Market Street Houses

This handsome row of early stone houses extends up the street from the Lea House (WL52) and, like it, was saved by Old Brandywine Village, Inc. The Tatnall Houses, at 1803 (c. 1770 with alterations of the 1840s) and 1805 (c. 1850) Market Street, were rescued from being demolished for a high-rise apartment building. The former was famed as Revolutionary War general Anthony Wayne's headquarters, where Washington held council. Restoration in the 1970s removed nineteenth-century porches and mansard roofs. Edward Tatnall, nineteenth-century botanist and owner of Wawaset Nursery, kept a telescope on the balustraded rooftop of his house at 1805 Market. The titanic explosion of some DuPont powder wagons on 14th Street in May 1854 smashed windows here. The Tatnall-Febiger House is at 1807 (1735 rear section; c. 1807 front); the William Lea House at 1901 (c. 1800, restored 1963–1966). Old Brandywine Village razed an incompatible nineteenth-century town house at 1903 and restored the houses at 1905 (c. 1805) and 1907 (c. 1785) in the 1970s, removing a commercial storefront from the latter.