After a delay of more than three years, largely the result of the COVID-19 pandemic, work on the mixed-use project called Forwood Commons in central Brandywine Hundred is now under way, with a replica of a historic 1799 schoolhouse planned as its centerpiece.
Developer Joe Setting, president and owner of Setting Properties, said the replica will be 22 feet long and 20 feet wide, the same dimensions as the original schoolhouse, and its exterior will be built from the stones that were salvaged when the structure was torn down last year. One of the salvaged pieces was the school’s 1799 datestone, which will be mounted on the front of the replica, which would be visible from Silverside Road.
The Forwood Commons plan, approved by the New Castle County Council in July 2019, has the appearance of a walkable upscale village, with 38 townhouses and five buildings providing about 33,000 square feet of retail and commercial space. There will be a single entrance to the project from Silverside Road, with a new traffic signal being installed to align that entrance with the entrance to the Branmar Plaza shopping center.
Site preparation started in the spring and will continue into early 2024, when construction will begin, with the first structures likely ready for occupancy by the middle of next year, Setting said.
Setting said he has tenants lined up for about half of the retail and office space. Leases are now being negotiated, with announcements on the committed tenants and the identity of the townhouse builder expected in the fall.
Setting pledged to create a replica of the former school after its previous owners – ironically descendants of the Forwoods who built it – let the structure deteriorate so badly that it could not be saved. Preservation advocates have described the building’s demise as a classic example of “demolition by neglect.”
“Given the bad condition of the schoolhouse, creating a replica may be the only opportunity to commemorate its history."New Castle County’s Historic Review Board said there wasn't much that could be done to save the historic Forwood School in May 2016.
“Given the bad condition of the schoolhouse, creating a replica may be the only opportunity to commemorate its history,” New Castle County’s Historic Review Board determined in May 2016.
“We weren’t able to save anything from the interior,” Setting said. “Everything caved in, including the roof.”
The building remained in use as a school until 1939, making it the longest-serving public school in Delaware and, until its demolition, the oldest school still standing in the continental United States, according to James Hanby, a Brandywine Hundred historian and a Forwood family descendant.
Setting and Hanby have been working together on plans for the replica, which will serve dual purposes as the Forwood Commons office and as a museum-like facility, Setting said.
The interior of the replica will feature plaques telling the Forwood School’s history and memorabilia to help tell the school’s story, Setting said.
Setting said he will invite students at the current Forwood Elementary School, located less than a mile away in the North Graylyn Crest community, to visit the building for field trips. The replica would also be opened to the public for several weekends each year, including one in December to coincide with the Delaware Day celebration of the state’s ratification of the U.S. Constitution. Private tours will also be offered by appointment, he said.
The Forwood Commons plan
The curved roadway into and through the Forwood Commons complex would divide its residential and office-retail sections, with the townhouses constructed in the rear, on the south and east sides of the project, and the commercial portion closer to Silverside Road.
The schoolhouse replica would be located just beyond the curve in the roadway, on the residential side. It would be visible from Silverside Road, albeit through a parking area for the commercial section.
Plans approved by the county list a bank, a coffee shop, a restaurant and a pharmacy as potential users but Setting said they’re not necessarily going to be part of the final retail mix.
The 38 townhomes will be similar to those in the popular Darley Green community in Claymont, with brick construction, front porches and garages accessed through an alley behind the homes, Setting said.
Setting was one of the original developers of Darley Green and he is also involved in planning the residential portion of the First State Crossing project now under way on the site of a former steel mill in Claymont. The townhouses and apartments planned for First State Crossing will likely be similar to those in Darley Green and Forwood Commons, he said.
New Castle County regulations require planting at least 427 trees and shrubs on the 11.5 acre Forwood Commons site but Setting said the landscape design calls for 955 trees and plants, more than double county’s standards. Many of those plantings will create a green privacy wall between the project and the Glenside Farms community to the southeast.
A pedestrian path will connect Glenside Farms and Forwood Commons. Also, Setting said he is building a cul de sac at the end of Glenside Avenue in Glenside Farms to improve the access of emergency vehicles in that community.
The old school’s history
Just as the Forwood Commons project is located in the heart of Brandywine Hundred, the old school is deeply embedded in the community’s history.
In 1796 Delaware’s General Assembly created a fund, underwritten by fees for marriage and tavern licenses, to help pay for public schools. Three years later, a trio of Brandywine Hundred residents – Robert and Jehu Forwood and Thomas Bird – received a half-acre site to build and operate a school.
Using local fieldstone and lumber, they had the 20- by 22-foot school built in two months and ready to open in August of 1799. Residents contributed to pay the teacher’s salary. Attendance was probably varied, with older boys attending in the winter, when they weren’t needed to work on the farms and younger children in the spring and fall.
By the 1830s the state had established a rudimentary school system and the Forwood building became known as Brandywine Hundred District No. 5. By 1855, enrollment topped 100 students – although not all the children were in the building at the same time – and an addition was built, making the school 40 feet long by 22 feet wide.
In the late 1920s area residents voted in a referendum to build a new school, with the cost split between the local district and the state, but the Great Recession intervened and the state funding never came through.
Then, in 1939, the state executed a forced merger of the Forwood School into the Alfred I. du Pont School District and the building was closed.
A nonprofit organization, the Society for the Preservation of Antiquities, acquired the school in 1940 but was unable to secure funds for repairs and improvements during World War II.
The property was sold back to the Forwood family in 1947. Dormers were added and the doors and windows were changed as the structure was converted to residential use. Members of the Forwood family lived on site or rented the property into the 1990s.
For several years, starting in 1999, the Forwoods who owned the property proposed having the land developed for a mix of residential and commercial use but ran into objections from residents of Graylyn Crest, Glenside Farms and others in the area.
With the building unoccupied for many years, “it became a hangout for people doing some nefarious things,” historian Hanby told Delaware Public Media in 2018.
Setting acquired the property in 2014 and two years later presented to New Castle County a vastly updated version of what the Forwoods had in mind at the turn of the century.
Hanby then explored options for saving the old school, including the possibility of moving it to the current Forwood Elementary School grounds, but it had deteriorated too much to make any salvage effort feasible. Eventually the roof caved in and the building was demolished.
While the structure could not be preserved, the replica will at least preserve its history.
“It’s the best solution to a horrible situation,” Hanby said in 2018.
Now, it’s a step closer to becoming a reality.
