CARR-648 Manchester Historic District

CARR-648 Manchester Historic District Architectural Survey File This is the architectural survey file for this MIHP record. The survey file is organized reverse- chronological (that is, with the latest material on top). It contains all MIHP inventory forms, National Register nomination forms, determinations of eligibility (DOE) forms, and accompanying documentation such as photographs and maps. Users should be aware that additional undigitized material about this property may be found in on-site architectural reports, copies of HABS/HAER or other documentation, drawings, and the “vertical files” at the MHT Library in Crownsville. The vertical files may include newspaper clippings, field notes, draft versions of forms and architectural reports, photographs, maps, and drawings. Researchers who need a thorough understanding of this property should plan to visit the MHT Library as part of their research project; look at the MHT web site (mht.maryland.gov) for details about how to make an appointment. All material is property of the Maryland Historical Trust. Last Updated: 09-11-2018 Survey No. CARR-648 Maryland Historical Trust Inventory of Historic Properties Form Maryland Route 30/Manchester Bypass Project 1. Name (indicate preferred name) historic Manchester Historic District and/or common 2. Location street & number Various streets w/in Manchester (see inventory list & district map) _ not for publication city, town Manchester vicinity of congressional district 6th state Maryland county Carroll 3. Classification Category Ownership Status Present Use X district public X occupied agriculture museum building(s) private unoccupied commercial park structure X both work in progress educational private residence site Public Acquisition Accessible entertainment religious object in process X yes: restricted government scientific being considered X yes: unrestricted industrial transporic*ion X not applicable X no military X other: small town 4. Owner of Property (give names and mailing addresses of all owners) name multiple owners street & number telephone no. city, town state and zip code 5. Location of Legal Description courthouse, registry of deeds, etc. Carroll County Tax Assessor liber street & number Winchester Exchange Bldg. - Main Street folio city, town Westminster state Man/land 6. Representation in Existing Historical Surveys title Inventory Form for Historic Sites Survey date April, 1980 federal X state county local depository for survey records Maryland Historical Trust city, town Crownsville state Maryland 7. Description Survey No. CARR-648 Condition Check one Check one excellent deteriorated unaltered X original site X good ruins X altered moved date of move fair unexposed Prepare both a summary paragraph and a general description of the resource and its various elements as it exists today. Contributing Resources - 303 Noncontributing Resources - 92 Summary paragraph: Manchester is primarily a linear town developed one lot deep along the cross formed by Maryland Route 30/Main Street and York and Westminster streets. Its proposed historic district includes additional one-lot-deep development along a small number of streets radiating out from the cross. The majority of the town's principal resources were erected between about 1800 and 1860. Its other contributing resources were built from the 1860s through World War Two. Almost all of its principal resources are single-family dwellings of frame, brick, or log. Among these residences are scattered other resources common to small towns distant from urban centers, such as stores, churches, and cemeteries. Although the siding, sash, and porches of most of the town's resources have been altered within the past 100 years, Manchester still appears much as it did around the time of the Civil War. Description Manchester's initial development took place on the lots fronting the central cross formed by Maryland Route 30, known as Main Street in the town, and York and Westminster streets. By 1862 (Martenet) Church and New streets had been extended a short distance out from the cross and by 1877 (Lake, Griffing, and Stevenson) High Street had swung a block out as well. In the early twentieth century, Locust Street was added at the east and Park Avenue and an extension of Westminster Street at the west. All of these streets were developed one lot deep and framed, until after World War Two, by farms and fields. The length of Main Street, which contains well over half of the historic district's resources, gives the town a decidedly linear aspect. Since its inception, Manchester has been formed almost entirely of single-family residences. These houses stand on small narrow lots, which led on Main Street to the construction of a number of attached buildings. Many of the town's non-residential enterprises—particularly stores and, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, cigar manufactories—were housed in buildings that looked like residences. Only a small number of buildings from the mid nineteenth through the early twentieth century—churches, a bank, school, and fire station, modern gas stations—are non-residential in appearance. Most of the historic district's principal resources were in place by the Civil War. Perhaps two- thirds of Main Street's residences were erected prior to 1860 and, overall, half of the district's principal resources may have been standing by this date. Manchester grew little during the last third of the nineteenth century and the first third of the twentieth. Its 1860 population of 640 rose to 755 in 1870, only to drop to 640 in 1880, 609 in 1900, and 523 in 1910. It expanded again in the teens (546 in 1920) and twenties (643 in 1930), as indicated by the small number of bungalows, foursquares, and late Victorian houses erected during this period within the historic Manchester Historic District/CARR-648 Section 7 Description continued district. However, along Main Street and the western sections of York Street the town has experienced only scattered infill since the Civil War, largely because it was already so tightly filled by that date and pressure for rebuilding sections of the town, as indicated by its static population, has never risen. Development since World War Two, particularly within the past two decades, has occurred beyond the historic district, on streets extended from the early roads or in new planned developments. Manchester's historic buildings are constructed of log, brick, and frame. The earliest houses are believed to have been log, which forms the walls of perhaps 10 to 15% of the historic district residences. Some of these houses may date from the late eighteenth century, but the earliest identified log dwelling is the Jacob Buhman House at 3256 Main Street (inventory #119) which, according to local historian Joe Getty (1987:51), was erected around 1803. It is difficult xc identify and date these houses, because they all are sheathed in early or modern materials, have plainly finished exteriors, and have been modernized. Buhman's house, representative of the group, features an early twentieth-century porch, modern sash, and a veneer of white formstone or brick. Brick formed virtually none of Manchester's earliest residences, for at the close of the eighteenth century, according to federal tax lists, the area that was to become northern Carroll County held but a few brick residences (Getty 1987:42). Brick is believed to have become popular at town residences by about 1820 and about one-quarter of Manchester's historic dwellings are constructed of it. Brick was particularly popular in the 1840s and 1850s. Brick or brick veneer was also popular at Victorian residences and foursquares erected within the historic district in the early twentieth century. The front elevations of brick residences within the historic district are generally finished with stretcher bond. Surprisingly, even most of the antebellum brick dwellings have stretcher rather than common bond facades. About ten of these early residences are finished with Flemish cond facades. The three-bay, gable-end house at 3069 Main Street (#45), probably erected during the first third of the nineteenth century, has a Flemish bond front elevation and, unique in Manchester, diamond patterned brickwork at its south gable end. (Its north gable end is obscured by the neighboring attached dwelling.) The town's nineteenth-century brick residences generally feature flat relieving arches and stepped brick cornices, as does 3069 Main Street. Later brick residences, erected in the early twentieth century, are discernable by their stepped-back Victorian (for example, 3036 Main Street/#74) or foursquare (3244 Main Street/#115) forms and the use of the segmental arch. Most of the town's historic resources are of frame. These include residences as well as the garages and other outbuildings that comprise almost all of the district's secondary resources. Frame is believed to have become popular in the quarter century preceding the Civil War, largely displacing log construction in town. As discussed further below, frame residences utilized the same basic forms as the log and brick dwellings into the second decade of the twentieth century. The form of the town's log, brick, and frame houses, throughout the nineteenth century anu into the early twentieth, changed little. Almost all houses from this period, with the exception of the late Victorian dwellings and foursquares and bungalows erected in the 1910s and 1920s, are two stories tall with gable end roofs. Their main blocks are either two rooms deep or extended to form an L-shape by an original or early two-story rear ell. (Some of these ells retain two-tier porches with chamfered posts characteristic of rural Carroll County.) Within this framework, the most popular house form in all three materials is three bays wide. About a third of the historic district's residences are two stories tall and gable ended with a three-bay front elevation. Of these, about Manchester Historic District/CARR-648 Section 7 Description continued three out of four have their entry at one side or the other, rather than at the center.

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