Wilmington is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Delaware. It lies at the confluence of the Christina River and Brandywine Creek, near where the Christina flows into the Delaware River. The population was 70,898 at the 2020 census. It is the county seat of New Castle County. Wilmington is one of the major cities in the Philadelphia metropolitan area and the core city of the Wilmington metropolitan division, which had 740,426 residents in 2020.
First settled by Swedish settlers in 1638, the modern city of Wilmington was built on the site of Fort Christina, which was the first Swedish settlement in North America, and Kristinehamn, which was planned to be the capital of New Sweden. Control of the area shifted before it was formally incorporated as the Village of Willingtown in 1731, then later granted Borough Charter within the Delaware Colony as Wilmington in 1739, named after Spencer Compton, 1st Earl of Wilmington. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, Wilmington developed as an industrial hub with industries in shipbuilding, milling, and later chemical manufacturing, largely influenced by DuPont. Its modern economy is focused on national banking and finance institutions.
History
Wilmington is built on the site of the settlement Kristinehamn, which was planned by Peter Mårtensson Lindeström to be the capital of the colony of New Sweden, and Fort Christina, the first Swedish settlement in North America. The modern city also encompasses other Swedish settlements, such as Timmerön / Timber Island (along Brandywine Creek), Sidoland (South Wilmington), Strandviken (along the Delaware River near Simonds Gardens) and Översidolandet (along the Christina River, near Woodcrest and Ashley Heights).
The area now known as Wilmington was settled by the Lenape (or Delaware Indian) band led by Sachem (Chief) Mattahorn just before Henry Hudson sailed up the Len-api Hanna (translated as "People Like Me River," now known as the Delaware River) in 1609. The area was called "Maax-waas Unk" or "Bear Place" after the Maax-waas Hanna (Bear River) that flowed by (present Christina River). It was called the Bear River because it flowed west to the "Bear People", who are now known as the People of Conestoga or the Susquehannocks.
The Dutch heard and spelled the river and the place as Minguannan. When settlers and traders from the Swedish South Company under Peter Minuit arrived in March 1638 on the Fogel Grip and Kalmar Nyckel, they purchased Maax-waas Unk from Chief Mattahorn and built Fort Christina at the mouth of the Maax-waas Hanna (which the Swedes renamed the Christina River after Queen Christina of Sweden). The area was also known as "The Rocks", and is located near the foot of present-day Seventh Street. Fort Christina served as the headquarters for the colony of New Sweden which consisted of, for the most part, the lower Delaware River region (parts of present-day Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey), but few colonists settled there. Dr. Timothy Stidham (Swedish:Timen Lulofsson Stiddem) was a prominent citizen and doctor in Wilmington. He was born in 1610, probably in Hammel, Denmark, and raised in Gothenburg, Sweden. He arrived in New Sweden in 1654 and is recorded as the first physician in Delaware.
The most important Swedish governor was Colonel Johan Printz, who ruled the colony under Swedish law from 1643 to 1653. He was succeeded by Johan Rising who, upon his arrival in 1654, seized the Dutch post Fort Casimir, located at the site of the present town of New Castle, which was built by the Dutch in 1651. Rising governed New Sweden until the autumn of 1655, when a Dutch fleet under the command of Peter Stuyvesant subjugated the Swedish forts and established the authority of the Colony of New Netherland throughout the area formerly controlled by the Swedes. This marked the end of Swedish rule in North America.
Beginning in 1664, British colonization began; after a series of wars between the Dutch and English, the area stabilized under British rule, with strong influences from the Quaker communities under the auspices of Proprietor William Penn. A borough charter was granted in 1739 by King George II, which changed the name of the settlement from Willingtown, after Thomas Willing (the first developer of the land, who organized the area in a grid pattern similar to that of its northern neighbor Philadelphia), to Wilmington, presumably after the British Prime Minister Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, who took his title from Wilmington, East Sussex, in southern England.
Although during the American Revolutionary War only one small battle was fought in Delaware, British troops occupied Wilmington shortly after the nearby Battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777. The British remained in the town until they vacated Philadelphia in 1778.
In 1800, Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, a French Huguenot, emigrated to the United States. Knowledgeable in the manufacture of gunpowder, by 1802 DuPont had begun making the explosive in a mill on the Brandywine River north of Brandywine Village and just outside the town of Wilmington. The DuPont company became a major supplier to the U.S. military. Located on the banks of the Brandywine River, the village was eventually annexed by Wilmington city.
The greatest growth in the city occurred during the Civil War. Delaware, though officially remaining a member of the Union, was a border state and divided in its support of both the Confederate and the Union causes. The war created enormous demand for goods and materials supplied by Wilmington including ships, railroad cars, gunpowder, shoes, and other war-related goods.
By 1868, Wilmington was producing more iron ships than the rest of the country combined and it rated first in the production of gunpowder and second in carriages and leather. Due to the prosperity Wilmington enjoyed during the war, city merchants and manufacturers expanded Wilmington's residential boundaries westward in the form of large homes along tree-lined streets. This movement was spurred by the first horsecar line, which was initiated in 1864 along Delaware Avenue.
The late 19th century saw the development of the city's first comprehensive park system. William Poole Bancroft, a successful Wilmington businessman influenced by the work of Frederick Law Olmsted, led the effort to establish open parkland in Wilmington. Rockford Park and Brandywine Park were created due to Bancroft's efforts.
Both World Wars stimulated the city's industries. Industries vital to the war effort – shipyards, steel foundries, machinery, and chemical producers – operated around the clock. Other industries produced such goods as automobiles, leather products, and clothing. In desperate need of workers more and more minorities moved to the north and settled in places like Wilmington. This led to tensions that occasionally boiled over like the Wilmington, Delaware race riot of 1919.
The post-war prosperity again pushed residential development further out of the city. In the 1950s, more people began living in the suburbs of North Wilmington and commuting into the city to work. This was made possible by extensive upgrades to area roads and highways and through the construction of Interstate 95, which cut through several of Wilmington's neighborhoods and accelerated the city's population decline. Urban renewal projects in the 1950s and 1960s cleared entire blocks of housing in the Center City and East Side areas.
The Wilmington riot of 1968, a few days after the April 4 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., became national news. On April 9, Governor Charles L. Terry Jr. deployed the National Guard and the Delaware State Police to the city at the request of Mayor John Babiarz. Babiarz asked Terry to withdraw the National Guard the following week, but the governor kept them in the city until his term ended in January 1969. This is reportedly the longest occupation of an American city by state forces in the nation's history.
In the 1980s, job growth and office construction were spurred by the arrival of national banks and financial institutions in the wake of the 1981 Financial Center Development Act, which liberalized the laws governing banks operating within the state, and similar laws in 1986. Today, many national and international banks, including Bank of America, Capital One, Chase, and Barclays, have operations in the city, typically credit card operations.
Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 17.0 square miles (44 km2), of which 10.9 square miles (28 km2) is land and 6.2 square miles (16 km2) is water. The total area is 36.25% water.
The city sits at the confluence of the Christina and Delaware rivers, approximately 33 miles (53 km) southwest of Philadelphia. Wilmington Train Station, one of the southernmost stops on Philadelphia's SEPTA rail transportation system, is also served by Northeast Corridor Amtrak passenger trains. Wilmington is served by I-95 and I-495 within city limits. In addition, the twin-span Delaware Memorial Bridge, a few miles south of the city, provides direct highway access between Delaware and New Jersey, carrying the I-295 eastern bypass route around Wilmington and Philadelphia, as well as US 40, which continues eastward to Atlantic City, New Jersey.
These transportation links and geographic proximity give Wilmington some of the characteristics of a satellite city to Philadelphia, but Wilmington's long history as Delaware's principal city, its urban core, and its independent value as a business destination makes it more properly considered a small but independent city in the Philadelphia metropolitan area.
Wilmington lies along the Fall Line geological transition from the Mid-Atlantic Piedmont Plateau to the Atlantic Coastal Plain. East of Market Street, and along both sides of the Christina River, the Coastal Plain land is flat, low-lying, and in places marshy. The Delaware River here is an estuary at sea level (with twice-daily high and low tides), providing sea-level access for ocean-going ships.
On the western side of Market Street, the Piedmont topography is rocky and hilly, rising to a point that marks the watershed between the Brandywine River and the Christina River. This watershed line runs along Delaware Avenue westward from 10th Street and Market Street.
These contrasting topography and soil conditions affected the industrial and residential development patterns within the city. The hilly west side was more attractive for the original residential areas, offering springs and sites for mills, better air quality, and fewer mosquitoes.
Neighborhoods
The city of Wilmington is made up of the following neighborhoods:
North of the Brandywine River
- Baynard Village
- Brandywine Hills – This neighborhood of approximately 225 homes in northern Wilmington was started in the 1930s. The streets in the neighborhood are named after famous American and English authors, including Byron, Emerson, Hawthorne and Milton. It is bounded by Lea Boulevard, Rockwood Road, Miller Road, and Market Street
- Brandywine Village
- Eastlawn
- Eastlake
- Gander Hill - site of Howard R. Young Correctional Institution
- Harlan
- Ninth Ward – Originally a post-Civil War political creation, the city's Ninth Ward has long been an area with owner-occupied residences. The Ninth Ward was integrated as a result of population shifts in the 1960s and remains a stable, working-class neighborhood.
- Prices Run - west of Northern Boulevard
- Riverside–11th Street Bridge – in the northeastern part of the city between the Northeast Corridor and Northern Boulevard.
- Triangle – a group of homes built in the 1920s whose corresponding streets along I-95 and Baynard Boulevard and 18th Street and Concord Avenue loosely form a triangle. It is bounded by W 18th St., Baynard Boulevard, Concord Ave., and Broom St.