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A Walker's Guide to Annapolis Sights & History
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By Jean B. Russo
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Maryland.com
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 | | | Annapolis National Historic Marker |
City Dock is the heart of the historic district and of the colonial seaport that has been the capital of Maryland since 1695. From here you can see across the Severn River to Greenbury Point, site of the first English settlement in Anne Arundel County; across the Chesapeake Bay to Kent Island, the first English settlement in Maryland; and across Spa Creek to the “Maritime Republic of Eastport,” an area annexed to Annapolis in 1951. The dock area and adjoining Market Space can be the starting point for several walking tours of Annapolis. This guide will offer routes through three different areas of town: the Spa Creek side of the city, the central core leading from Market Space up the State House and beyond, and the Severn River side of town. These can be done individually or combined into one or two tours.
During the colonial period, the Bay with its many navigable tributaries made the whole tidewater region accessible to ships from Great Britain. Because most planters used their own wharfs to export tobacco and to import European goods, there was no need for a large seaport like Boston, Philadelphia, or Charleston. Annapolis' importance and growth depended on its role as seat of Maryland's government.
Before the Revolution, there were fewer than 1,500 people in Annapolis, yet it was the center of wealth, culture, and crafts until the 1770s, when it was surpassed by Baltimore. Despite the city's small size, visitors were impressed with its genteel society and the speed with which Annapolitans adopted the latest English fashions.
Today the dock is known as "ego alley," the place where boat owners show off as they pass in review before Annapolitans and visitors. But this harbor is also a working port, as it has been since the seventeenth century. Crab boats use it in the summer and oystermen during the winter months. If you walk along the north side of city dock to Susan Campbell Park, you’ll find a National Park Service-sponsored Gateways Program exhibit that highlights the relationship of the city to the Bay since its initial settlement.
The area surrounding city dock has been a focus of activity for over three hundred years. During the colonial period, ships docking here included slavers bringing captive Africans for sale to local planters. Perhaps the best known slave brought to America was Kunta Kinte, whose story was told by his descendant, Alex Haley, in the book Roots. You can see a bronze plaque commemorating that event in the brick pavement near the water's edge. Dedicated by Alex Haley in September 1981, the plaque memorializes Kunta Kinte and honors the struggle against adversity of all people who arrived in America in bondage. A nearby sculpture depicts Haley reading to a group of children and a series of ten bronze plaques on the adjacent wall contain messages based on themes of reconciliation and healing taken from Roots. Across Market Space, next to the Market House, the sidewalk contains an inlaid granite compass rose, whose bronze centerpiece contains a world map with Annapolis at its center. A nearby display provides more information about each element of the memorial.
 | | Beth Rubin | | Alex Haley sculpture welcomes visitors to Kunta Kinte Memorial. |
If you stand anywhere along Market Space and scan around the waterfront, you'll see a panorama of three hundred years of Annapolis architecture. The building located at the intersection of Main and Compromise Streets was once a warehouse, confiscated from its Loyalist owner, Daniel Dulany, during the Revolution for storage of food supplies for the Revolutionary troops. Nearly destroyed by a devastating waterfront fire in 1790, the building was rebuilt by 1810 and housed the store of George and John Barber. The other end of the block was the site of the bakery in which the fire started. Rebuilt immediately, 99 Main became the store of merchant Lewis Neth in the early nineteenth century and will soon lead a new life as a center for Annapolis history operated by Historic Annapolis Foundation. The adjacent bank building is a modern structure carefully designed to enhance the 18th-century Georgian building next door. Across Main Street, the early 20th-century store built by merchant Aaron Lee Goodman, whose name is still carved across the top of his building, dominates the corner of Main and Market Space. The restored 1858 Market House stands at the head of the dock and beyond it is Middleton Tavern, one of several buildings in town that once housed a colonial tavern.
In the eighteenth century, inns or taverns (“ordinaries” in the language of the day) were places where residents and visitors gathered to do business, discuss politics, and socialize. They housed social clubs, held auctions, posted tobacco and wheat prices, provided offices for itinerant physicians and dentists, served as post offices for hand-carried letters, and hosted balls and traveling entertainments. Horatio Samuel Middleton first leased this Market Space property in 1743. Later named "The Sign of the Duke of Cumberland," the tavern was the meeting place of gentlemen's clubs, such as the fashionable Jockey Club and the Tuesday Club, and saw Washington, Jefferson, and other prominent men as guests. Middleton also ran a ferry service to the eastern shore, operated a shipyard, and carried on a general merchandise business from the tavern.
The Central Core
If you walk away from the water, around the left end of the Market House, you can approach the State House by one of the town’s most picturesque streets. Cornhill and adjoining Fleet Streets (named after streets in the City of London) look much as they did in the late eighteenth century, except at that time the street surface was merely dirt, not pavement. Tradesmen and craftsmen leased the modest buildings, which housed several taverns and shops of local artisans. At 37-39 Cornhill, John Brewer operated a tavern and a dry goods business. Records show that Thomas Jefferson bought gloves, salt, and cotton stockings from Brewer in the winter of 1783-1784. After St. John’s College opened, Brewer’s widow Susannah rented rooms to students. In the 19th century, the house was divided into two units, both privately owned. Notice the plaques beside the doors. Historic Annapolis Foundation has placed these markers, which are color-coded to identify date of construction, on buildings of architectural importance throughout the city. The red color that you see here designates the 18th-century colonial period.
When you reach State Circle, the small brick building to the right of the State House is known as the Old Treasury. This sturdily-built, cross-shaped structure was erected between 1735 and 1737 to serve as the office issuing Maryland's first paper money. After the Revolution, the state treasurer’s office was located here, giving the building its name. The property is now a state historic site, managed by Historic Annapolis Foundation. A panel in the entranceway provides more detail about the building’s history.
If you walk past the Old Treasury and up the steps toward the State House, you’ll see one of the cannons brought to Maryland by the first settlers. These colonists numbered close to 150 and arrived in 1634 on two sailing ships, the Ark and the Dove. Their settlement, on a tributary of the Potomac River in southern Maryland, was named St. Mary's City and served as the colony’s first capital. The colonists mounted their cannon to protect St. Mary's from possible attack. Over time the river bank eroded and the cannons fell into the St. Mary’s River. Two hundred years later, several were discovered; this one was brought to Annapolis as a reminder of Maryland's beginning in 1634.
In 1695 the small village then known as Ann Arundell Town (after the wife of Cecilius Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore) became the second capital of Maryland. Royal Governor Francis Nicholson drew up a new town plan, inspired by the Baroque plans used in European cities. He placed two circles on the highest points of land, situating the State House on the higher and the Anglican Church (St. Anne’s) on the lower, with streets named for points of the compass radiating out from the circles. This design, then the most sophisticated in English America, still frames views of the town's principal buildings and vistas of the water more than three hundred years later. Nicholson left Annapolis in 1698 to become governor of Virginia, where he laid out the City of Williamsburg, also in a Baroque plan but without circles.
As you look around State Circle, you can see a number of 18th century buildings. To the far left of the State House is a white building with a widow's walk and red roof, built in the 1720s. After 1783, it was occupied by John Shaw, Maryland's best known cabinet maker, who came to Annapolis from Scotland. Many pieces of Shaw's beautiful and valuable furniture are still in existence in museums and private collections; a few pieces are on display in the State House. Shaw, like many 18th-century businessmen, had many jobs. He was also State armorer, made coffins, sold imported goods, and oversaw final construction of the State House dome.
The first State House in Annapolis, built on this site in the 1690s, was destroyed by fire in 1704. The second, built upon the foundations of the first, continued in use until 1772, when it was razed to make room for this larger building in the Georgian style that predominated in England during the reigns of the three Kings George. The present State House is the oldest building in continuous legislative use in the fifty states and is topped by the largest free-standing wooden dome in America, made of cypress timbers and held together with wooden pegs. Just as the building itself is the third on the site, so too it took three tries to achieve the present dome. A hurricane destroyed the first small copper cupola soon after its completion in 1774. The second attempt leaked badly. Although work began on the present dome in 1785, it was not completed until 1794, sixteen years after the legislature first occupied the building.
To enter the State House, you must walk around the building to the entrance on the opposite side of the circle. A photo id will be necessary for admission. Once inside the State House, if you walk through the central hall to the last door on the left, you will be in the Old Senate Chamber. In addition to its historic importance, this room exemplifies the emphasis Georgian architecture placed on symmetry and balance. The door to the left of the fireplace has no handle because it is not a working door; its sole purpose is to balance the working door on the right. Two of the desks and one of the chairs are original pieces from John Shaw’s workshop. Above the fireplace hangs Charles Willson Peale’s painting of General George Washington after the battle of Yorktown in 1781. Behind Washington stands his aide, the Marquis de Lafayette; on the right is Washington's young aide and secretary, Maryland-born Tench Tilghman, who carried news of the victory over the British to the Congress then meeting in Philadelphia.
The Old Senate Chamber has been the scene of many important events in both Maryland and American history. First used by the State Senate in 1779, it also housed the national Congress from November 1783 to August 1784, when Annapolis was the nation’s ninth capital.
Two events of critical importance to the new country took place in this room during the session of Congress held here. The figure of George Washington, in full military dress, commemorates the general’s appearance before the Congress on 23 December 1783. After eight years as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, Washington took part in a carefully-scripted ceremony of resignation, written by a congressional committee that included Thomas Jefferson. Washington entered the room, took off his hat, and bowed to the Congress before starting his speech. Members of Congress tipped their hats to acknowledge Washington, and then replaced them on their heads. The purpose?: To establish the authority of the civilian government over the military, one of the most important principles of American freedom. As soon as the resignation ceremony ended, Washington left to spend Christmas with his family at Mount Vernon.
Three weeks later, on 14 January 1784, Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris, formally ending the Revolutionary War and making Annapolis the first capital of the independent United States.
The original 18th-century section of the State House contains additional exhibit rooms open to the public. The room directly across the hall from the Old Senate Chamber displays portraits of the Calvert family. The Silver Room, also on the left side of the central hall, contains the 48-piece silver service created in 1906 by Samuel Kirk & Sons, famous Baltimore silversmiths, for the wardroom of the new battle cruiser USS Maryland. Citizens and schoolchildren donated $5,000 to purchase the silver, which depicts nearly two hundred scenes from Maryland history. After the battleship Maryland, which served in World War II, was decommissioned in 1947, the silver returned here. In June 1992, the state sent four pieces of the silver service to the Navy to be displayed aboard the newly commissioned nuclear submarine, USS Maryland.
On each side of the doorway are two large paintings by Francis Blackwell Mayer, who lived in Annapolis in the late nineteenth century. The one on the right depicts the Mass of Thanksgiving celebrated by the first settlers on St. Clement's Island in the Potomac River on 25 March 1634, an event remembered today in the annual Maryland Day celebration. The one on the left depicts Maryland's own tea party, which took place at Annapolis just ten months after the Boston Tea Party. The brig Peggy Stewart arrived in October 1774, carrying about 2000 pounds of tea from England. When local Sons of Liberty learned that the ship's owner had paid the hated tax on tea, they aroused the entire city. Fearing for the safety of his family, Stewart ran his ship aground and then set fire to it himself.
As you walk back toward the exit, when you cross the marble stripe in the floor you are moving from the 18th-century State House into the 20th-century addition. You will pass on your right a plaque honoring Matthew Henson, who was born in Charles County, Maryland in 1866. At the age of thirteen, Henson walked to Baltimore and got a job as a cabin boy on a sailing ship, whose captain taught him mathematics and navigation. Henson accompanied explorer Robert Peary on a trip to Nicaragua to find a route for a canal to the Pacific Ocean and on seven expeditions to the Arctic and polar regions. Henson was one of five men to accompany Peary on the final push to the North Pole in April 1909. Because Henson was in better physical condition, he broke a path for Peary and was thus the first to reach the Pole. Recognition of Henson's accomplishments came late in life, but before his death in 1955, he received a Congressional Medal, was awarded honorary degrees from Howard University and Morgan College, and became a member of the Explorers Club. Henson Bay in northwestern Arctic Canada is named after him.
The rooms on either side of the new section house the legislature, which meets each year beginning in January for ninety days. The room on the left is occupied by the 141 members of the House of Delegates and the room on the right by the 47 State Senators. When the legislature is not in session and the doors of these rooms are open, you can see four life-size portraits on the side walls of the Senate chamber that portray Maryland’s four signers of the Declaration of Independence. On the left wall are William Paca, three-term governor and a federal judge, and Thomas Stone, who was initially reluctant to take the bold step of declaring independence. On the right are Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Roman Catholic among the signers, and Samuel Chase, later a U.S. Supreme Court justice. Note also the Tiffany skylight in each chamber.
As you exit the State House, to your left you can see the residence of Maryland’s governor and the spire of St. Anne’s Church beyond. These will be described more fully in the section that tours the Spa Creek side of town. The neo-Georgian buildings you see in front of you are various Maryland State offices built in the twentieth century. Directly in front of you is Lawyer’s Mall, which features sculptures celebrating the accomplishments of Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993). The central figure depicts Marshall as a young lawyer. Seated opposite him on one bench is the figure of Donald Gaines Murray. Marshall’s first major victory in the battle for school integration won Murray’s admission to the University of Maryland Law School. The other bench holds two schoolchildren to symbolize Marshall’s most significant legal victory: the decision in Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka et al. declaring segregated public education unconstitutional. Marshall, who was born in Baltimore, received a law degree from Howard University in 1933. He worked as counsel for the NAACP from 1934 until 1961, was a judge on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals from 1961 to 1965, and served as solicitor general of the United States from 1965 to 1967. The first African American appointed to the Supreme Court, Marshall served from 1967 to 1991.
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