St. James is the oldest church in Wilmington, a parish dating to 1729 with a Gothic Revival sanctuary built in 1839 at Third and Market downtown. The history runs deep: the original building's bricks went into the current one, Cornwallis quartered troops on the site during the Revolution, and the parish still holds the Ecce Homo altar painting captured from a Spanish pirate ship in 1748. Beyond services, the sanctuary doubles as one of the city's best-sounding rooms and hosts classical concerts, including the Vivace International Music Festival's summer showcase series. A fixture of every downtown historic walking tour, with the graveyard and architecture worth a slow lap on their own.
