Manor House

Whether to development or disaster, Howard County has lost many of its impressive early farmhouses and manors. But at least one remnant of the landed gentry has not only survived but found new life by changing from a private home to public use. Historic Oakland has been home to families, nursing care residents, two colleges, church services, a museum and offices for the local Red Cross and the developer of Columbia. Now marking its 200th birthday, the estate built by an heir of Maryland's Ridgely family is busier than ever as a multipurpose venue and community meeting place.

Colonial Players' 64th season has been a banquet of stimulating plays, and the season closes this month with a delightful dessert in British playwright Alan Ayckbourn's 1979 farce "Taking Steps. " The show is indeed a comic confection, and seems to have been destined for Colonial Players, presented in-the-round on a single level designed to simulate a three-story Victorian home with attic, bedroom level and living room area. Here, the cast of two couples, a solicitor and a real estate agent continually run up and down imaginary stairs while avoiding each other — all in the span of one night.

There's a rich history to tell about Evergreen Junior, a 96-year-old manor house on the grounds of Loyola College in North Baltimore.Since the early 1920s, the Tudoresque castle has housed the priests and brothers of the Society of Jesus who are on Loyola's faculty. Evergreen Junior is undergoing a thorough renovation. It will be used for academic purposes when it reopens next year.But before Loyola purchased the storied mansion, Evergreen Junior was intended to be the honeymoon "cottage" of Horatio Whitridge Garrett, one of the wealthiest young men in Baltimore.

Beyond the verdant crops flourishing in this summer's 100-degree heat and regular rainstorms, a guesthouse from long ago sits near the northeastern edge of the 236-acre property that is home to the Shrine of St. Anthony in western Ellicott City. Carriages once traversed this portion of the scenic land - now bisected by L-shaped Folly Quarter Road and leased out as farmland to the University of Maryland by the Conventual Franciscan Friars - to deliver guests to lively summertime parties at the estate known as Folly Quarter.

The Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning is asking a developer to revise his plans to build office condominiums next to the historic Woodlawn manor house in Columbia. In a letter to Woodlands LLC, the Subdivision Review Committee raises a number of problems with the plan to erect parking lots and a 74,000-square-foot building on the wooded 5-acre property off Bendix Road. The committee states that "the size and architecture of the new building should be compatible with the existing historic structures."

CHAPEL POINT -- St. Thomas Manor at Chapel Point is a Maryland architectural landmark, the earliest surviving Georgian mansion in the state, according to the Historical Society of Charles County. Since it was constructed in 1741, the manor house has been a residence for Jesuits. And it was they who built the adjoining church in 1798, naming it St. Ignatius after St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of their Roman Catholic order, the Society of Jesus. Today, the church and manor house are part of the oldest continuously active Catholic parish in the United States, according to a historical marker at the entrance.

The Belmont Conference Center, a historic Elkridge manor house with an 82-acre estate, is for sale, its owner announced yesterday. After being its steward for more than 20 years, the board of directors of the Washington-based American Chemical Society decided to sell the property because Belmont didn't fit the group's plans. "Having a conference center was not really aligned with our strategic mission" of being the premiere provider of chemical information in the world, said the society's executive director and chief executive officer, Madeleine Jacobs.

ONE OF Howard County's oldest structures, an 18th-century manor house known as Dorsey Hall, will be restored as part of a $3.5 million office center scheduled to open early next year. Howard County Executive James N. Robey joined developers Richard Talkin and Donald Reuwer on Tuesday to break ground for the project, called the Dorsey Hall Manor Executive Offices. The development, at 5100 Dorsey Hall Drive in Columbia, will include the construction of 32,000 square feet of office space in four two-story buildings.

At the end of a milelong, one-lane road lined with trees stands an Elkridge manor house built when Maryland was a colony. It's a metaphorical island in a county where post-1960s architecture dominates, a literal island surrounded by the vast Patapsco Valley State Park. Named for its view, Belmont - "beautiful mountain" - was home to a prominent Howard County family for generations. But unlike some of the county's brick-and-mortar survivors of history, Belmont is as lively today as it ever was. It's a conference and retreat center.

Colonial Players' 64th season has been a banquet of stimulating plays, and the season closes this month with a delightful dessert in British playwright Alan Ayckbourn's 1979 farce "Taking Steps. " The show is indeed a comic confection, and seems to have been destined for Colonial Players, presented in-the-round on a single level designed to simulate a three-story Victorian home with attic, bedroom level and living room area. Here, the cast of two couples, a solicitor and a real estate agent continually run up and down imaginary stairs while avoiding each other — all in the span of one night.

Whether to development or disaster, Howard County has lost many of its impressive early farmhouses and manors. But at least one remnant of the landed gentry has not only survived but found new life by changing from a private home to public use. Historic Oakland has been home to families, nursing care residents, two colleges, church services, a museum and offices for the local Red Cross and the developer of Columbia. Now marking its 200th birthday, the estate built by an heir of Maryland's Ridgely family is busier than ever as a multipurpose venue and community meeting place.

Building up to 325 detached homes instead of an Erickson retirement community at historic Doughoregan Manor in Howard County is likely to be a more difficult, slower and less-profitable project for the Carroll family to pursue. The family's new plan, if approved, would divide the remaining 892 acres of the estate in the same way, with development clustered in the northeast corner near Frederick Road and Kiwanis-Wallas Park. The family continues to plan for permanent preservation of the nearly 300-year-old manor house and most of the land, while donating 34 acres to the county for park expansion.

A new plan to build up to 325 detached homes instead of a retirement community at historic Doughoregan Manor in Howard County is being quietly presented to community groups in western Ellicott City. The Carroll family, descendants of the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence, is preparing to take their new plans public early next month before submitting them to the county, said Joseph Rutter, a former county planning director who is acting as developer. The housing would take 12 to 13 years to be completed if approved, and the project would likely produce 171 new county schoolchildren for all grades, Rutter said.

Historic Ellicott City's decorator show house offers a variety of design approaches this year, from traditional Williamsburg-style plates and topiaries, to 1970s-inspired lava lamps, to a family room cabinet featuring a large TV that rises at the push of a button. Giving designers the freedom to show their stuff has always been part of the appeal of the show house, which is in its 24th year. But design chairman Carroll Frey said that because this year's house is 35 years old, the design committee gave people more leeway to take a contemporary approach.

Rick and Terri Steel were about to sign the contract for a new house when they decided to go for a drive and give it some thought. They said it was a good thing they did. In the car, winding along some country roads just beyond the busy Owings Mills commercial centers, they happened upon a stately, old manor house with a giant maple tree in front. They knew by looking at the porch that it was really the home in which they, their three kids and two dogs belonged. Terri Steel said she still has a picture of her husband, Rick, standing beneath the two-story porch roof of the 1840s-era house that they bought seven years ago. But now that two of their three kids have grown and left and the bustle in the "study hall" -- a wide hallway equipped with desks and computers -- has largely quieted, they have decided to move on. "This is going to be a hard place to leave because it was such a lovely place to raise a family," said Terri Steel.

In 1924, at the age of 51 and with her marriage crumbling and money nearly gone, Norah Lindsay, a beautiful English socialite of the second tier, began a career as a garden designer, working for the aristocrats who were her friends. She was determined to save her home, the Manor House at Sutton Courtenay in Oxfordshire, the place she and husband Harry Lindsay had lovingly restored, where they bore two children and where Norah became a tireless and inspired gardener. A woman who was known for her carefree life and a social calendar filled with the rich, famous and royal was suddenly earning modest wages while toiling alongside the workers employed by her society friends.

FORTY-FIVE YEARS ago, after his team won the world championship in sudden death overtime, Arthur Donovan, legendary Baltimore Colt and Falstaff of American football, invested his bonus in a country club without a golf course. But while the Valley Country Club, in the Riderwood area of Baltimore County, might not have had 18 holes and fabulous fairways, it had the grand, 19th-century hilltop manor house and 12 acres of a former dairy farm. With Artie Donovan's winnings from the December 1958 NFL championship, it soon had tennis courts, a snack bar, a clubhouse and the huge swimming pool that more than 400 members, their families and friends still enjoy each summer.

Tucked in Howard County's hills is a stone house that speaks to three eras: First, the 1800s, when it was built as a cottage for an estate's gardener; then the Cold War era, when an underground fallout shelter was built; and recent years, when the house was remodeled by owners John and Sandi Riegert with updated amenities. The Glenelg Manor Farm is on the Howard County Historic Sites Inventory, its fieldstone quarried from nearby Ellicott City. The house has long been parceled off from the estate that once included it, property that is now the Glenelg Country School and a residential subdivision.

Tucked in Howard County's hills is a stone house that speaks to three eras: First, the 1800s, when it was built as a cottage for an estate's gardener; then the Cold War era, when an underground fallout shelter was built; and recent years, when the house was remodeled by owners John and Sandi Riegert with updated amenities. The Glenelg Manor Farm is on the Howard County Historic Sites Inventory, its fieldstone quarried from nearby Ellicott City. The house has long been parceled off from the estate that once included it, property that is now the Glenelg Country School and a residential subdivision.

Rene Laya, Dale Lupton and Scott Jones sat on scaffolding in the steamy sunshine dozens of feet above the ground, carefully removing bricks from a roof cornice built a century and a half ago for a place called Blandair. It is careful, tedious, sweaty work, peeling back the layers of history to prepare for a $1.8 million restoration of the late Elizabeth Smith's once jealously guarded home. The men work for the National Park Service's Historic Preservation Training Center, based in Frederick, and their efforts have begun the transformation of a secluded, rundown farm into a 300-acre park intended to be a new jewel in Columbia.