History
The first building on the Mount Clare property was built by John Henry Carroll, barrister Charles Carroll's brother, (1723–1783), in 1754, and was probably eventually incorporated into the larger house. Charles inherited the property after John's death. The property consisted of 800 acres from the much larger Georgia Plantation, which had belonged to their father, Dr. Charles Carroll. Mount Clare overlooked the northwestern shore of Ridgely's Cove of the Middle Branch and Ferry Branch of the Patapsco River, where some wharves and docks existed along with the Baltimore Iron Works, one of the largest industrial enterprises of colonial America. Charles began construction of the house between 1757 and 1760.
This area had originally been near the first selected site by the appointed town commissioners for the new Baltimore Town, laid out in 1729. A different location, further northeast on the Basin, head of the Northwest Branch of the Patapsco River, was chosen after the landowner John Moale objected to the project on the theory that he had located important iron ore deposits there that he intended to eventually mine and exploit. One hundred and twenty years earlier, during the first explorations and mapping by the famed Captain John Smith, (1580–1631), of the northern Chesapeake Bay, on his 1608 map he had labeled what is now called the Patapsco River as Bolus River, from the Latin word meaning clay, usually holding iron mineral deposits.
Charles Carroll the Barrister, (1723-1783), began building the present 2+1⁄2-story Georgian style central block, incorporating his brother John's kitchen and flanking it with a wash house and an orangery. In 1768, Charles added the projecting bay and Palladian window that dominate the entry facade today. The kitchen wing was enlarged and an office wing was added for balance, resulting in a symmetrical nine-part elevation. [7] The house was completed about 1767. [5]
After Barrister Charles' death in 1783, his widow made further changes, connecting the outbuildings and adding a greenhouse to the orangery and expanding the laundry, resulting in a complex about 360 feet long. These additions, along with other alterations, were in the more current style of Federal architecture which is similar to but slightly different from the older Georgian. [7]
By the 1820s, nearby to the east as the street grid of the city began growing and inching closer towards the southwest with its rows and lines of streets and alleys filled with the dense development of small brick rowhouses of various styles. Under the competitive economic pressure to the City and the Port of Baltimore of the 1825 massive construction project with the opening of the northern Erie Canal, with its quicker and cheaper access from the Great Lakes to New York City and the proposed Chesapeake and Ohio Canal along the Potomac River to the south from Georgetown and Washington, D.C. to the western Appalachian Mountains and Cumberland, Maryland caused a long reaction among leading citizens and leaders of the city. The forming by several businessmen and industrialists, after hearing details of the incredible new transportation technology now being used in Great Britain from several of its leading merchants, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, was formed in 1827 which included Charles Carroll of Carrollton, (1737–1832), as one of its directors and the important ceremonial position of setting the First Stone for the railroad at the end of the big parade, festivities and ceremonies on Independence Day, July 4, 1828, near the old house.
The soon-to-be-famous foundries, shops, forges and other equipment sheds and shacks would be known as the Mount Clare Shops off East Pratt Street near future Arlington Street, where a small Mount Clare Station was erected in the early 1830s as one of its first passenger terminals and joined by its landmark B. & O. Roundhouse in 1884, (future site after 1953 of the Railroad Company's new B. & O. Transportation Museum, later reorganized independently as the B&O Railroad Museum), in addition to the main temporary one at the southeast corner of West Pratt and South Charles Streets, near the Basin's waterfront piers. The Mount Clare name was applied to the nearby growing neighborhood in the early 19th century, home to an increasing complex of foundries, shops, mechanics, industries and businesses supplying equipment, workmen, contractors and businesses, all revolving around the business of the railroad. Attracted to the growing industrial capabilities of the area were industrialists, inventors, manufacturers such as Peter Cooper (1791–1883) of New York, who designed the first steam engine locomotives for the railroad when it quickly shifted from the horse-drawn power used during its first four years. Ross Winans (1796–1877) further developed locomotives and other equipment, followed by his son Thomas Dekoven Winans, with his Russian contracts and work. Hundreds of workers with specialized industrial skills, both citizens and recent immigrants, worked in southwest Baltimore and lived in the surrounding streets and communities. Other nearby neighborhoods were Poppleton, Union Square, and East Baltimore, along with the earlier Pigtown, (also known by the gentrified 1980's as Washington Village).
The mansion left the Carroll Family's ownership in 1840, and the house's flanking hyphen wings were demolished. During the American Civil War, when Baltimore was occupied in May 1861 by northern state militia and then regular army forces, Mount Clare was used as a headquarters by Union Army forces who fortified the site and named it Camp Carroll, one of a series of earthen forts surrounding Baltimore, then making it the second most-fortified city in the world at that time, after Washington, D.C.
After the War, and a period of use as a beer garden (called the Schutzengarten) by the German community in Baltimore, the house and adjacent acreage 70 acres (28 ha) facing Washington Boulevard and the Gwynns Falls and Middle Branch of the river were purchased in 1890 by the City of Baltimore as its third large landscaped park. [5]
Beginning in January 2012, a collaborative operating agreement between the City of Baltimore's Department of Recreation and Parks and the B&O Railroad Museum and The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America (Maryland Chapter) (a descendants' heritage group. The local Dames had been administering the site since 1917. The B&O Railroad Museum, located a mile northeast of Mount Clare, provides seasonal train rides to and from its Mount Clare Shops museum complex for visitors, and has developed tours and exhibits noting the railroad and Civil War history of the site. The soon-to-be-constructed/restored/renovation of the second small passenger station (Mount Clare Station) to supplement its original, little-known, waterfront first station on West Pratt Street (between South Charles and Light Streets along with an extensive complex of workshops, furnaces, warehouses and foundries to maintain the new growing transportation system a mile to the northeast on the edge of the estate were named the Mount Clare Shops. The Colonial Dames with their experienced staff, volunteers, docents and historians will be telling the story of the mansion itself and its furnishings/decorations with the colonial lifestyle of both the Carroll family (and several subsequent owners in the 19th century), their relatives and visitors, with the slaves/servants employed in the house, gardens, and outlying grounds and plantation outside of old Baltimore Town.
Charles Carroll was an American statesman from Annapolis, Maryland. He was the builder of the Baltimore Colonial home Mount Clare (1760), and a delegate to the Second Continental Congress in 1776 and 1777.
The B&O Railroad Museum is a museum and historic railway station exhibiting historic railroad equipment in Baltimore, Maryland. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) company originally opened the museum on July 4, 1953, with the name of the Baltimore & Ohio Transportation Museum. It has been called one of the most significant collections of railroad treasures in the world and has the largest collection of 19th-century locomotives in the U.S. The museum is located in the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's old Mount Clare Station and adjacent roundhouse, and retains 40 acres of the B&O's sprawling Mount Clare Shops site, which is where, in 1829, the B&O began America's first railroad and is the oldest railroad manufacturing complex in the United States.
Mount Vernon is a neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland, located immediately north of the city's downtown. It is named for George Washington's Mount Vernon estate in Virginia, as the site of the city's Washington Monument.
Doughoregan Manor is a plantation house and estate located on Manor Lane west of Ellicott City, Maryland, United States. Established in the early 18th century as the seat of Maryland's prominent Carroll family, it was home to Founding Father Charles Carroll, a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence, during the late 18th century. A portion of the estate, including the main house, was designated a National Historic Landmark on November 11, 1971. It remains in the Carroll family and is not open to the public.
The Phoenix Shot Tower, also known as the Old Baltimore Shot Tower, is a red brick shot tower, 234.25 feet (71.40 m) tall, located near the downtown, Jonestown, and Little Italy communities of East Baltimore, in Maryland. When it was completed in 1828 it was the tallest structure in the United States.
Pigtown is a neighborhood in the southwest area of Baltimore, bordered by Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to the east, Monroe Street to the west, Russell Street to the south, and West Pratt Street to the north. The neighborhood acquired its name during the second half of the 19th century, when the area was the site of butcher shops and meat packing plants to process pigs transported from the Midwest on the B&O Railroad; they were herded across Ostend and Cross Streets to be slaughtered and processed.
Union Square is a neighborhood located in the Sowebo area of Baltimore. It dates to the 1830s and includes a historic district of houses and commerce buildings.
The President Street Station in Baltimore, Maryland, is a former train station and railroad terminal. Built in 1849 and opened in February 1850, the station saw some of the earliest bloodshed of the American Civil War (1861-1865), and was an important rail link during the conflict. It is the oldest surviving big-city railroad terminal in the United States.
The Homewood Museum is a historical museum located on the Johns Hopkins University campus in Baltimore, Maryland. It was listed as a National Historic Landmark in 1971, noted as a family home of Maryland's Carroll family. It, along with Evergreen Museum & Library, make up the Johns Hopkins University Museums.
Evergreen Museum & Library is a historic house museum and research library in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. It is located between the campuses of the Notre Dame of Maryland University and Loyola University Maryland. It is operated by Johns Hopkins University along with Homewood Museum; both make up the Johns Hopkins University Museums.
The Carroll Mansion is a historic building and museum located in Baltimore, Maryland.
The Mount Clare Shops is the oldest railroad manufacturing complex in the United States, located in Baltimore, Maryland. It was founded by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) in 1829. Mt. Clare was the site of many inventions and innovations in railroad technology. It is now the site of the B&O Railroad Museum. The museum and Mt. Clare station were designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961.
St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal Church, more commonly called Old St. Paul's Church today, is a historic Episcopal church located at 233 North Charles Street at the southeast corner with East Saratoga Street, in Baltimore, Maryland, near "Cathedral Hill" on the northern edge of the downtown central business district to the south and the Mount Vernon-Belevedere cultural/historic neighborhood to the north. It was founded in 1692 as the parish church for the "Patapsco Parish", one of the "original 30 parishes" of the old Church of England in colonial Maryland.
The Baltimore Terminal Subdivision is a railroad line owned and operated by CSX Transportation in the U.S. state of Maryland. The line runs from Baltimore to Halethorpe along the original Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) line, one of the oldest rail lines in the United States and the first passenger railroad line. At its east (north) end, it connects with the Philadelphia Subdivision; its west (south) end has a junction with the Capital Subdivision and the Old Main Line Subdivision.
"Mount Winans" is a mixed-use residential, commercial and industrial neighborhood in the southwestern area of the City of Baltimore in Maryland. Its north, south and east boundaries are marked by the various lines of track of the CSX Railroad. In addition, Hollins Ferry Road running to the south towards suburban Baltimore County in the southwest and further connecting with adjacent Anne Arundel County to the southeast, draws its western boundary.
Lakeland is a neighborhood in south Baltimore, Maryland. Its borders are Annapolis Road on the east, the Baltimore city/county line to the south, a CSX/MARC Railroad line to the west, and the same railroad line to the north.
The Belmont Estate, now Belmont Manor and Historic Park, is a former plantation located at Elkridge, Howard County, Maryland, United States. Founded in the 1730s and known in the Colonial period as "Moore's Morning Choice", it was one of the earliest forced-labor farms in Howard County, Maryland. Its 1738 plantation house is one of the finest examples of Colonial Georgian architectural style in Maryland.
The Hockley Forge and Mill are a collection of colonial-era industrial buildings along the Patapsco River near modern Elkridge, Maryland. Located at the river's head of navigation, the site is a flat section of land along the Patapsco River valley with steep embankments on either side. At its 19th-century peak, the site held more than 30 industrial buildings.
Carroll Park is a nearly 117-acre (47 ha) public park located in the historic Washington Village-Pigtown neighborhood in southwestern Baltimore, Maryland. The park is bordered by Washington Boulevard to the south, Monroe Street to the west, Bayard Street to the east, and the Mount Clare Branch of the Baltimore Terminal Subdivision railroad to the north. The park also extends westward beyond the Montgomery Ward Warehouse and Retail Store to include the Carroll Park Golf Course.
