Exhibitions and Demonstrations

Nation of Inventors, Hagley Museum’s new, permanent exhibition, explores diverse stories of American innovation.

High on a bank of the Brandywine River overlooking the original powder mills, E. I. du Pont, founder of the DuPont Company, built his home. For almost a century the Georgian-style home and surrounding complex of buildings and gardens served as the center of family and business life.

The first Du Pont black powder was made in these powder yards in 1804 launching one of the longest standing and most innovative American enterprises since this country’s founding.

The Crowninshield Garden is a ca. 1920s neoclassical garden built on the terraced ruins of Eleutherian Mills.

Over the 120 years that the Du Pont powder yards were in operation on the Brandywine, thousands of workers from diverse backgrounds lived, worked, and died in communities that surrounded the yards. In many ways, life in these communities was very different from life in other industrial towns.