes, and rectifies the omission of significant late nineteenth and early twentieth-century buildings within the listed historic district proper. NFS Form 10-900-a OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES CONTINUATION SHEET Section number 7 Page # 2 The small city of Lewes is situated on the eastern side of Sussex County, facing northeast into the mouth of the Delaware Bay. Resting on relatively firm ground, Lewes has the Great Marsh and other wetlands to the northwest, more marsh and wetlands, and that sandy spit called Cape Henlopen, formed in the twentieth century, to the southeast. Cape Henlopen is steadily thrusting itself into the Delaware Bay, providing now a safer haven for seacraft than the once negligibly protective harbor could offer, even with the use of such man-made efforts as the breakwater of 1897. Ironically, seagoing vessels are now so large as to preclude refuge within the harbor that nature has so generously provided. Southwest of the city proper are the sandy soiled farms of eastern Sussex County, and due southeast, on the Atlantic Coast, is the late nineteenth century camp meeting village of Rehoboth Beach, reborn in the early twentieth century as a nascent resort town. Between the town and the bay is the Lewes and Rehoboth canal, formerly Lewes Creek until dredged in 1900, a stretch of wetlands, and Lewes Beach. The only access from the canal to the Delaware Bay is the Roosevelt Inlet to the northwest. The southeast stretch of the canal winds past Rehoboth and Dewey Beaches and termi­ nates in Rehoboth Bay. Roads run parallel along Lewes Beach, with early twentieth-century beach cottages and bungalows populating the side streets. Modern development has sprung up on the outskirts of Lewes, in a limited way to the northwes"£, and more extensively to the southwest along the access roads. Slock House Pond, once some 18 acres in size but subsequently reduced several times, is in the southwest quadrant of the town. Lewes is popularly known as an eighteenth-century coastal town commem­ orated for being the site of the earliest European settlement in Delaware, and for bravely defying the British during the War of 1812. In actuality, Lewes is composed principally of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century building stock. The plan of the town con­ sists of roads at right angles on southwest-northeast, and southeast- northwest axes. The "King's Highway" is the exception entering the town on a north-south axis. Interstitial streets and alleys connect the principal roads and provided for the orderly expansion of the town. NFS Form 10-900-a 0MB Approval No. 1024-0018 (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES CONTINUATION SHEET Section number 7 Page # 3 The dominant building material is frame, and the dominant construction type is balloon framing. Other materials and construction types are represented, including braced frame (mortise and tenon joined), and masonry - both brick and rockfaced concrete block. In Delaware, balloon framing, the system of construction invented in 1832 by George Snow in Chicago, was not widely used until well after 1850. This framing system consisted of regular dimension, mill sawn lumber or scantling, joined together by machine-made spikes or nails. The simple nature of this system allowed for the rapid building of the west,