An historic New Castle County house with roots in the 19th Century and connections to former President Joe Biden is now on the National Register of Historic Places.
Dating back to the 1820s, the Mitchell-Biden House was originally a humble one-room log cabin. As the area began to evolve, so did the house. The result is a site replete with architectural interest.
“The house was built around 1823 by the Mitchell family in Mill Creek Hundred, and it's a really interesting example of a stone house that was actually an addition to a log house," explains Catherine Morrissey, Associate Director of UD’s Center for Historic Architecture & Design. She spearheaded the effort to get the Mitchell-Biden House listed on the register.
Although the log house was gone by the 1850s, Morrissey says traces of the original building remain, a boon for architectural historians.
“What remains in the basement of the house today is the original foundation for the log house. And then by 1852, the building is entirely stone and the log house has gone away," she says.
The house continued to be owned and lived in over the generations. In the early 1970s, it was home to a New Castle County Councilman named Joe Biden, who lived there during and after his successful campaign for US Senate in 1972.
Morrissey says the evolution of the Mitchell-Biden House is reflective of the early 19th-Century transition from settlements to permanent towns and cities as industry began to grow.
“We see this sequencing a lot, of log to stone," Morrissey says. "Then they take down the log house because it's really outdated or having condition issues and then they expanded it most likely by 1852 with another stone addition.”
Morrissey says having the house listed on the National Register of Historic Places is a good way to highlight the many stories from the historic site. The house remains in private hands today.
