Nemours Estate Facts for Kids

Quick facts for kids Nemours Estate
Nemours Estate from the front
Motto	Yours to Love and to Know
Owned by	Nemours Foundation

The Nemours Estate is a huge country estate in Wilmington, Delaware, United States. It covers about 200 acres, which is like 150 football fields! The estate features beautiful French-style gardens and a large mansion. This mansion looks like a French castle, called a château. It has 105 rooms spread across four floors. The Nemours Estate shares its land with the Nemours Children's Hospital, Delaware. Both are owned by the Nemours Foundation.

History of Nemours Estate
Treasures Inside the Mansion
- Special Clocks and Furniture
Exploring the Gardens
- Garden Highlights
Restoration of the Estate
Images for kids
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History of Nemours Estate

Nemours Estate was built between 1909 and 1910. It was a special gift from Alfred I. du Pont to his second wife, Alicia. The estate got its name from a town in France called Nemours. This town was connected to Alfred's great-great-grandfather, Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours. The mansion was designed by a famous architecture firm, Carrère and Hastings. They built it in the elegant Louis XVI style of French architecture.

Treasures Inside the Mansion

The Nemours mansion is filled with amazing items. You can find rare French furniture from the 1700s. There's also a cool collection of old antiques, artworks, and tapestries. The art includes paintings from the 1500s, works by famous European artists, and early pieces by American artists like Frederic Remington.

Special Clocks and Furniture

One very interesting item is a rare musical clock from around 1785. It was made by David Roentgen and Peter Kinzing. This clock can play four different tunes on a hammered dulcimer and a pipe organ. Another clock in the mansion was made for the French queen Marie Antoinette, but she never received it.

The mansion also has a chair from the 1937 coronation of King George VI. Alfred I. du Pont's third wife, Jessie, attended this event. There's even a chair from Independence Hall, a very important historical building in the U.S. You can also see a portrait of Alfred I. du Pont himself in the mansion.

Exploring the Gardens

Boxwood Garden

Sunken Garden

The Nemours Estate has the biggest and most detailed French formal gardens in North America. These gardens were designed to look like the famous gardens of Versailles in France. The main path from the mansion stretches for about a third of a mile. The grounds are beautifully designed with many plants, fountains, pools, and statues. There's even a carillon tower, which is a tower with bells.

Garden Highlights

Here are some of the special areas you can explore in the gardens:

The Boxwood Garden: This is a French-style garden with neat boxwood hedges. It has a fountain in the middle.
The Colonnade: Built in 1926, this area is a memorial to Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours and his son Eleuthère Irénée du Pont. It was designed by Thomas Hastings.
The Maze Garden: This fun garden has a maze made of tall hedges. In the center, there's a statue called "Achievement" by Henri Crenier.
The Reflecting Pool: This large pool is about 40 feet across and has 157 water jets! It's surrounded by beautiful trees like Japanese cryptomeria and pink horse chestnuts.
The Sunken Gardens: These gardens were designed by Alfred Victor du Pont and Gabriel Masséna. They feature a big lake, grottoes (small caves), and a statue from 1930 by Charles-Marie Sarrabezolles. Alfred V. du Pont was Alfred I. du Pont's only son and an architect.
The Temple of Love: This classical-style temple holds a life-sized statue of Diana from 1780, created by Jean-Antoine Houdon.

Restoration of the Estate

The Nemours Estate closed in 2005 for a big renovation project. It reopened its gates on May 1, 2008. This three-year project cost $39 million! Experts worked to fix and clean everything. They restored furniture, fabrics, tapestries, paintings, and sculptures. The entire electrical system was replaced. The huge 800,000-gallon reflecting pool was drained and repaired. The beautiful formal gardens were also restored, including the plants, design elements, and statues.