Amstel House is one of New Castle's finest Georgian mansions, built around 1738 and named after the Dutch city that gave New Castle its original name, Nieuw Amstel. The house was owned by Nicholas Van Dyke, a governor of Delaware during the Revolutionary War period, and George Washington is said to have attended a wedding here in 1784.
Today it functions as a museum of colonial domestic life, managed by the New Castle Historical Society. Rooms are furnished with period pieces — pewter, china, needlework, and furniture typical of an upper-class colonial Delaware household. The adjacent Dutch House, one of the oldest brick houses in the state (dating to the late seventeenth century), is also under the society's care and is included in the same admission.