Whitehall is a colonial home that was built beginning in 1764 near

Annapolis Annapolis ( ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Maryland and the county seat of, and only incorporated city in, Anne Arundel County. Situated on the Chesapeake Bay at the mouth of the Severn River, south of Baltimore and about east o ...

Anne Arundel County Anne Arundel County (; ), also notated as AA or A.A. County, is located in the U.S. state of Maryland. As of the 2020 United States census, its population was 588,261, an increase of just under 10% since 2010. Its county seat is Annapolis, whi ...

in the

Province of Maryland The Province of Maryland was an English and later British colony in North America that existed from 1632 until 1776, when it joined the other twelve of the Thirteen Colonies in rebellion against Great Britain and became the U.S. state of Maryland ...

Horatio Sharpe Horatio Sharpe (1718 – November 9, 1790) was the 22nd proprietary governor of Maryland from 1753 to 1768 under the restored proprietary government of Maryland. Early life Horatio Sharpe was born in Hull, Yorkshire, England in 1718 to ...

, then the

provincial governor A governor is an administrative leader and head of a polity or political region, ranking under the head of state and in some cases, such as governors-general, as the head of state's official representative. Depending on the type of political ...

of the British

colony of Maryland The Province of Maryland was an English and later British colony in North America that existed from 1632 until 1776, when it joined the other twelve of the Thirteen Colonies in rebellion against Great Britain and became the U.S. state of Maryla ...

. The house is located about to the east of Annapolis on a peninsula between Whitehall Creek and Meredith Creek, opposite Sharpe's Point on a branch of

Chesapeake Bay The Chesapeake Bay ( ) is the largest estuary in the United States. The Bay is located in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region and is primarily separated from the Atlantic Ocean by the Delmarva Peninsula (including the parts: the ...

. The site, originally comprised about . The house is a five-part Georgian mansion of great length, only one room deep in the main section. It features elaborate original interior woodwork, attributed to

William Buckland William Buckland Doctor of Divinity, DD, Royal Society, FRS (12 March 1784 – 14 August 1856) was an English theologian who became Dean of Westminster. He was also a geologist and paleontology, palaeontologist. Buckland wrote the first full ...

, and is one of only two pre-Revolutionary houses in the

Thirteen Colonies The Thirteen Colonies, also known as the Thirteen British Colonies, the Thirteen American Colonies, or later as the United Colonies, were a group of Kingdom of Great Britain, British Colony, colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America. Fo ...

to have a temple portico. It was designated a

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Only some 2,500 (~3%) of over 90,000 places listed ...

in 1960.

History

In 1763, Governor Sharpe purchased 814 acres of Homewood's Lott. The following year, he bid for the Whitehall tract, the money going directly to the vestry of St. Margaret's Church. Sharpe commissioned the design and construction of a pavilion, gardens, parks, and entrance court of this estate and a house for his intended bride, Mary Ogle. Unfortunately for Sharpe, the daughter of

Samuel Ogle Samuel Ogle (c. 1694 – 3 May 1752) was the 16th, 18th and 20th Proprietary Governor of Maryland from 1731 to 1732, 1733 to 1742, and 1746/1747 to 1752. Background The Ogle family was quite prominent for many centuries in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, ...

shattered his plans and married his secretary and close friend, John Ridout.Swann. ''Colonial and Historic Homes of Maryland''. P. 68 The central portion of the house is believed to have been completed in 1765 as a pavilion for entertaining guests brought by boat from Annapolis. Work continued to add wings on either side until 1769, when it became Sharpe's residence following his unexpected relief as governor after 16 years by Robert Eden, a relative of Lord Baltimore. According to a 1912 biography by Matilda Ridout Edgar, Sharpe "spent as much of his time as was possible at Whitehall, amusing himself with his favourite pursuit of farming... His Garden was his passion, and seeds and scions of trees and rare shrubs and flowers to beautify it were sent for from Holland and England and France." Although Whitehall is not considered a

plantation A plantation is an agricultural estate, generally centered on a plantation house, meant for farming that specializes in cash crops, usually mainly planted with a single crop, with perhaps ancillary areas for vegetables for eating and so on. The ...

as it did not specialize in commercial sale of

cash crop A cash crop or profit crop is an Agriculture, agricultural crop which is grown to sell for profit. It is typically purchased by parties separate from a farm. The term is used to differentiate marketed crops from staple crop (or "subsistence crop") ...

s, It is noted that most of the labor on the farm and gardens was provided by "his large retinue of negro

slaves Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

and

indentured An indenture is a legal contract that reflects or covers a debt or purchase obligation. It specifically refers to two types of practices: in historical usage, an indentured servant status, and in modern usage, it is an instrument used for commercia ...

white servants." Sharpe left Maryland for England in 1773 on family business and did not return before his death in London in 1790. Whitehall MD3

The

American Revolution The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolut ...

prevented Sharpe's return and so he instructed his friend and former secretary John Ridout to sell Whitehall.

Benjamin Ogle Benjamin Ogle (January 27, 1749 – July 7, 1809) was the ninth Governor of Maryland from 1798 to 1801. Early life The Ogle family was quite prominent for many centuries in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northumberland, England, dating from the medieva ...

purchased the house from Ridout and two days later resold the house to Ridout for the same sum. Whitehall remained in the Ridout family for 116 years. In 1895, Caroline Sherman Story, the widow of Maj. Gen. John Patten Story, acquired Whitehall. Upon her death in 1923, the house passed to her son, John P. Story, Jr. He sold Whitehall to St. John's College of Annapolis."Death Calls Widow of Maj. Gen. Story," Washington (D.C.) Evening Star, 28 Dec 1923, p. 7. From St. John's, ownership of the house passed to the Henderson family and then to the Scarlett family. The home is still privately owned. Whitehall was restored by Charles Scarlett, Jr. in the early 20th century down to its 1787 appearance and has remained preserved in that manner to this day. While the home was built originally by provincial Governor Sharpe as a retreat and entertainment pavilion; it was later enlarged and became his residence from his retirement in 1769 until his return to

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

in 1773.

House

Whitehall is an unusually long one-story five-part

Flemish bond Brickwork is masonry produced by a bricklayer, using bricks and Mortar (masonry), mortar. Typically, rows of bricks called ''Course (architecture), courses'' are laid on top of one another to build up a structure such as a brick wall. Bricks ...

brick building, about in length, with a two-story elevation on the north side. It was designed by Joseph Horatio Anderson, who designed the third (and present)

Maryland State House The Maryland State House is located in Annapolis, Maryland. It is the oldest U.S. state capitol in continuous legislative use, dating to 1772 and houses the Maryland General Assembly, plus the offices of the Governor and Lieutenant Governor. In ...

. The "full temple portico" on the central portion of the house, with its

Corinthian columns The Corinthian order (Greek: Κορινθιακός ρυθμός, Latin: ''Ordo Corinthius'') is the last developed of the three principal classical orders of Ancient Greek architecture and Roman architecture. The other two are the Doric order w ...

, is one of two in the American colonies built prior to the

American Revolutionary War The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was a major war of the American Revolution. Widely considered as the war that secured the independence of t ...

(the other being the Jumel Mansion built by Roger Morris in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

). From the north, the house has a seven-part elevation, with arcaded extensions comprising to the west a privy, and to the east a kitchen and well, both mostly underground, which were added in the 1950s restoration. The main house comprises a main pavilion of three rooms, flanked by narrow relatively long hyphens that connect to the east and west end pavilions, giving a five-part elevation facing south. On the north side the ground falls away, revealing a full basement story beneath the main house, with additional extensions running beyond the end pavilions. The central house features a square main hall with a coved ceiling rising to , flanked by drawing rooms on either side. The south portico faces the Severn River, while a small balcony on the north side of the main hall leads to a pair of stairs to grade level. The hyphens feature lunette windows lighting the narrow gallery to the end pavilions on the south side. Round stucco blind openings decorate the north sides of the hyphens, with an arcade on the lower level open to the north. The end pavilions are two rooms deep. The pavilions were augmented during restoration by the kitchen and privy extensions, both mostly underground. These were designed to Anderson's original plans; no trace of their existence prior to the restoration was discovered. If extensions had been built the privy would have included one of the first water closets in the United States. A second floor was added by John Ridout in 1793, with bedrooms directly above the drawing rooms in the main pavilion, with a gabled roof whose ridge coincided with the portico roof. The second story was removed during the comprehensive restoration that began in the 1950s under Charles Scarlett, Jr. The site immediately to the north of the house is surrounded by earth mounds in the form of a bastioned breastwork. These features were added during the 1950s restoration, stated to have been built in accordance with original plans by Anderson and Sharpe, and are not of historical origin.

National Historic Landmark

Whitehall was designated a

in 1960. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1966. and Whitehall has been nominated as one of the components of the proposed Chesapeake National Recreation Area in legislation introduced in Congress in 2022.

References

Sources

Whitehall, Saint Margarets Road, Annapolis (Anne Arundel County, Maryland)

External links