Claymont homes: worker housing, postwar streets and Darley Green
Claymont's housing is mostly postwar but unusually mixed. Census estimates put the median home at 1964, with about a quarter built in the 1950s alone, and only about 41 percent are detached houses, with 22 percent attached and about 31 percent in buildings of five or more units. Two neighborhoods are older. Overlook Colony was built before World War I by the General Chemical Corporation for its workers, and Hickman Row, brick townhomes finished in 1919, housed African-American steelworkers and their families.
Knollwood and Addicks Estates are single-family streets near the train station. The newest layer replaced the Brookview Garden Apartments: Darley Green, whose first homes were finished in 2009, is planned as a mix of 831 townhomes, apartments and shops, and about 14 percent of Claymont's homes now date from 2010 to 2019. A Darley Green door hung in 2009 has well over a decade of daily lifts on its springs, while the opener on a 1950s Claymont house may predate 1993, when federal rules began requiring an extra safety device such as photo eyes or an edge sensor.
