Mount Clare Museum

Mount Clare a colonial plantation in Baltimore.

Mount Clare is a National Historic Landmark located in southwest Baltimore City’s Carroll Park.

Mount Clare Museum preserves the historic house and the surrounding landscape, and presents the history of Baltimore City’s development, by focusing on the lives of individuals who lived, worked, and played here.

The museum is dedicated to serving a diverse audience by providing dynamic programs and exhibitions that offer a variety of enhanced educational opportunities to visitors. 

Mount Clare is the oldest colonial structure in the city, the only surviving pre-Revolutionary manor house, and the lonly industrial plantation site within a major American city. At one point, it was one of the largest plantations in the state of Maryland that relied heavily on enslaved labor, as well as the labor of convict and indentured laborers.

Currently a 5-part house, with hyphens and wings that are reconstructions, the north facade acts as the main entrance and contains a portico with Palladian window above. The house is owned by the City of Baltimore and is maintained by the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Maryland (NSCDA-MD).

Site History

In 1732, Dr. Charles Carroll, an Irish immigrant and surgeon, bought a 2,568-acre iron-ore and clay-rich tract along the Patapsco River to the west of Baltimore. He sold all but 800 acres to the Baltimore Iron Works, where he and four other partners manufactured pig iron with enslaved and convict laborers. On the remaining land, which he named Georgia Plantation, he built a small frame house in the late 1740s. In 1756, his son, Charles Carroll, Barrister, began construction of a new summer residence on the site -- a high rise about a mile from the river -- which he named Mount Clare in honor of his grandmother, Mary Clare Dunn, and his sister, Mary Clare Carroll Maccubbin. The Georgian manor consisted of a center mansion balanced by wings connected by hyphens, or corridors. The carriage entrance on the landside of the house features a limestone-columned portico supporting a second story chamber with Palladian window that still exists today.

General Washington’s Greenhouse: On one of the wings was an orangery, or heated greenhouse, in which enslaved gardener Richard Garrett raised among other exotic plants, oranges, lemons, pineapples and broccoli or the Carroll family. Letters between General George Washington and Margaret Tilghman’s brother-in-law Tench Tilghman indicate Washington sought advice on plants for his plantation, Mt Vernon, and information on the construction and heating of a greenhouse.

B & O Railroad: In 1829, James Maccubin Carroll, nephew of the Barrister, who inherited the house after Margaret Tilghman died in 1817, donated a portion of the property for the country’s first passenger and freight railroad station, the B&O’s Mount Clare Station. In 1848, the Carroll’s sold the right-of-way to the B&O railroad for the Locust Point Branch, a spur leading from the main line southward to the Baltimore shipyards.

Civil War: By 1851, James Maccubbin Carroll, Jr., grandnephew of the Barrister, the third and last generation of the Carroll’s to live at Mount Clare, moved his family to Monument Street in Baltimore city. By the summer of 1861, during the Civil War, Baltimore was under military occupation. Federal troops created an encampment on the Mount Clare grounds called Camp Carroll. The cavalry used the pastures to the west of the mansion as a training ground. Before and during the Civil War, the dependencies on the house were falling into disrepair. Following the war, the house was leased to a succession of renters.

German Immigrant Society: In 1870, the Carroll heirs leased the house and 15 acres to the West Baltimore Schuetzen Association, a German immigrant society that used the property as a recreational club, complete with a clubhouse, shooting range, 10-pin bowling alley, drinking hall and bandstand. By 1873, the dependencies were dilapidated, and the Schuetzen Association requested permission to demolish them. They built a second story kitchen wing on the west side of the house.

City Park: In 1890, the Carroll heirs sold the house and 20 acres to the City of Baltimore for a public park. The City purchased an additional 16 acres from other landowners and hired the Olmsted Brothers Landscape Architecture firm to design the park. To preserve the original Georgian architecture of the house, the Schuetzen-built wing was torn down and in 1908; the present wings with basements were built as bathhouses and locker rooms for the park. Carroll Park was segregated, Whites only. The Carroll Park Golf Course, a nine-hole course, built in 1923 on the park's southwest side was desegregated on June 25, 1951 after civil rights protests. The Baltimore City Park Board also designated some fields, courts, and playgrounds for interracial use. In 1955, the Park Board officially desegregated all Baltimore parks after the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision.

1.) "Mount Clare," Historic American Buildings Survey, National Park Service, HABS No, MD-192, March 1960, http://lcweb2.loc.gov/master/pnp/habshaer/md/md0200/md0201/data/md0201data.pdf 2.) "Site of National Significance: Mount Clare, Maryland." National Park Service, 12/19/69, http://focus.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NHLS/Text/70000860.pdf