Hotel Rodney hasn’t changed much in 96 years

If you stood on Second Street in Lewes across from St. Peter’s Episcopal Church today and looked at Hotel Rodney, it would look almost exactly as it does in this 1928 photograph when it was known as the Caesar Rodney Hotel. Built in 1926 and restored in 1989, the structure is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Hotel Rodney now includes 20 rooms and four suites on two floors, and is home to the Rose & Crown restaurant and a few shops on the street level and in the basement. Over the years, the hotel has gone by different names including the New Devon Inn, the Zwaanendael Inn and the Swans’ Inn.

According to a 2011 feature on the hotel in the Washington Post, the “Rodney” of Hotel Rodney refers to the original owners, John and Ruth, who resided in the building with their brood of 12, two of whom governed Delaware in the 1800s. Caleb, who served for less than a year after the death of Gov. John Collins, later ran a grocery store in the space now occupied by the front entryway. The boys are buried across the street at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, a who’s who of Lewes townsfolk.

As the Cape Region continues to change, this is one of many examples in Lewes that not everything is lost to progress.