Between ocean and lake, Delaware’s most expensive residence

For dozens of centuries, it’s been highly prized land.

Long before it was part of the United States and Delaware, natural assets drew Native Americans to the coastal land between freshwater lakes and Atlantic Ocean now known as Rehoboth Beach. Freshwater for obvious reasons; the beach and ocean for summer breezes.

Archaeological studies have determined that this area of Delaware, for a long period of pre-colonial time, hosted the largest seasonal encampment of Native Americans along the North American continent’s Eastern Seaboard.

In the colonial period, pirates anchored off the Delaware coast to row ashore and fill casks with freshwater from the lakes. When troops from invading British ships in the War of 1812 left the mouth of Delaware Bay and headed down the coast to get freshwater denied them by an unaccommodating Lewes, local militia beat them to the punch and drove them off the beach in front of the largest of the lakes.

Now those unusual freshwater lakes so close to the sea - which may have once had Native American names - are called Lake Comegys, Silver Lake and Lake Gerar. At the southern edge of Rehoboth Beach’s corporate limits, Silver Lake is the largest of the three.

Between the lake and the ocean is a dune-protected strip of land studded with low-profile pines and houses. Margaretta Lammot du Pont Carpenter bought that unique stretch of property between Rehoboth Beach and Dewey Beach in the early 20th century. She and her husband, Robert Ruliph Morgan Carpenter, nestled a classic, shake-shingled beach cottage behind the dunes there as a summer retreat. Her father, Lammot du Pont, was one of the early principals in the DuPont Company, and her husband worked for and was also an officer in the rapidly expanding enterprise.

At the time Margaretta and her husband married, her oldest brother, Pierre S. du Pont - she was the youngest of 11 children - was president of the company. Heavily involved in the munitions industry, the company factored heavily in World War I. Coming out of that war, the gunpowder company was booming - literally and figuratively.

When Margaretta and her husband were building their Rehoboth Beach cottage, Pierre was building his Longwood estate, and public schools all over Delaware to improve the educational skills of black and white students. The Lewes School on Savannah Road, and the Frederick Thomas School built for African-American students behind it on DuPont Avenue, were two of nearly 100 schools funded by Pierre in that era.

Other members of the Carpenter family built summer cottages - primarily children of Margaretta and her husband - on adjacent properties that fronted on Prospect and Penn streets at the south end of Rehoboth Boardwalk.

The property and houses had extra celebrity cachet. Margaretta’s husband owned the Philadelphia Phillies baseball team. He ceded management, and eventual ownership of the team, to their son Ruly Carpenter Jr. Ruly built the team into a perennial contender, including the National League pennant-winning Whiz Kids in 1950 and the 1980 World Series champions.

After several decades of Carpenter-family ownership, the Phillies were sold after the 1980 series win. A good time to sell. Ruly’s family continues to own three cottages across the street from the cottage his mother and father built. 

Family subdivides property

Over the decades, members of the family further subdivided and sold off half-acre lots. Most of the resulting 13 lots have since sold for millions of dollars, and are now occupied by large homes with commanding views of the Atlantic Ocean and Silver Lake.

Margaretta Carpenter’s original cottage occupies two of those lots. When it was purchased about 19 years ago by Meredith Townsend, she became the first owner not related to the du Ponts. She fully restored and expanded the seven-bedroom cottage to give it contemporary touches and better views of the sea and lake. Now she has decided to sell the property.

According to listing agent Bryce Lingo, the asking price of $14.9 million makes it the most expensive single-family residential property currently on the market in Delaware. Townsend also owns an adjacent, unencumbered lot to the south.

In the meantime, the properties have actually grown, thanks to beach replenishment projects in Dewey Beach. “Every time they do a replenishment project in Dewey,” said Lingo, “some of that sand naturally moves up the coast along the lake properties.  The beach there is two times as wide now as it was 20 years ago. There’s actually a second dune building in front of the homes.”

Shell House, as the original cottage came to be known through the years, is a vintage, early 20th-century Rehoboth Beach structure that rambles off in several directions on its property.

Lingo says there has been serious interest in the property, but no deal yet. He hopes that whoever buys will retain and enjoy beach living in the unique cottage now approaching its century mark. But he’s also a realist, and he understands the value and rarity of ocean lots that also front on the Delmarva Peninsula’s largest freshwater lake.

Location, location, location.