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 Making History at the New Annapolis History Center
Historic Annapolis Foundation is laying mortar for the bricks of local lore
by Carrie Steele
Each morning this spring, as early risers follow the first shafts of daylight down through City Dock, they’ve heard the soft poundings, thumps and talk of workmen busy as ants on the tall brick building off the City Dock circle.
The new Annapolis History Center, known now but perhaps not forever as History Quest, is the four-story brick building downtown on the corner of Green Street and Main Street. Its last occupant was Sign of the Whale.
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photos by Carrie Steele
Workers transform the future site of the Annapolis History Center, left.
The center will serve both casual tourists and serious historians alike, says Historic Annapolis Foundation president Greg Stiverson, above.
Project manager Patricia Blick, below, saw keeping the original fabric of the building as saving history. |
Construction has closed the sidewalk all spring, and hay bales set along the door have brought a country feel to bustling Annapolis — as well as blocking off the construction area from foot traffic and protecting storm drains.
A $6 million project is underway.
“It’s going to help launch people onto their own history tour,” said Historic Annapolis Foundation trustee Jim Nolan. “It’s not a museum in itself. Our whole city is a museum.”
By early 2006, visitors will find over 300 years of history served up to order, whether it’s a 15-second story video clip, a themed guided tour or a more in-depth new audio tour of a city block. Both casual tourists and serious historians will be served, says Historic Foundation president Greg Stiverson. The menu of options will tempt visitors with both delectable appetizers and hearty main courses of history, with the goal being to “give people maximum flexibility,” Stiverson says.
On the first floor, they’ll sample history hors d’oeuvres and get their bearings on what’s around Annapolis. Upstairs they’ll find exhibits on old Annapolis history, culture, art and geography.
The menu will also offer the third floor, along with its bird’s-eye vistas of City Dock, for rent for parties, meetings and other occasions.
But before the building can host visitors, it has to be made presentable.
Inside demolition is done, Stiverson said. Renovating the 5,000-square-foot 1791 historic building was no easy task.
“The workers had to carry everything by wheelbarrow out of this 42-inch-wide alley,” Stiverson said of the long list of tasks tackled by North Point Builders, the general contractor for the job.
Even in the midst of construction the building is bursting with history. The original plaster shows where a past staircase rose along the back of the building. Historic brick makes jagged entryways as you cross unfinished wood-plank floors. Archeology was part of renovation, says project manager Patricia Blick, as an old hearth and well appeared.
 Interior walls stay put because of building codes, but codes also allow preservation of the historic staircase that winds up the height of the building. Keeping the original fabric of the building was saving history, Blick says.
There’s also an elevator, in addition to the original staircase, so visitors have easy access to every floor. It’s a custom-made elevator that will arrive in small boxes and have to be assembled onsite as the last major job of construction.
Blick expects that the construction should be completed by the end of September. Then, the exhibits will be put into place. This summer, Historic Annapolis Foundation will be working with Gallagher and Associates Exhibits in Bethesda, the same team that designed the new International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C.
The new addition to Annapolis Historic Foundation’s network of buildings will be the last piece in the financial puzzle, too. Brad Davidson, president of the board of trustees, expects that the new History Quest center will contribute the last third of the foundation’s revenue, now earned from private donors. Selling history will help make the Historic Foundation operationally self-supporting.
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 Small Town Book Grabs Big State Award
St. Leonard’s history recognized as a record in time — and a good read
by Carrie Steele
Every community has stories to tell, and last year, author and Bay Weekly contributor Sara Ebenreck Leeland — with Bay Weekly’s Earth Journal columnist Gary Pendleton as illustrator — wove and restored St. Leonard’s story to its community. St. Leonard, a small Bayside enclave midway down Calvert County, is an archeological dig layered with history, of which Leeland gives us a hearty core sample: how Native Americans used to live, what John Smith found when he sailed up the Chesapeake and what it was like when electricity first illuminated the town.
Backing up Leeland was The St. Leonard Vision Group, a handful of historians who commissioned this heritage book project and supported it with extensive research, design and publishing.
“Sara Leeland and the Vision Group came to this project with the right kind of idea, looking at history in a particular way,” said Pendleton. “It’s not just the old buildings and battles and important men; it’s really a history that dealt with more day to day kind of stuff, even going back to how the land came to be.”
“Leeland has told history as a story, where events are not facts to memorize but threads that weave a pattern of meaning,” wrote Bay Weekly editor Sandra Martin last year, when the book came out. “Most importantly, it’s a book you want to read.”
Leeland wrote this book, but its genius is not her work alone. The storytellers could have surrounded a large campfire. With the St. Leonard Vision Group, more than 50 local historians contributed, casting their nets for oral histories and digging for facts and photos that tell St. Leonard’s story. From continents colliding 250 million years ago through present day land preservation, it’s summed up in a readable 126 pages.
Local businesses plus handfuls of donors contributed. Funding came from Koenig Private Foundation as well as local residents and companies.
When St. Leonard: A Maryland Tidewater Community was finished, The Vision Group infused it into Calvert County eighth grade Maryland history classes and gave copies to every 2004 student in the St. Leonard and Mutual elementary schools. The new book was also donated to Calvert County public libraries.
Now, the Maryland Historical Trust has honored the book with its Educational Excellence Award for a project that educates people about Maryland’s heritage.
“The Board of Trustees’ committee liked the fact that the group behind the publication went to such extensive lengths to get the book to school children and public libraries,” said Maryland Historical Trust’s spokesman Scott Whipple. “They thought this was a nice community effort: a real partnership among groups and individuals among the community.”
Other winners were the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation for “From Bridge to Boardwalk: An Audio Journey Across Maryland’s Eastern Shore” and Havre de Grace Historic Preservation Commission’s “Reflections” video series. Also earning awards for Calvert County was Calvert Marine Museum’s Patuxent Small Craft Guild, which took home the Preservation Service Award for its preservation of living traditions.
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