LOCAL LANDMARK:

Carroll Park: A Monticello in Baltimore?

Making the case for Heritage-Smart Development in Baltimore City

Visionary realist that he is, for several years in the mid-1980s, our Mayor, and then our Governor promoted efforts to transform what many are familiar with simply as “the old mansion in Carroll Park” into a regional tourist destination, funding a National Park Service Master Plan that called the historic site worthy of claiming “its place of honor among its contemporary Colonial estates, such as Mount Vernon, Monticello, and Stratford Hall.”

Farming, milling, ship building, and bog iron deposits were what first brought colonists to the area just west of the harbor. Later in the 1730s, when nearby Baltimore Towne boasted five houses, the timber and the iron resources in the area persuaded Dr. Charles Carroll and his partners in The Baltimore Company Iron Works to locate what would become the mid-Atlantic region’s largest iron foundry on the Gwynns Falls, just west of present-day Carroll Park. Bars of “pig iron” were produced at the furnace and exported to England from Carroll’s shipyard at the mouth of the Patapsco’s Ferry Branch. Thus, began one of Maryland’s earliest manufacturing industries and the accumulation of great wealth for Dr. Carroll and his partners.

A National Historic Landmark, Mount Clare is a Georgian mansion built in 1756 by Charles Carroll, Barrister

Inheriting his one-fifth interest in the furnace and the adjacent property in the 1750s, the European-educated son of Dr. Carroll looked more to establishing his legacy than to mining the provinces for natural resources. In 1756, with a newly minted “Esquire” from England’s Middle Temple, and on the path to a distinguished legal and political career, the young Barrister Carroll began construction of a “country seat” on the high hill descending towards Ferry Branch. At its completion in the 1770s, “Carroll’s Hundred” sported an elegant Georgian Mansion (Mount Clare) with multiple flanking dependencies and outbuildings, stables, and a state-of-the-art Orangery to cultivate the latest in lite cuisine--citrus! Later, the Carrolls’ Orangery would provide General Washington with a prototype for one at Mount Vernon.

For almost 120 years, from 1732 to 1850, the Carroll family maintained the huge 2,300-acre tract running from Ferry Branch on the south to what is now Frederick Road on the north, selling off a portion in 1830 to the B&O Railroad for the first rail line in the U.S. Originally a land patent from King George, the property was known as .... Georgia!, and later as Carroll’s Hundred and Mount Clare. During the years that the Barrister and his wife Margaret occupied the mansion, Mount Clare hosted the likes of John Adams, General George Washington and his Aide de Camp, Lieutenant Tench Tilghman (Margaret’s cousin). It was from here and from his house in Annapolis, that Carroll, as a member of Maryland’s Council of Safety, pondered the momentous decisions facing the colony. As we know, he and the Council went with destiny, sending the young Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a cousin of the Barrister, along with Jefferson, Hamilton and the rest of the gang to Philadelphia and into history. And this, from what recent archaeology is telling us, is just the tip of the iceberg of Carroll Park’s remarkable colonial past.

Ash stains from 2000 Orangery excavation revealed ingenious 1770's hypocaust system (heating ducts).

How can something we haven’t known about for all this time be that important? Well, Baltimoreans grow up thinking we have only one really important historic site. That’s Fort McHenry. The Shot Tower and The Flag House are just for school trips. “The Fort” is down there on the other side of the harbor where it’s hard to remember how to get there. We think about it on the 4th of July, with the fireworks, and when they play the National Anthem. They put it on TV. That’s our local paradigm. Until more recently, self-promotion wasn’t part of the Crab-town psyche. Unlike Boston, with dozens of Revolutionary sites and at least a dozen historical and preservation commissions to protect them, we in Baltimore cling most comfortably to our 19th-century roots. The B&O Museum comes in at just under number one for this reason. There are other explanations for this.

For 10,000 years before the Carrolls, the earth was warming again and the paleo world of America’s Woodland peoples gradually took shape. The promontory running close to the west of the upper Chesapeake’s great natural harbor was strategically valuable as a lookout for commerce and military advantage. The earliest archaeological evidence in the park is from this paleo-Indian period, millennia before the Carrolls ever left Ireland. Eons passed, over and over the hilltop’s strategic advantage worked to shape its story with different players, but for many of the same reasons. But, once the leap was made from pre-history to the Carrolls, historical events began their rapid, tumbling progression, with the ancient hilltop mutely recording the archaeological drama in layer after silty layer as the forest dwindled and the quietude was carried away on the wind.

It is a large and elegant House. It stands fronting looking down the River, into the Harbour. It is one Mile from the Water. There is a most beautifull Walk from the House down to the Water. There is a descent, not far from the House. You have a fine Garden--then you descend a few Steps and have another fine Garden--you go down a few more and have another. It is now the dead of Winter, no Verdure, or Bloom to be seen, but in the Spring, Summer, and Fall this Scaene must be very pretty.

Another Harborplace? No, but part of its tiara. In Baltimore, they say it takes about 20 years to get a good idea off the ground, and we’re just about on schedule, give or take a decade. Baltimore City owns the historic property in Carroll Park, but over the years, two groups have advocated on behalf of its interests--The National Society of Colonial Dames of America in Maryland and The Carroll Park Foundation. Since 1917, the NSCDA has occupied Charles Carroll’s original 1756 mansion and operated it as a museum house--Mount Clare--curating a collection of decorative arts and furniture, a high percentage of which is original to the Carrolls. The CPF, licensed by the city in 1991, has conducted archaeological research and developed a capital plan for the restoration of the 18th-century landscape and the development of an outdoor living history museum, in keeping with Baltimore City’s 2001 Master Plan for Carroll Park. And, what a jewel it will be, just minutes by shuttle from the B&O Museum, the National Aquarium, Harborplace and the new Reginald F. Lewis Museum!

Archaeologists use selective site testing to locate hidden resources.

Let’s get physical. Or, if you prefer, let’s get to the bottom line. With a National Historic Landmark, a world-class heritage site, and our town’s recent mention in an International Tourism Guide as one of the ten best venues on the globe, Baltimore has a potential amenity in Carroll Park worth millions in annual tourism revenue. Ideally situated as an incentive for an additional night’s stay at nearby Harborplace, a restored Carroll’s Hundred, together with Mount Clare Museum, will add just the critical mass to West Baltimore’s heritage scene to encourage second-night bookings to take in attractions convenient to, but only a few minutes from the Inner Harbor.

So, what’s one less ventilation tunnel? The answer lies in who built it--the invisible inhabitants again. Without the tunnel, the tantalizing bits and pieces of pottery, and all the flotsam and jetsam that archaeologists use to study the invisible Americans at Carroll’s Hundred, their legacy is lost. In 2000, when the Governor’s Task Force to Study the History and Legacy of Slavery in Maryland issued its 500-page report, it made significant mention of the Carroll’s Hundred project. The Task Force recommended that for this and other such sites in Maryland “...slavery is a part of our heritage associated with many resources, sites, edifices, corridors, and artifacts that will be forever lost unless we invest methodically in their protection and preservation. Though slavery formerly tore us apart, it is a part of our heritage with great potential to bring all Marylanders together.... Moreover, through tourism, slavery and its legacy can become a core part of economic development plans of the State and its local jurisdictions.”

Fortunately the reality of the physical deterioration of Carroll Park has not been lost on city and state officials. Over the past several months, organizations such as the Maryland Historical Trust, Preservation Maryland, and CPF are calling for renewed action to protect this national treasure. The Trust is drawing up new guidelines to support its existing historical easement agreement with Baltimore City that would bring existing protections for the site up to the standards required for National Historic Landmarks.