Item E.2. Spa Spring Site DATE: September 12, 2017 TO: Historic Preservation Commission VIA: Robert E. Krause, Ph.D., HPC Liaison Howard S. Berger, Supervisor Historic Preservation Section, Countywide Planning Division FROM: Thomas W. Gross, Senior Planner Historic Preservation Section, Countywide Planning Division RE: Evaluation for Historic Site Designation: Findings, Conclusion and Recommendation Historic Resource Spa Spring Site MIHP Number 69-001 Address 4500 bl. Tanglewood Drive, Bladensburg, MD 20710 Owner Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission Environmental Setting 0.805 acres Description Map 50, Grid C2, Parcel 250 Procedural Background March 1973 Survey and documentation of the property initially completed by Michael F. Dwyer. July 1981 Resource included in the Prince George’s County Historic Sites and Districts Plan. September 1, 2017 The property was posted “at least 14 days in advance,” according to the provisions of the Prince George’s County Historic Preservation Ordinance (Subtitle 29-118) and the Prince George’s County Zoning Ordinance (Subtitle 27-125.03). Evidence of sign posting and written notice to the property owner are attached. September 1, 2017 The property owner, the adjacent property owners, the Town of Bladensburg, and other interested parties were mailed written notice of the time, date, and location of the public hearing on the application. September 19, 2017 Date of HPC public hearing. Findings Description: Spa Spring Site is the site of a spring that served as a local landmark, tourist attraction, and drinking water source throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Undated photographs show a wood frame gazebo and trestle-mounted water storage casks at the spring site, no evidence of which remains. The area surrounding Spa Spring was maintained as a public park by the Town of Bladensburg and the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission until the 1940s, after which the site was altered Evaluation for Historic Site Designation: Findings, Conclusions and Recommendation Spa Spring Site (69-001) September 12, 2017 Page 2 dramatically by the realignment of Tanglewood Drive and the construction of flood control levees along the south bank of the Northeast Branch of the Anacostia River. Setting: Spa Spring Site is located in northern Prince George’s County in the Town of Bladensburg. While the exact location of the spring and its associated structures could not be determined, it most likely occupied what is now Parcel 250, just west of the point at which a small stream crosses Tanglewood Drive near its intersection with 46th Street. The parcel is bounded roughly by Baltimore Avenue to the west, Tanglewood Drive to the south and east, and a floodwater protection levee that parallels the south bank of the Northeast Branch of the Anacostia River to the north. Research conducted for this evaluation determined that the location of the historic resource as reflected on the Prince George’s County GIS mapping software, on Parcel 257, is erroneous. Light industrial uses occupy properties to the immediate south and east of the historic resource, while riparian parkland lies to the north. History: Spa Spring Site is located on property that was originally patented to members of the Beall family, although it is not clear whether Colonel Ninian Beall or his brother, John Beall, Sr., owned the land where the spring was located. A 918-acre portion of the patent, known as New Dumfries, was sold by Ninian Beall to John Gerrard in 1711. The deed describes the property as “formerly called Beall’s Meadows but now called or known by the name of Aston Clinton.” Shortly after the marriage of Gerrard’s daughter, Rebecca, to Charles Calvert in 1722, the land was transferred to the couple and resurveyed with the name Charles and Rebecca. In 1735 the property passed to Elizabeth Calvert, who owned it at the time the Maryland General Assembly passed an Act in 1742 authorizing the establishment of a town “near a place called Garrison Landing.” The land for the new town, which was to occupy 60 acres on the south side of the Eastern Branch of the Potomac River, was purchased from Elizabeth Calvert by a group of five commissioners and divided into 60 one-acre lots. Despite its historical association with Bladensburg, the site of Spa Spring appears to have been just north of the area purchased by the commissioners for the new town. There is a “town spring” noted on a 1787 survey of the town, but it was located near the east end of the settlement at what is now 4100 Edmonston Road. Spa Spring was located near the boundaries of several tracts but was likely within the limits of Charles and Rebecca, the northern boundary of which followed roughly the course of the Northeast Branch of the Anacostia River. Ownership of the property in the latter half of the eighteenth century could not be definitively traced in County land records, but by 1801 it is known to have been owned by William Steuart, an attorney living in Bladensburg. The Spa Spring site may have been among the considerable property near Bladensburg that Steuart is known to have held in trust for the sons of Dr. David Ross, although no record of Ross purchasing that tract—from either the Calvert or Beall families, the most likely previous owners—could be located. There is no evidence that Steuart developed the area immediately surrounding the spring. In December 1852, Steuart sold 10 acres to James Crutchett of Washington, D.C., the deed for which sale includes a specific reference to “the Spa Spring” among the metes and bounds description of the property. Crutchett (1816–1889) was an entrepreneur whose ventures included the installation of gas lighting near the U.S. Capitol in the 1840s and a factory built in the 1850s to produce George Washington keepsakes from wood harvested on the Mount Vernon plantation. This scheme landed Crutchett heavily in debt and his factory was seized by the federal government at the beginning of the Civil War for use as a soldiers’ rest home. Crutchett likely purchased the Spa Spring acreage as an investment, although there is no evidence that he made any effort to develop or subdivide the land during his thirty- plus years of ownership. In June 1886 Crutchett presented the U.S. Government with a deed of gift for six acres near Bladensburg, which was described as containing “an ever-flowing spring of the well-known and celebrated chalebiate [sic] mineral water so well known and commonly called Bladensburg spa water…the use of said spring and land has for these many years not been developed for the beneficent use they are capable of.” The deed expresses Evaluation for Historic Site Designation: Findings, Conclusions and Recommendation Spa Spring Site (69-001) September 12, 2017 Page 3 Crutchett’s hope that Congress would authorize the erection of a fence and suitable buildings around the spring, as well as pumps and pipes to supply the spring water to the Capitol, the White House, and other public buildings. While nominally a gift, Crutchett concluded the deed by noting he “leave[s] it to the U.S. Government to allow me anything or nothing for said property.” Crutchett had recently asked Congress to reopen his claim for damages tied to the seizure of his property during the Civil War and may have thought the gift would persuade lawmakers to act in his favor. Congress did not officially accept title to the land until 1889, after resolving a question as to whether Crutchett’s claim of ownership was valid. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Spa Spring site was generally accepted to be open to the public regardless of who held title to the land surrounding it. The earliest mention of the spring as a tourist attraction appears in a letter from Rosalie Stier Calvert to her parents in 1803, in which she relates that the “waters of Spa Spring have suddenly gained such a reputation that Dougherty’s House (a local inn) is not large enough to handle the crowds of the fashionable who come to drink the waters every day.” Stier warns her father of the likelihood of “inconsiderate and tiresome visits” to his home at Riversdale owing to the spring’s popularity. By the 1840s, Spa Spring and its adjacent grove regularly provided a venue for social and political gatherings. Spa Spring also lent its name to a local baseball team in the 1870s. Real estate speculators and other entrepreneurs frequently referenced Spa Spring when promoting their Bladensburg ventures. An 1804 newspaper advertisement for the Union Tavern welcomes “such persons as feel disposed to visit the Spa,” while property owners with available rooms frequently touted the spring when soliciting seasonal boarders. The Spa City Hotel appears on the 1878 Hopkins Atlas, its name derived from a real estate enterprise promoted in the 1870s by the Washington, D.C., brokerage of Hall & Ross. Newspaper advertisements for land and houses in and around Bladensburg frequently mentioned the distance to Spa Spring from the property in question. An item appearing in the December 2, 1884 edition of the Evening Star, announcing the sale of property owned by the estate of Clark Mills, includes a 9.25-acre lot that purports to contain “the celebrated Spa Spring;” the lot description, however, does not match the location of the spring. Spa Spring also makes a brief appearance in the written record of the Civil War. In July 1864, an agent of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad who had been sent to inspect the Laurel Bridge and the road from Beltsville to Bladensburg reported that rebel forces camped north of the town “have one piece of artillery, with which they threw a shell which fell near the camp in the vicinity of the Spa Spring.” Although the spring was located outside the area acquired by the Bladensburg commissioners in 1742 and was not officially owned by the town until its transfer from the federal government in the early twentieth century, civic leaders made efforts to maintain Spa Spring throughout its existence.