The Wilmington Historic District encompasses much of the downtown area and is one of the largest urban historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places. Walking the tree-lined streets between the riverfront and the residential blocks gives a coherent sense of what a prosperous 19th-century Southern port city looked like — far more complete than most comparable American cities, which sacrificed their historic fabric to urban renewal.
The architecture spans the 18th through early 20th centuries: Federal-style mercantile buildings near the river, Greek Revival churches, and street after street of Italianate and Queen Anne townhouses in the residential blocks. The concentration of intact 19th-century domestic architecture is exceptional — Wilmington escaped the worst of the urban renewal era largely because the city's economy stagnated after the Civil War and there was little pressure to replace older buildings.
Start at the riverfront and walk north through the historic blocks, detouring along Market Street to see the sequence of churches (St. James Episcopal, First Baptist, First Presbyterian, and the Basilica of St. Mary) that give the city's ecclesiastical architecture its unusual density and quality.