Home Remodeling in St. Georges, DE
Careful remodeling for the village houses of St. Georges, Delaware, on the north bank of the canal.
St. Georges was settled before 1730 at the head of St. Georges Creek, and a tavern went up in 1735. The main north-south highway came through in 1762, and when the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal opened in 1829 it used the creek, so the village grew where road met waterway. It was incorporated as a town in 1825. The canal also undid it. A lift bridge built in 1923 stood in the middle of the village until January 10, 1939, when a freighter struck it and brought it down. After the federal government took over the canal and a new high bridge sent traffic around the village, all growth stopped, and in 1941 St. Georges gave up its town charter. Today two high bridges carry the through traffic past it, the St. Georges Bridge on Route 13 and the cable-stayed Senator William V. Roth Jr. Bridge on Route 1, opened in 1995.
What remains is a village that stopped where it was. The North St. Georges Historic District, listed on the National Register in 1995, covers 33 acres along Main, Broad, Delaware and Church streets, with 69 contributing buildings dating from about 1719 to 1942. Most are houses, in styles running from the mid-19th-century revivals to late Victorian. Dawson's serves St. Georges, about eight miles north of Middletown, for the work these houses need.
A former town, now county permits
When the charter was revoked, the town's duties passed to the county. That means building permits and inspections in St. Georges come from New Castle County's Department of Land Use, the same office that serves the farmland around it, and there is no village board to apply to. The Register listing is a record of the village's significance rather than a permit step, so the responsibility for keeping the street intact sits with the owner and whoever does the work.
Houses from three centuries
A house in the district might be 18th-century, mid-19th-century with a revival cornice, or late Victorian with a deep porch. Most have had kitchens and bathrooms fitted and refitted over a hundred years of plumbing. The plan that works keeps the front rooms as they are and puts the new kitchen where the old service rooms stood, with cabinets scribed to uneven plaster and new lines run inside partitions. A bathroom is rebuilt from the joists up, with waterproofing under the tile and a fan that vents outdoors. Old joists that were notched for earlier plumbing runs get sistered before the new floor goes down.
Windows, siding and porches
Exterior work is where the care shows on a street this old. Wood windows are repaired where they can be and replaced with units that match the sash and muntin pattern where they cannot. Clapboard on a frame house is patched and painted, or replaced in kind, rather than covered over. Porches are rebuilt with the same posts, rails and trim, and an addition goes at the back, below the main roofline.
Ready to plan a remodel in St. Georges?
Call Dom with the address and the project, or send the details through the form. The walkthrough is free and the estimate comes in writing.