Contact the Delaware Tourism Office for general information about the area (1-800-441-8846/in Delaware, 302-736-4271). The best source for material about the town is the Mayor and Council’s Office, 220 Delaware Street, New Castle, DE 19720 (302-322-9802). The Amstel House and Old Dutch House museums are open Tuesday through Saturday from April through November; the Read House is open March through December; the courthouse is open year-round. The David Finney Inn, facing the courthouse, provides comfortable lodging in a building most of which dates from the eighteenth century; the phone number is 302-322-6367.

When in the area, plan also to visit the Winterthur Museum and Gardens, near Wilmington, the nation’s foremost collection of American decorative arts (800-448-3883), and the Hagley Museum and Library, the site of the original nineteenth-century Du Pont gunpowder works along the Brandywine outside Wilmington (302-658-2400).