Delaware’s Gilded Age Masterpiece and the Largest French Formal Garden in North America

77 Rooms, 200 Acres, Vintage Automobiles, and a Garden Versailles Would Recognize

There is no shortage of grand du Pont estates in Delaware and the Brandywine Valley. Hagley preserves the industrial origins, Winterthur the obsessions with the decorative arts, Longwood the horticultural ambitions. Nemours is different — it is the one that most directly asks the question: what does a man do when money is essentially no object and he wants to build something magnificent for the woman he loves? The answer, in Alfred I. du Pont’s case, was a 77-room modified Louis XVI château on 200 acres of Delaware countryside, with the largest French formal garden in North America extending from the front door.

Nemours Estate is open Tuesday through Sunday. The estate is closed on Mondays. The estate is seasonal, typically open April through December, with the mansion and Chauffeur’s Garage closing at 4:30 p.m. and the grounds remaining open until 5:00 p.m. Last entry is 4:00 p.m. The estate is closed for approximately two weeks in November for seasonal decorating, closed Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day. Always verify current dates and hours at nemoursestate.org before your visit.

Admission: Day passes are $20 for adults, $10 for children ages 6–16, free for children 5 and under. Gardens-only passes are available at a reduced rate. ACCESS/EBT cardholders receive discounted admission when purchasing tickets at the Ticket House on the day of your visit. Delaware library cardholders can access Nemours free through the Delaware Libraries Museum Pass Program. Free parking is available on-site.

The entrance is located on the campus of Nemours Children’s Hospital — follow signs for Nemours Estate upon arrival.

Alfred I. du Pont and the Building of Nemours

Alfred Irénée du Pont (1864–1935) was the great-great-grandson of E.I. du Pont, founder of the du Pont Company. By the early 20th century he was one of the most powerful industrial figures in America — a co-owner of the DuPont Company during its transformation from a gunpowder manufacturer into the diversified chemical giant it would become.

Alfred was also a man of strong passions, complicated personal relationships, and an unusual combination of aristocratic taste and populist instinct. When he married his second wife, Alicia Bradford, in 1907 following a deeply scandalous divorce that shocked even Delaware’s du Pont family, he set about building her a home commensurate with his fortune and his feelings.

He hired the New York firm Carrère & Hastings — the same architects responsible for the main branch of the New York Public Library — to design a house in the French neoclassical tradition on a 3,000-acre property outside Wilmington. The result, completed in 1910 and named after the ancestral du Pont town in France, was a 47,000-square-foot mansion containing 105 rooms, 77 of which are open to visitors today.

Alfred spent the rest of his life at Nemours. When he died in 1935, he left the property in trust for the Nemours Foundation — an organization he had established to provide healthcare for children, which has evolved into one of the largest children’s health systems in the United States. Nemours Children’s Hospital shares the campus today, a living continuation of Alfred’s philanthropic legacy just beyond the estate gates.

Trivia: The estate contains gates that are said to have come from the palaces of Henry VIII and Catherine the Great, and a clock that once belonged to Marie Antoinette. Whether the provenance of each piece is entirely bulletproof is a matter for collectors; what’s certain is that Alfred du Pont shopped at the very top of the European antiques market.

The Mansion: Self-Guided With Expert Guides Throughout

Nemours operates as a self-guided experience — visitors move through the mansion at their own pace, with knowledgeable estate guides stationed throughout the rooms to share information, tell stories, and answer questions. This format strikes visitors as one of the most satisfying of any great house in the region: you can linger over the rooms that interest you, move quickly through those that don’t, and have genuine conversations with the guides who know the house intimately.

The mansion’s 77 accessible rooms cover the full range of a Gilded Age country house interior: formal reception rooms, a dining room of extraordinary scale, bedrooms each with its own private bath (a remarkable luxury for 1910), a basement bowling alley, a kitchen and servant areas preserved to show the full social organization of the household, and the mechanical systems Alfred du Pont took particular pride in — including industrial-scale refrigeration, water filtration, and electric power that were cutting-edge for the period.

Among the collection highlights: rare 18th-century French furniture, paintings spanning four centuries, tapestries, and decorative objects including Marie Antoinette’s clock and Louis XVI’s clock — two timepieces with more historical resonance than most entire museum collections.

The French Formal Gardens

Nemours is nicknamed the “Versailles of the Brandywine Valley” — a title that requires the gardens to carry a great deal of weight. They do. The formal French gardens extend from the mansion for approximately a third of a mile along a central axis, comprising a sequence of designed spaces arranged in the jardin à la française tradition:

The Long Walk

The central axial vista connecting the mansion to the Achievement Fountain at the garden’s terminus — flanked by bronze elk sculpted by French artist Prosper Lecourtier, framed by allées of clipped trees, and punctuated by classical sculpture throughout.

The Reflecting Pool

A one-acre reflecting pool in the Art Nouveau style, one of the largest ornamental water features in the region.

The Colonnade

A classical memorial structure honoring Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours and his son Éleuthère Irénée, the family patriarchs whose legacy Alfred built upon.

The Temple of Love

A garden folly housing a statue of Diana sculpted by Jean-Antoine Houdon, one of the most celebrated sculptors of 18th-century France and a figure whose work spans the pre-Revolutionary era to the American founding.

The Boxwood Garden

A formal parterre garden of geometric precision, demonstrating the French horticultural tradition at its most architectural.

The Maze Garden

Western Arborvitae hedges forming a navigable maze with a central sculptural element — one of the garden features most popular with visiting children, who experience it with rather more urgency than their parents do.

Woodland and Meadow Areas

Two hundred acres of grounds extend beyond the formal core, including naturalistic woodlands, meadows, and the broader landscape that frames and contextualizes the formal garden composition. Garden and shuttle tours of the grounds are offered seasonally — inquire at the Welcome Center upon arrival.

The Chauffeur’s Garage and Vintage Automobile Collection

Alfred du Pont was a serious automobile enthusiast and early adopter who maintained a fleet of vehicles appropriate to his wealth and the era’s technology. The Chauffeur’s Garage — built in 1914 with an addition added a decade later — houses a collection of five vehicles from the estate’s history, including:

• 1951 and 1960 Rolls-Royce models
• A 1933 Buick Coupe
• 1921 and 1924 Cadillacs

The garage was also home to Alfred’s personal chauffeur and his family, and the building’s residential quarters have been preserved as part of the interpretive experience. A train table for young visitors makes the Chauffeur’s Garage a particularly child-friendly stop on the estate tour.

Visiting Nemours: Practical Notes

• Strollers are permitted in the gardens but not inside the Mansion
• Picnics are encouraged — bring a blanket for the grounds; picnic tables are limited. Water is available for guests throughout the property
• No food is available for purchase on-site — plan accordingly
• Accessibility: The Mansion is ADA-accessible; the paved roads through the property are accessible; the gardens and natural grounds are not
• Photography is permitted for personal use throughout the Mansion and Gardens; professional and photoshoot photography requires advance reservation (email [email protected])
• Nemours does not host private events or weddings

Nemours in the Brandywine Valley du Pont Estate Circuit

Nemours sits within a 15-minute drive of Hagley Museum (E.I. du Pont’s original industrial estate), Winterthur Museum (Henry Francis du Pont’s decorative arts collection), and the Delaware Art Museum in Wilmington — and within 30 minutes of Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square. Each represents a different branch of the family and a different vision of what the du Pont fortune could create. Together they constitute one of the most remarkable concentrations of Gilded Age cultural philanthropy accessible anywhere in the mid-Atlantic.