It has taken more than a year but the first of many steps to preserve a historic property in New Castle is finally complete.
Buttonwood, a 19th-century riverfront home associated with a former chief justice of Delaware’s Supreme Court, now has a new roof.
The $30,000 project, funded in part by a $10,000 grant from the Delaware Preservation Fund (DPF), a subsidiary of the Preservation Delaware nonprofit, was completed in mid-October, with asphalt shingles installed to closely match the color of the deteriorated cedar shake roof.
The installation was an essential starting point in the effort to preserve the building, now more than 180 years old.
“There’s a critical need to button up the building, no pun intended,” said Michael Emmons, a Preservation Delaware vice president and administrator of DPF’s small grants program.
With the roof work complete water infiltration that could damage the interior is less of a concern and preservation specialists can map out their next steps, Emmons said.
The interior “is in formidable condition for a property that has been mothballed for 27 years,” said Paul Camponelli, a former New Castle resident and descendant of former city officials who has been leading a grassroots effort to restore the structure.
The most likely next step is to repair crumbling pointing of the structure’s brickwork, especially on its south side, according to Camponelli and Kevin Orcutt, director of safety and security for Zenith Home Corporation, the business responsible for Buttonwood’s maintenance.
But no one can say when – or if – that work might begin and who would pay for it because, for Buttonwood, there is no clear path forward.
A little history
Buttonwood, which faces the Delaware River about a half mile north of New Castle’s historic district, was built in the late 1830s or early 1840s on what had been a farm owned by James Booth Sr., once Delaware’s chief justice and the secretary at the state’s constitutional conventions in 1776 and 1792. Booth is recognized as one of the state’s first advocates for the abolition of slavery.
The home, sometimes referred to as the Booth Mansion, was most likely built by Molton C. Rogers, the brother-in-law of Booth’s daughter Maria. At that time, it was not unusual for prominent residents of New Castle to have a “summer home” on farmland outside the downtown area, according to Michael Connolly, executive director of the New Castle Historical Society.
Buttonwood’s Greek Revival architecture made it “a pretty grand house in its day,” Connolly said. Its main floor seems primarily designed for entertainment, featuring four large parlors, two on each side of a center hall and extending from the front to the rear of the mansion.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most of the Buttonwood property remained as farmland but fell into the hands of Lukens Steel, operator of one of several steel mills built near the town.
An adjacent area developed into a historically Black residential community, named Buttonwood after the farm, and Pierre S. du Pont financed the construction of one of the state’s “colored schools” in the neighborhood in 1924. The Buttonwood School remains standing as a museum and community gathering place.
Fast forward to the 1990s. Two large industrial parks are built north of the historic district – Twin Spans closest to town and Riveredge, whose entrance is near the ramps to the Delaware Memorial Bridge.
Buttonwood sits at the southern end of the Riveredge complex, but not where Molton Rogers built it. In 1996, the home was moved about 300 feet to the southeast, closer to the river, because its original location stood in the way of where Zenith wanted to build a manufacturing and warehouse facility on a site of roughly 70 acres.
Location and ownership issues
Myriad complications related to the property’s location and ownership complicate any discussion of Buttonwood’s future.
Years ago, Buttonwood’s riverfront vistas would have made it a real estate agent’s dream. Today the old mansion is hemmed in. Reaching the property by motor vehicle requires a two-mile drive through the Riveredge industrial park. There is no direct link from New Castle’s historic district. To make that connection with a pedestrian/bicycle path would require the city to secure permission from the owners of the Twin Spans complex.
Advocates for Buttonwood’s preservation say that its location on the edge of an industrial park disconnected from old New Castle is making it harder to build support and secure funding for the project.
Ownership of the building adds another layer of complexity to the preservation effort.
In 1996, when the mansion was moved, Zenith Home Corporation was its owner, and Zenith signed agreements to maintain the structure. Subsequently, Zenith sold its property – the manufacturing/warehouse facility and Buttonwood – to Stag Industrial, a Boston-based real estate investment trust, and then leased it back from Stag. Under the lease, Orcutt said, Zenith is responsible for all the expenses and maintenance, but it does not have a voice in what might ultimately become of Buttonwood.
That situation, Camponelli said, made it difficult to persuade Zenith to pay for the roof replacement because the expense would not yield any operational benefit to the company.
Fortunately, Orcutt said, Zenith received a “really good price” from F&J Builders LLC to take on the project.
Camponelli and others see two possible paths forward for a restored Buttonwood: transformation into offices under private ownership or preservation as a museum or other community use under the auspices of a nonprofit organization.
Either arrangement would require action by Stag Industrial. Neither Orcutt nor Camponelli has any idea of Stag’s plans for Buttonwood. A company representative could not be reached for comment.
Who cares about Buttonwood
Camponelli, whose father and grandfather once served on the New Castle City Council, has spent nearly two years securing advocates to fight for Buttonwood’s preservation. His supporters include: Emmons, who is assistant director of the Center for Historic Architecture and Design at the University of Delaware in addition to his Preservation Delaware position; Tommy Wilson, one of the Trustees of the New Castle Common, a trust established in 1764 to preserve and protect the common lands of New Castle; members of the Tjaden family, who lived in the mansion and its adjacent tenant house and farmed the land for nearly 60 years, starting in 1938; and Francis Biddle, owner of F&J Builders.
Biddle said he became impressed with the property while putting on the new roof. “If I could make it into our office, I’d take care of it,” he said.
Lisa Kauffman of Ridgely, Maryland, has fond memories of Buttonwood.
“I would stay with my grandparents [Melvin and Gwendolyn Tjaden] sometimes. I was very small when they lived there,” Kauffman said. Her grandparents moved out of the house in the 1980s, when she was about 14 years old, she said.
Buttonwood today doesn’t quite resemble the “grand mansion” she recalls from her childhood, Kauffman said, primarily because the entrance stairs and the large porches that spanned the length of the house in both front and rear did not survive the relocation in 1996. “We used to sit on the front porch, in rocking chairs, for hours,” she said.
Kauffman, who has not visited Buttonwood in several years, was pleased to learn that the roof has been replaced. “To think that anyone would destroy the house would be devastating to me,” she said.
Wilson said he has “run into a brick wall” in his efforts to secure funds for the preservation effort. The Trustees of the New Castle Common often contribute to projects run by nonprofit organizations, he said, but Buttonwood is owned by an out-of-state business.
“To think that anyone would destroy the house would be devastating to me."Lisa Kauffman of Ridgely, Maryland, whose grandparents used to live in the Buttonwood home.
Accessibility may be a greater concern. “I can’t speak for the 13 people on board,” he said, “but the feeling seems to be ‘why put money into something that the people can’t even get to?’”
If the city government could be persuaded to secure an easement to create a pedestrian/bicycle path from the historic district through the industrial park to Buttonwood, that might make the trustees more interested in supporting the restoration, Wilson said.
But city officials have had no significant discussions about that possibility, according to Suzanne Souder, acting city council president. Developers of a proposed mixed-use residential-retail complex in the industrial park have floated the idea of such a path into the historic district but did not suggest who might pay for it, she said.
Whether the matter is a pathway or help with financing a restoration, “they basically need money and, like most cities, we don’t have a lot of money hanging around,” Souder said.
A preferable long-term solution, Wilson said, would be for the mansion to be acquired by the New Castle Historical Society, which already receives support from the trustees to maintain other historic buildings in the city.
However, Emmons said, restoration of Buttonwood will likely require some grants to cover the costs, even if the interior is in relatively good condition. One possible source would be federal or state historic preservation tax credits, he said. These programs give property owners a credit against their income or certain other taxes for a percentage of their approved restoration costs. Several factors go into determining the amount of the tax credit, including the size of the project, the building’s intended use and whether the owner is a business, a resident or a nonprofit organization, according to Kara Briggs, historic tax credit program manager in the state Historic Preservation Office.
It is unclear whether Buttonwood would qualify for credits because it is not yet listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It might qualify for that designation, some New Castle officials believe, but two potential obstacles are that it is not located within a designated historic district and it has been moved from its original location, although only by about 300 feet.
Other qualifications could factor into Buttonwood’s eligibility. For federal tax credits, the property must be income-producing, which would require transformation into an office or similar use. Delaware tax credits can be approved for residential uses, but the mansion’s location at the far end of the industrial park makes it less likely that it would be restored as a home.
Delaware Preservation Fund rules don’t allow applications for another grant for Buttonwood until 2025, Emmons said.
“There’s not a lot of government funding for brick-and-mortar restorations but other sources are available,” he said.
One avenue that might be worth pursuing, Emmons said, would be to link Buttonwood’s restoration to the Black heritage of the nearby Buttonwood community and the role of African Americans in New Castle’s history.
“With James Booth’s position on abolition, there’s a lot of connectivity. Maybe there’s a win-win there,” Camponelli said.
Remaining hopeful
Buttonwood’s supporters are not sure what will happen next.
“We’re not in the business of preserving historic houses,” Zenith’s Orcutt says, adding that that company will work with Camponelli to apply for government and private grants next year.
Camponelli is hopeful that recent and future personnel changes in city government and the Trustees’ board will lead to positive actions. “As political changes happen, maybe we can gain interest,” he said.
There are no plans now, Wilson said, “but we’re not going to quit.”
