How did a 17th century Dutch town hall get built two hours from DC?

Visitors to tiny Lewes, Delaware, near Rehoboth, might double take at the town’s most unusual building: A replica of the 17th century town hall from Hoorn, Netherlands. Here’s its story.

The Delaware building is the Zwaanendael Museum. It’s a local history museum, built in 1931, commemorating the first European settlement in what’s now Delaware: the Dutch town of Zwaanendael, founded nearby in 1631.

And, um, wiped out by Lenape Native Americans in 1632.

Try and try again

The site was such a desirable location for a town that Dutch colonists built another one at the same location in 1663, which English colonists from Maryland promptly wiped out in 1664. The Dutch regrouped, but the town was again burned by Marylanders in 1673.

In 1674, the Treaty of Westminster officially transfered all Dutch colonies along the US east coast (including what’s now New York City) to England, and in 1682 the English governor of the Delaware colonies renamed the town to Lewes.

Three hundred years later, the State of Delaware wanted a memorial to that history, and the museum was born. 20th Century leaders seem to have chosen to the town hall of Hoorn as a model because Zwaanendael’s founder, David Pieterszoon de Vries, was from Hoorn.

De Vries himself is memorialized as the statue atop the museum:

Along with a unicorn?

Anyway, it’s a fascinating building, with a fascinating history, and a neat monument to the first town in the first state.