The Latimer House

The Latimer House, built in 1852 by local merchant Zebulon Latimer, has housed the Historical Society since 1963 and is currently open to the public as a house museum exemplary of upper-class life in Wilmington during the Victorian period. With 14 rooms containing over 600 historic objects (including furniture, jewelry, ephemera, tableware, tools, and more), the Latimer House lets you step back in time to a more elegant era.

The house, built in the popular Italianate style, was designed to be symmetrical, with a central hallway on each floor opening onto an identical layout on either side. On the first floor, the hallway divides the formal sitting and dining areas on the north side — used for entertaining and special occasions — from the less formal sitting rooms to the south.

Shown here is the south front sitting room overlooking Third Street. The coal-burning fireplace, like all the fireplaces on the first floor, is solid marble. The chandelier, original to the house, originally burned gas; it was converted to electricity by William Latimer, Zebulon's son. The window, which reaches all the way to the floor, can double as a doorway out onto the side porch.

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The Gardens

The Latimer House gardens, enclosed in original stucco and lace-brick walls, overlook historic downtown Wilmington, and have been planted largely with flora authentic to the period.

Here, our garden volunteers clean up the area surrounding our fountain, which originally stood in the Third Street median.

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Touring the House and Gardens

Guided tours of the Latimer House interpreted by our trained docents are available for $10 per person. Members may tour the home free of charge. The Latimer House is located at the corner of Third and Orange Streets in downtown Wilmington. Tickets for all three house museums in Wilmington—the Latimer House, the Bellamy Mansion, and the Burgwin-Wright House—are available for $24.00 from any of the museums.

The house is open for tours at the following times:

Monday through Friday, 10:00 a.m. — 4:00 p.m.
Saturday, 12:00 p.m. — 5:00 p.m.

The last tour begins at 3:30pm.

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Touring the Wilmington Historic District

The Society also sponsors walking tours of downtown Wilmington. The walking tour lasts approximately 2 hours and covers 12 blocks of the historic district. Each house and building on the walk has its own story that is told and it truly shows life in the past and the present. The price per person is $10.00, or $7.00 for groups of twenty or more.