A potpourri of miscellaneous news SCRIBBLED IN A REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK

EXPANSION APPROVED: The Historic Review Board approved a revised plan for adding a service wing while restoring the Blue Ball dairy barn. Joseph Healy, a consultant to the state Division of Parks & Recreation, told the county board that the roof line has been changed to "try to blend the addition to the

agrarian architecture of the barn" Some corrugated metal siding will be used to mimic the appearance of a shed which once stood there. The glass façade will be shaded with sun screening to tone down its modernistic appearance and air-conditioning equipment will be place in a pit with a metal grating leaving only a  residential-size condenser, he said. Mark Chura, manager of planning, preservation and development for the division, said that it expects to put the barn restoration out to bid by the end of March, looking for work to begin during the summer. He said it will take 15 to 18 months to complete. Changes in the plan,

A model of the planned addition (left) and courtyard behind the restored Blue Ball dairy barn. A rear view of the barn is shown at the right of the photo.

which must still receive county Department of Land Use approval, were made to satisfy objections the review board raised as a previous hearing. They have not yet been presented to the general public, although they were shared with the executive committee of the Council of Civic Organizations of Brandywine Hundred, which had raised some objections. The barn is to be a prominent feature of the planned Alapocas Run portion of Wilmington State Parks.

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A key County Council committee rejected a request to help Simpson United Methodist Church acquire a specially equipped van and decided to no longer consider grant requests from churches and religion-based organizations.

Those steps were taken on Feb. 11 by 4-3 votes at a meeting of Council's finance committee, but, since all Council members sit on all committees, the same sentiments presumably would prevail  before Council itself. The unexpected debate arose when Karen Venezky announced she was tabling the church's bid for $2,500 toward the $14,000 cost of the van to transport disabled and elderly people because one of several intended uses listed in the application was to take them to services. She said that made it a church-state issue. William Tansey said, however, that was an incidental use and moved to have the request restored to Council's agenda, which would have been tantamount a recommendation for approval.

After a discussion in which Penrose Hollins sided strongly with Tansey and Robert Weiner endorsed Venezky's position, Tansey's motion failed. Robert Woods cast the other favorable vote. Tansey then argued that the same decision should apply to all future grant requests from any group with church ties. Hollins said that would cut off "a lot of folks deserving of our support [for their] good work in our community." Council president Coons and Patty Powell joined Hollins on the short side of the vote which approved Tansey's second proposal. Woods told Delaforum after the meeting that he would let the matter rest there as "just an expression of the sense of the committee," which he chairs.

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A STEP CLOSER ... MAYBE: County Council received competing proposals for an ordinance to establish policy for indemnifying county workers to the extent of paying fees for outside counsel during investigations and court actions related to performance of their duties. The proposals, offered by Council President Christopher Coons and by Karen Venezky with the support of Patty Powell and Robert Woods, differ mainly  in their provision for having the county reimbursed if the employee is found or pleads guilty in a criminal case. Introduced on Feb. 11, they are slated for a vote on Feb. 25. In the meantime, there no doubt will be efforts to reconcile them into a single measure. Read previous Delaforum article

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The Marquis de Lafayette returned to Delaware to help commemorate the 225th anniversary of the fledgling United States with France. The last time the Revolutionary War hero was here was in 1826.

This time he spent an afternoon at the Robinson House on Philadelphia Pike in Claymont where, in the person of re-enactor Loic Barnieu, he told of having left France against the wishes of his king to aid the Revolutionary cause only to find the Continental Congress unwilling to accept his  services until he

An honor guard awaits the arrival of the French nobleman, whom Congress commissioned a brevet major general in General Washington's Colonial army. The guard was mustered by the Cecil County (Md.) Militia.	Lafayette presents an autobiographical of how he came to espouse the American cause at the Naamans Heritage Association hosted event.

agreed to pay all his own expenses. From then on, as they say, the rest is history. The king, Louis XVI, was himself toppled by revolution after his soldiers helped the Yanks chase the troops of British King George III from most of his American colonies. Lafayette, imprisoned during the French revolution and forced into political exile by Napoleon Bonaparte, was more honored on this side of the Atlantic than on his own.

Historic consultant Robert Selig, who has documented Delaware's role in the final campaign of the war in preparation for the coming commemoration of the Washington-Rochambeau Revolutionary Route, told the commemoration gathering on Feb. 8 that, despite cultural and language differences and limited commercial relations, the United States and its  first allies have remained so, with a few relatively minor glitches, to this day. The National Park Service is expected to designate the route taken by American and French regulars and militia  to final victory at Yorktown an historic trail. The route literally passes the doorstep of the Robinson House along what is now known at Philadelphia Pike.

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THE WAY IT WAS:
Caesar Rodney rides where the New Castle County Courthouse once stood. The 'Brandywine granite' structure served from 1880, when Wilmington replaced New Castle as county seat, until just after World War I when it was torn down to make way for Rodney Square. The courthouse was located in the Public Building (seen in background of the photograph) from then until last summer when it moved to the new state court building at Fourth and King Sts. The post card dates from between 1906 and 1908.
This is another in a series of 'then and now' views of Wilmington. It draws on the extensive collection of local picture post cards accumulated by Terry Craig. Current views of the same scenes are Delaforum digital photos. See previous views in this series.

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OLD WITH THE OLD; IN WITH THE NEW: The new Brandywine Branch of the New Castle County Library on Foulk Road is scheduled to open on Apr. 12, a Saturday, with a public ceremony. Concord Pike Library at Talleyville will close for good on Feb. 23 so its collection can be moved to the new facility. Outstanding books may be put into its book depository until April or returned to another library in the county system -- Elsmere and Claymont being the nearest. Concord Pike Library has operated since the 1960s. There has not yet been a determination -- at least not one to which the public has been made privy -- about the fate of that building, which is owned by the Wilmington Institute Free Library, a separate system although subsidized by county government.

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