Wilmington is the largest city in the state of Delaware, United States and is located at the confluence of the Christina River and Brandywine Creek, near where the Christina flows into the Delaware River. It is the county seat of New Castle County and one of the major cities in the Delaware Valley metropolitan area. Wilmington was named by Proprietor Thomas Penn for his friend Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, who was prime minister in the reign of George II of Great Britain. According to 2006 Census Bureau estimates, the population of the city is 72,826. Wilmington is located at 39° 44' 55" N, 075° 33' 06" W (39.748563, -75.551581). According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 17.0 square miles. Of that, 10.9 square miles of it is land and 6.2 square miles (36.25%) of it is water.
The area now known as Wilmington was first colonized by settlers from Sweden who in March, 1638, established Fort Christina which served as the headquarters for the colony of New Sweden. Sweden claimed and, for the most part, controlled the lower Delaware River region (parts of present day Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey), but settled few colonists there. Dr. Timothy Stidham (Swedish: Timen Lulofsson Stiddem) was a prominent citizen and doctor in Wilmington. He was born in 1610, probably in Hammel, Skanderborg, Denmark and raised in Gothenberg, Sweden. He arrived in New Sweden in 1654 and is recorded as the first physician in Delaware.
In 1655 the Dutch West India Company arrived and took over the area, renaming it Altena. In 1664 British colonization began, the area stabilized under British rule, with strong influences from the Quaker communities, and was granted a borough charter in 1739 by King George II which changed the name from Willington, after Thomas Willing the first 'developer' of the land who organized the area in a grid pattern similar to that of its northern neighbor Philadelphia, to Wilmington, presumably after Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington.
The greatest growth in the city occurred during the Civil War. Delaware, though officially a Union State, was divided in its support of both the Confederate and the Union soldiers; the northern part of the state was largely Union, while the southern part of the state leaned toward the Confederacy. The war created enormous demand for goods and materials. Older establishments expanded, and many new industries were attracted to the city. The city turned out products including ships, railroad cars, gunpowder, shoes, tents, uniforms, blankets and other war-related goods. By 1868, Wilmington was producing more iron ships than the rest of the country combined and it rated first in the production of gunpowder and second in carriages and leather. Due to the prosperity Wilmington enjoyed during the war, city merchants and manufacturers expanded Wilmington's residential boundaries westward in the form of large homes along tree-lined streets. This movement was spurred by the first horsecar line, which was initiated in 1864 along Delaware Avenue.
The late nineteenth century saw the development of the city's first comprehensive park system. William Bancroft, a successful Wilmington businessman, led the effort to establish open parkland in Wilmington and was heavily influenced by the work of Frederick Law Olmsted. Rockford Park and Brandywine Park owe their creation to his generous donation of land and efforts. In 1860, there were 21,250 people living in the city; by 1920, that number had risen to 110,168.
Both World Wars stimulated the city's industries. Industries vital to the war effort - shipyards, steel foundries, machinery and chemical producers - operated on a 24-hour basis. Other industries produced such goods as automobiles, leather products and clothing.
The post war prosperity again pushed the residential development further out of the city. The 1950s saw a large increase in people living in the suburbs of North Wilmington and commuting into the city to work. This lifestyle was made possible by extensive upgrades to area roads and highways and through the construction of I-95, which cut a swath through several of Wilmington's most stable neighborhoods and contributed to significant population losses in Wilmington. Urban renewal projects in the 50s and 60s cleared entire blocks of housing in the Center City and East Side areas. The riots and civil unrest in the city following the 1968 assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. also contributed to urban emigration. On April 9, 1968, Governor Charles Terry, Jr. deployed the National Guard to the city at the request of Mayor John Babiarz. One week later, Mayor Babiarz requested the National Guard troops be withdrawn, but Governor Terry refused, and kept them in the city until his term ended in January 1969. Urban emigration largely abated, and the city has been able to maintain a population of 70,000 for the last few decades.
The city in the 1980s experienced tremendous job growth and office construction when many national banks and financial institutions relocated to the area after the Financial Center Development Act of 1981 substantially liberalized the laws governing banks operating within the state. In 1986, the state adopted legislation targeted at attracting international finance and insurance companies. Today many national and international banks, such as Bank of America, Chase, Barclays among others have operations in the city; typically their credit card operations.
Beginning in the 1990s, the city launched a campaign to revitalize the former shipyard area known as the Wilmington Riverfront. The efforts were bolstered early by The Big Kahuna (a now defunct nightclub), Kahunaville (a restaurant, bar and arcade which has also since closed) and the Wilmington Blue Rocks minor league baseball stadium. Development continues as the Wilmington Riverfront tries to establish its cultural, economical, and residential importance. Recent high-rise luxury apartment buildings along the Christina River have been cited as evidence of the Riverfront's continued revival. On June 7, 2006, the groundbreaking of Justison Landing signaled the beginning of Wilmington's largest residential project since Bancroft Park was built after World War II.