John Anthony of Troy, New York, came to Delaware to participate in the booming peach market. He ordered plans, elevation, and specifications (which survive at Duck Creek Historical Society) and then, unusually for the time, had the house prefabricated, shipping the parts to Delaware by train. As assembled here, Bannister Hall (indicated as “New Home” on D. G. Beers's Delaware atlas of 1868) was a big, fourteen-room frame box with a veranda across the front, a wing at the rear, and an observatory atop a hipped roof (both with brackets). Weathered and unrestored, it stands at the end of a long drive, surrounded by an arboretum of rare varieties of trees. The brick dwelling behind the house (c. 1754) was the original home place on the plantation, most of which has recently been subdivided.