Two CHAD Nominations Selected for National Register of Historic Places

Delaware recently had two historic sites added to the National Register of Historic Places. The Center for Historic Architecture & Design authored both nominations as part of a Certified Local Government grant for New Castle County for 2019.  

The Isaac and Florence Budovitch House in Wilmington (upper left) was listed on January 30, 2020, under Criterion C for its mid-twentieth century Contemporary architecture. Designed by Edgar Tafel, who studied under renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright as an original apprentice in Wrights Taliesin Fellowship, the dwelling exhibits distinctive Prairie School/Wrightian influence and characteristics of organic architecture espoused by Wright. Built in 1955-56 by Ernest DiSabatino & Sons, it has been virtually unaltered in the more than 60 years since its construction and maintains exceedingly high levels of integrity.

Newark Union Church and Cemetery in the Wilmington vicinity (lower left) was listed on February 6, 2020. It is locally significant under Criteria A and C, as it represents the early history of European settlement in northern Delaware, and religious practices in Delawares Brandywine Hundred over the course of nearly three centuries. It also embodies architectural traditions in the region during the mid-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries especially stone construction and late Gothic Revival design. The site was originally a Quaker burial site (c. 1688). By 1704 there was a log Quaker meeting house on the site. The current stone building was built in 1845 as a non-denominational church for Methodists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians. By 1888 the Methodists took sole possession of the building, and in 1906 it was remodeled to its current appearance.