Wilmington is Back
A surge in residential development, evolving work places and the liveliest entertainment scene in decades—Wilmington is back and better than ever.
With 380 years of history since our city was founded, and development happening in every corner, we've got a neighborhood and lifestyle for everyone. It's time to love where you live.
From inside the townhomes of Trolley Square to the stately dwellings of Kentmere Parkway, the people who live within the Delaware Avenue corridor have a strong sense of community identity and neighborhood pride. (Forty Acres and Trolley Square may only be blocks apart, but confuse them at your peril if you’re talking to a local.) Within walking distance, you’ll find the renown Delaware Art Museum, the bucolic Rockford Park, and the oldest continuous family-owned Irish bar in the country … and residents who find themselves at home in all three.
Brandywine Park and the Brandywine River that runs through it define both the western border and the way of life in Triangle Park and Brandywine Village, where Victorian and Colonial revival architecture combine to create its unique look and feel. Residents – include the governor of Delaware – will often walk down the street to the banks of the Brandywine River to visit with the animals at the Brandywine Zoo, fish in the waters, relax in the Jasper Crane Rose Garden, catch a summer concert in the Sugar Bowl Pavilion and buy art at the annual Brandywine Festival of the Arts.
Kosciuszko Park. Pulaski Park. The legacy of the Polish immigrants who settled Browntown and Hedgeville is remembered in many local landmarks, even as the neighborhoods have now diversified like much of the city. Enter the city here and you’ll drive past Mexican, Indian and Caribbean cafes … and one of the state’s top disc golf courses inside Canby Park.
Brick rowhomes dominate Wilmington’s oldest streets in this historic section of town, an area that day in March of 1638 when the Kalmar Nyckel landed on “The Rocks,” bringing 24 Swedish settlers to what would become New Amsterdam. (That landing spot is now Fort Christina Park on the East Side. The modern Kalmar Nyckel, a replica of that original tall ship, is now docked nearby.) Today, the East Side Rising project promotes affordable new housing, expanded home ownership, and other projects to update these neighborhoods and improve the quality of life for residents.
It’s still the Corporate Capital of the World, but in recent years, downtown Wilmington has diversified. Belly up to the bar inside one of Market Street’s new restaurants, and you’ll likely to see the CEO of a Fortune 500 company sitting next to a coder from a local tech startup. Hidden in plain sight, blocks from city’s tallest buildings and centers of commerce, the quiet tree-lined streets and century-old brownstones of Midtown Brandywine are a step into another place and time. Back near Market Street, there’s a building boom of residential apartments for a new generation of city dwellers who want to live near jazz bars, pristine music halls, street festivals, a growing restaurant scene … and their offices and co-working spaces, all within a few blocks of each other.
Leave downtown on a bicycle and your best route is along the Northern Delaware Greenway Trail, where you’ll ride through green spaces and golf courses on your commute before arriving at Brandywine Hills and the residential neighborhoods surrounding the beautiful and historic P.S. du Pont Middle School. Families play by day inside the many neighborhood parks throughout the area, though mom and dad might be just as excited to have the just-opened Wilmington Brew Works within walking distance.
The Brandywine Creek powered the city’s grist mills during in the earliest years of economic and industrial development in Riverside and neighboring Price’s Run. Today, community life revolves around the neighborhood’s churches and schools, including Thomas Edison Charter School, where their young chess champions have taken home two trophies from the National Junior High Chess Championships in the past five years.
Home to the essential Port of Wilmington, its surrounding industrial areas and the historic Southbridge neighborhood of Wilmington, South Wilmington is today a focal point for community improvement and creative land reuse projects inside the city. A brand-new five-story fieldhouse complex will provide home court for the Delaware Blue Coats, the Philadelphia 76ers NBA farm team, starting in the 2018-19 season. Meanwhile, the South Wilmington Wetland Park project looks to create new recreation areas and walking trails for residents in the community.
Wilmington’s first “suburbs” stayed within city limits as entire neighborhoods of single-family home were built all at once, from the ground, starting 100 years ago. But even when they were still in Wilmington proper, smart developers gave them names that made people feel like they were moving to the country – Westmoreland and The Flats, Union Park and Greenhill. Even today, they retain a feel of cities within cities, with neighborhood grocers, pharmacies and corner delis you can walk to after work, and a public golf course for recreation on the weekends.
Wilmington’s oldest residential neighborhood sits on a hill overlooking downtown Wilmington and the business district below. Ask them where they live, and residents will identify themselves as coming from micro-communities named for the churches that once dominated the district – the historic Quaker Hill, the tree-lined Trinity Vicinity. Today, much of West Center City is part of Wilmington’s Creative District, where artists and makers can find affordable housing, studio spaces, and makerspaces like Wilmington’s NextFab.
Waves of immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries built Wilmington’s Little Italy and the historic neighborhoods that surround it. Today, the West Side is a residential enclave for people who bike to work downtown, walk their dogs around the Cool Springs reservoir and dine along a restaurant row that reflects the true diversity of the neighborhood as it exists today. Every June, the West Side becomes the center of Wilmington’s social scene as Greek and Italian festivals fill the streets with food, music and dancing well into the night.
A true live-work-play community, the Wilmington Riverfront has been reborn over the past 25 years. Once home to the city’s busy shipyards, the banks of the Christina River now teem with residents and office workers who fill the streets from the moment the local coffee shops begin their daily grinds, all the way through the nights when fireworks light up the sky over Frawley Stadium. For the time in between, there is opera and art museums, theater and movies, a summer beer garden and a winter ice rink, a year-round children’s museum and a dining options for every member of the family.
From inside the townhomes of Trolley Square to the stately dwellings of Kentmere Parkway, the people who live within the Delaware Avenue corridor have a strong sense of community identity and neighborhood pride. (Forty Acres and Trolley Square may only be blocks apart, but confuse them at your peril if you’re talking to a local.) Within walking distance, you’ll find the renown Delaware Art Museum, the bucolic Rockford Park, and the oldest continuous family-owned Irish bar in the country … and residents who find themselves at home in all three.
Brandywine Park and the Brandywine River that runs through it define both the western border and the way of life in Triangle Park and Brandywine Village, where Victorian and Colonial revival architecture combine to create its unique look and feel. Residents – include the governor of Delaware – will often walk down the street to the banks of the Brandywine River to visit with the animals at the Brandywine Zoo, fish in the waters, relax in the Jasper Crane Rose Garden, catch a summer concert in the Sugar Bowl Pavilion and buy art at the annual Brandywine Festival of the Arts.
Kosciuszko Park. Pulaski Park. The legacy of the Polish immigrants who settled Browntown and Hedgeville is remembered in many local landmarks, even as the neighborhoods have now diversified like much of the city. Enter the city here and you’ll drive past Mexican, Indian and Caribbean cafes … and one of the state’s top disc golf courses inside Canby Park.
Brick rowhomes dominate Wilmington’s oldest streets in this historic section of town, an area that day in March of 1638 when the Kalmar Nyckel landed on “The Rocks,” bringing 24 Swedish settlers to what would become New Amsterdam. (That landing spot is now Fort Christina Park on the East Side. The modern Kalmar Nyckel, a replica of that original tall ship, is now docked nearby.) Today, the East Side Rising project promotes affordable new housing, expanded home ownership, and other projects to update these neighborhoods and improve the quality of life for residents.
It’s still the Corporate Capital of the World, but in recent years, downtown Wilmington has diversified. Belly up to the bar inside one of Market Street’s new restaurants, and you’ll likely to see the CEO of a Fortune 500 company sitting next to a coder from a local tech startup. Hidden in plain sight, blocks from city’s tallest buildings and centers of commerce, the quiet tree-lined streets and century-old brownstones of Midtown Brandywine are a step into another place and time. Back near Market Street, there’s a building boom of residential apartments for a new generation of city dwellers who want to live near jazz bars, pristine music halls, street festivals, a growing restaurant scene … and their offices and co-working spaces, all within a few blocks of each other.
Leave downtown on a bicycle and your best route is along the Northern Delaware Greenway Trail, where you’ll ride through green spaces and golf courses on your commute before arriving at Brandywine Hills and the residential neighborhoods surrounding the beautiful and historic P.S. du Pont Middle School. Families play by day inside the many neighborhood parks throughout the area, though mom and dad might be just as excited to have the just-opened Wilmington Brew Works within walking distance.
The Brandywine Creek powered the city’s grist mills during in the earliest years of economic and industrial development in Riverside and neighboring Price’s Run. Today, community life revolves around the neighborhood’s churches and schools, including Thomas Edison Charter School, where their young chess champions have taken home two trophies from the National Junior High Chess Championships in the past five years.
Home to the essential Port of Wilmington, its surrounding industrial areas and the historic Southbridge neighborhood of Wilmington, South Wilmington is today a focal point for community improvement and creative land reuse projects inside the city. A brand-new five-story fieldhouse complex will provide home court for the Delaware Blue Coats, the Philadelphia 76ers NBA farm team, starting in the 2018-19 season. Meanwhile, the South Wilmington Wetland Park project looks to create new recreation areas and walking trails for residents in the community.
Wilmington’s first “suburbs” stayed within city limits as entire neighborhoods of single-family home were built all at once, from the ground, starting 100 years ago. But even when they were still in Wilmington proper, smart developers gave them names that made people feel like they were moving to the country – Westmoreland and The Flats, Union Park and Greenhill. Even today, they retain a feel of cities within cities, with neighborhood grocers, pharmacies and corner delis you can walk to after work, and a public golf course for recreation on the weekends.
Wilmington’s oldest residential neighborhood sits on a hill overlooking downtown Wilmington and the business district below. Ask them where they live, and residents will identify themselves as coming from micro-communities named for the churches that once dominated the district – the historic Quaker Hill, the tree-lined Trinity Vicinity. Today, much of West Center City is part of Wilmington’s Creative District, where artists and makers can find affordable housing, studio spaces, and makerspaces like Wilmington’s NextFab.
Waves of immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries built Wilmington’s Little Italy and the historic neighborhoods that surround it. Today, the West Side is a residential enclave for people who bike to work downtown, walk their dogs around the Cool Springs reservoir and dine along a restaurant row that reflects the true diversity of the neighborhood as it exists today. Every June, the West Side becomes the center of Wilmington’s social scene as Greek and Italian festivals fill the streets with food, music and dancing well into the night.
A true live-work-play community, the Wilmington Riverfront has been reborn over the past 25 years. Once home to the city’s busy shipyards, the banks of the Christina River now teem with residents and office workers who fill the streets from the moment the local coffee shops begin their daily grinds, all the way through the nights when fireworks light up the sky over Frawley Stadium. For the time in between, there is opera and art museums, theater and movies, a summer beer garden and a winter ice rink, a year-round children’s museum and a dining options for every member of the family.