Maryland

Situated along the Chesapeake Bay, the world’s largest estuary, Marylanders could not help but embrace boatbuilding for both commercial and recreational purposes. Responding to the singular conditions of the Chesapeake Bay and the requirements of the fishing, crabbing, and oystering industries, Maryland boatbuilders created such distinctive sailing vessels as the log canoe, brogan, bugeye, pungey, crabbing skiff, two- and three-sail bateaux, and the fishing shanty. Also originating from broadly recognized forms are the Chesapeake schooner, sloop, skipjack, and the Baltimore Clipper.

Much has been written about the transformation wrought on the American landscape and social patterns by the interstate highway system since its creation in 1956. The construction of I-95 on the East Coast is perhaps the most important example, transforming rural outposts into bedroom communities and creating a series of sprawling metropolitan areas where there was once a clearer demarcation between city and country. This impact is particularly evident in Maryland, where I-95 travels northeast to southwest through Cecil, Harford, Baltimore, Howard, and Prince George’s counties.

From the moment of its founding in 1790, the District of Columbia changed its Maryland neighbors. The federal city was created from Maryland and Virginia property ten miles square on either side of the Potomac River. In 1846 the Virginia portion, including Alexandria, retroceded to the Commonwealth, leaving only the original Maryland territory to accommodate the national capital. 

In 2010 the last remaining house on Holland Island off the coast of southern Dorchester County was subsumed by the Chesapeake Bay. The former residents left long ago in 1918 when erosion and rising water levels forced the once thriving town of watermen and their families to move to the mainland. The vulnerability of the Delmarva peninsula, which has been slowly sinking since the last Ice Age, makes it a startling early warning case study in climate change sea-level rise.

Among Maryland’s most distinctive domestic building forms is the five-part Palladian house, consisting of a central block flanked by hyphens and terminating wings. It first appeared in Maryland in and around Annapolis in the 1760s, embraced by the city’s wealthier classes. It spread throughout the Chesapeake region, serving in rural areas as the centerpiece of a plantation or along the urban fringes as a country retreat or gentleman’s farm.

The term “Chesapeake” has been applied to a basic house form prevalent within the Western and Eastern Shore regions from the period of early settlement through the eighteenth century. In early Maryland it appeared as a one-story-and-loft frame dwelling of either one or two rooms, with a steeply pitched gable roof. Its design and construction were based upon English vernacular building traditions adapted to suit local conditions, both material and economic. It encompassed heavy timber framing joined by mortise and tenon, with a large chimney at one or both ends.