WILMINGTON, DELAWARE: ST. ANTHONY OF PADUA PARISH CHURCH

When we finished our tour of Old Swedes we moved on to another remarkable but very different building: St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church. This Romanesque Revival church, patterned after the Basilica di San Zeno in Verona, Italy, took seven years to build and was finished in 1926. Much of the work on the building was done by artistically skilled parishioners. It is located in an Italian neighborhood of Wilmington and is famous for the Italian festival held here every spring. 

St. Anthony stands outside as sentinel. As you might be able to tell by his haircut and clothing, he was a Franciscan. 

He lived only 35 years, from 1195 to 1231, and is noted for his brilliant speaking and knowledge of the scriptures, for his dedication to the poor, and as the patron saint of finding both things and lost people--a nice guy to have around. Here he is again in the tympanum, holding what I assume is the Christ child:

One of my favorite things about the church was the Italian cathedral-style doors. The front door has ten panels, each with a caption from the Beatitudes:

 While not as ornate as Ghiberti's famous baptistery doors in Florence, I couldn't help but make the connection:

Ghiberti's baptistery doors, Florence, Italy

WILMINGTON, DELAWARE: OLD SWEDES CHURCH

Delaware, with about 900,000 people, ranks 45th in population among the United States (although 8th for population density), and with only Rhode Island being smaller in area, it is 49th in land mass. By way of comparison, Los Angeles has a population of over 4 million people in one-fourth of the space.

I had never had my sights set on any tourist destinations in Delaware, which I thought of as a tiny, nondescript state, in spite of the fact that it was one of the original Thirteen Colonies and was actually the very first state to ratify the Constitution and thereby the first to be admitted to the Union in 1787. However, Bob wanted to spend some time there so that he could check off the state high point, and while we were at it, we decided we might as well take in the sights, such as they are.

Well, I was all wrong about Delaware. In fact, now I realize we need to return to Delaware because we missed seeing the state capitol building in Dover.

The Dutch and the Swedes, who were the first to colonize Delaware, left their mark on the area. After stopping by the state high point, the first place we visited was Old Swedes Church, a National Historic Landmark built in a single year and consecrated on June 4, 1699.  That's about as old as it gets for structures in the U.S. In fact, the church claims to be "the nation's oldest church building still used for worship as originally built."

The church was consecrated on Trinity Sunday and named "Holy Trinity Church," but over the years it became known as "Old Swedes Church." Information at the site informed us that this stone church is "a rare example of Swedish colonial architecture." The brick bell tower on the front was a much later addition.

DELAWARE: STATE HIGH POINT

In April 2016 we flew to New York City to visit our son, who is a student there. We went a day before he was available so that we could do a little traveling to neighboring states. Bob had several items on his bucket list that he wanted to cross off.

We flew into JFK and picked up a rental car, then got on our way.

It was fun to see one of the famous Brooklyn exit signs. Brooklyn has a very unique personality, that's for sure.

It was a beautiful day for a drive, and we had 135 miles to go to our first destination.

We were on our way to to Delaware high point, 6.5 miles north of downtown Wilmington in northern New Castle County and within a few feet of the Pennsylvania state line. We made several wrong turns on the final approach. It's not like we could see a mountain, a hill, or even a rise in front of us. Eventually we found this robin's egg blue sign:

"Ebright" is the name of the street that dead-ends into the sign. The word "azimuth" means "the angle of horizontal deviation, measured clockwise, of a bearing from a standard direction, as north or south."  A "bench mark," referred to on the sign, is "a marked point of assumed or known elevation from which other elevations may be established." Does this make sense to you? Yeah, me neither. However, this spot is listed as the state high point, even though we were only "in the vicinity of the highest natural elevation in the state." Maybe the exact high point changes from year to year based on roots pushing up sections of the ground, etc.

I wouldn't say the Delaware High Point was the high point of our trip, but it has its own kooky appeal.

It looks like hyacinths do well at high elevations like 447.85 feet above sea level. I was glad to have something to look at:

Only Florida's high point (345 feet above sea level) sits at a lower elevation that Delaware's.