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The Walnut Street YMCA and YWCA opened in September 1940 to much excitement and anticipation within the African American community in Wilmington, Delaware. Jeanne D. Nutter, PhD, an oral historian, has compiled two other books on African Americans in Delaware. She has amassed an array of historical images from the archives and collections of the Walnut Street YMCA, the Delaware Historical Society, the Washam family, and numerous members of the local African American community.

During segregation, the building became the center of cultural, athletic, and civil rights activities of African Americans in the area. Both youth and adults benefited from the numerous offerings. The activities were impressive, with an award-winning basketball team and an expansive swim program that produced outstanding swimmers and divers. The beautifully designed facility offered an indoor swimming pool, bowling alley, auditorium, cafeteria, library, gymnasium, workshop, game room, meeting rooms, and dormitories. Care was taken to enhance the interior with paintings by noted African American artist Edward Loper Sr. and others. The exterior was adorned with sculptural friezes that paid homage to such luminaries as Marion Anderson, Booker T. Washington, Paul Robeson, and George Washington Carver. The illuminated clock tower became a beacon for the community.

Smyrna, Clayton, and Woodland Beach, Delaware, share a history born from early settlers with big dreams, landowners who helped grow their importance on the regional stage, and industries that shaped the local economy. The story of these communities is wrapped around transportation, great location, and fertile agricultural soil. Smyrna, beginning as the settlement of Salisbury and then Duck Creek Village, sprang up on its river namesake before moving to Duck Creek Crossroads, where it continued to thrive. Large steamers regularly docked in Smyrna Landing to take shipments of grain, fertilizer, and even passengers to Philadelphia. The installation of the train depot, called Smyrna Station, cemented the importance for a renewed generation of history by almost instantly creating the town of Clayton. To the east, Woodland Beach enjoyed a surge of popularity, boasting a Ferris wheel, dance hall, and beer garden.

Marian Cruger Coffin (1876-1957), one of the first American women to work as a professional landscape architect, may not be a household name; however, with designs at some of America's foremost horticultural institutions, it should be. While Coffin's designs can be seen at locations as varied as Winterthur, New York Botanical Garden, Mount Cuba Center, and the University of Delaware, Gibraltar is perhaps one of her most important commissions. In 1916, Coffin was introduced to the owners of Gibraltar, a country estate home situated high on a roughly six-acre site in Wilmington, Delaware, by her longtime friend Henry Francis duPont. Beginning that year, Coffin transformed the grounds of the early-19th-century estate into a paradise of romantic gardens that seamlessly merged the Beaux-Arts classicism of her Massachusetts Institute of Technology training with the complex flower garden style of Beatrix Farrand, whom she much admired. While the gardens fell into disrepair following the death of their first owner, they were eventually restored and are now open to the public, allowing all who visit to enjoy their beauty.

Launched in Wilmington in 1997, Kalmar Nyckel—The Tall Ship of Delaware—is one of the region’s great educational resources, a floating classroom and inspirational platform for a broad array of land-and sea-based programs.

An accurate replica of the original Swedish naval vessel that launched the colony of New Sweden in the Delaware Valley in 1638, today’s Kalmar Nyckel voyages over 2,000 nautical miles and reaches more than 30,000 students, passengers, and visitors a year. A photographer’s dream wherever she goes, Kalmar Nyckel embodies America’s maritime heritage and has become one of Delaware’s defining treasures.

Samuel W. Heed, Esq., is the senior historian and director of education at the Kalmar Nyckel Foundation, where since 2008 he has been developing the programs, exhibits, articles, and documentaries that bring the Kalmar Nyckel story to life and give it meaning. Heed serves on a number of nonprofit boards, including the Council of American Maritime Museums. The Kalmar Nyckel Foundation archives provided the primary resources for this book.