Page 40 - The Hunt - Fall 2021

Getting lost in Hagley Museum’s Crowninshield Garden.
STORY AND PHOTOS BY JIM GRAHAM
They say that when one door closes, another opens. And so it was in 1915, when an explosion at Eleutherian Mills rocked the banks of the industrial community along the Brandywine, sending
30 souls across the creek. By 1921, the mills were closing, and parcels of the property were being sold by the DuPont Company. In 1923, Louise du Pont convinced her father, Col. Henry A. du Pont,
to purchase the property. She and her husband, Frank Crowninshield, would move into the home above the derelict yard.
That mansion—the du Pont family home—
sits at the top of a rocky slope overlooking the Brandywine Creek and the mills complex founded in 1803 by Louise’s great grandfather, Eleuthère Irénée du Pont. Over the years, the couple built a garden on the terraced ruins of the first DuPont company industrial site in the United States. Eschewing professional advice, Frank, who’d been one of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, would
38 THE HUNT MAGAZINE fall 2021
Paul Orpello, Hagley’s director of gardens and horticulture.