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History of Annapolis Roads |
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Table of Contents Chapter 2: Belmont Farm, Precursor to Annapolis Roads Chapter 3: Annapolis Roads, Founding Documents Chapter 4: Designing Annapolis Roads, 1926-1934 |
Before Annapolis Roads, before Belmont Farm, before European colonists cleared and cultivated the land on which we now live, Indians settled the Annapolis Neck, as they had all of the peninsulas along the Chesapeake Bay. How many groups lived here over the centuries and what their lives were like are questions archaeologists strive to answer. What those groups called themselves we shall never know. They left behind no records of their languages, no chronicles of their societies; only bits of refuse from which scientists try to understand aboriginal lifeways. Such evidence survives in Annapolis Roads, easily spotted by the trained eye. And--although no archaeological research of the community has ever been undertaken--those few traces are similar to those identified and studied elsewhere in Anne Arundel County, giving us a glimpse of Annapolis Roads before history.
In walking around Annapolis Roads, carefully looking at the ground, you may notice the telltale signs of prehistoric Indian sites: fragments of oyster shells scattered around a planting hole, an eroded road shoulder, or in the root ball of an overturned tree. While the fragments and whole shells may be part of a historic site--trash from a farmstead, perhaps--they typically represent Indian shell middens, midden being a term of Scandinavian origin meaning refuse heap. Careful excavation and screening of the soil will reveal bits of animal bone, earthen pottery and broken stone tools, and flakes of stone created during the manufacture or sharpening of stone tools. The styles in which pottery and stone tools were made betray the age of the deposits in which they are found, the different styles representing different periods from the Paleo- Indian 12,000 or more years ago until contact with European explorers and traders in the late 1500s and early 1600s. Even the oyster shells tell something of the age of a site.
Until about 11,000 years ago, there was no Chesapeake Bay, only the ancestral Susquehanna River with its origin in south central New York State. As glaciers receded, sea levels rose, inundating the Susquehanna River valley as far north as Annapolis in 3000 B.C. and to the current limits of the Bay by 1000 B.C. In other words, there were no oysters in the area until at least 5000 years ago; therefore, oyster shells mark Indian sites that are roughly 500 to 5000 years old, most ranging in age from 500 to 3000 years old. Archaeologists divide that time range into three periods: the Early Woodland (1000-300 B.C.), Middle Woodland (300 B.C.-A.D. 900), and Late Woodland (A.D. 900-1650). Pottery, arrow and spear point styles, and distinctive lifeways, characterize each period.
Early Woodland peoples appear to have followed patterns established centuries earlier, during the Paleo-Indian and Archaic periods, occupying small short-term camps throughout the region while collecting and processing locally available resources; for example, quartz pebbles for tools in some areas, oysters and fish in others, and certain kinds of woods or fibers in yet others. At certain times of the year, the small groups came together in larger camps where young people found mates and all the people socialized and participated in various ceremonies. These people differed from their predecessors in moving around less, while focusing more on the emerging resources of the Bay and its tributaries, especially the shellfish and pelagic (swimming) fish. Long distance trade appears to have de- clined, with local quartz replacing imported stone from Pennsylvania and Western Maryland for tools. Pottery replaced bowls previously made of soft soapstone that had been quarried in Howard and Cecil counties and subsequently traded to groups in Southern Maryland and on the Eastern Shore. These patterns developed in the Middle Woodland, about 2000 years ago, with larger long-term settlements established near the heads of the major rivers. Areas like Annapolis Roads served mostly for local resource procurement, particularly for collecting and drying oyster meat for use at the main settlements. My excavations at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, in Edgewater, revealed evidence of frequent--possibly seasonal--returns of groups to the same campsites to harvest oysters and to hunt and fish on the side. Evidence for agriculture during this period is poor, the Indians likely relying on the collection of wild plant foods, hunting, and fishing. Today those sites can be found under thin deposits of recently developed soil, but 18th- and 19th-century travelers reported shell middens many feet in height, mined by local landowners for the shell, which they burned and used the resulting lime for fertilizer and mortar.
By the Late Woodland Period, after A.D. 900, local Indians established large, more or less permanent villages on the level floodplains of the rivers at which they raised large quantities of corn, beans, and squash. They supplemented these foods with wild plant foods, shellfish, fish, and mammals collected or hunted from short-term satellite camps. Many of those settlements, and possibly the satellite camps, were abandoned during the late 16th century, possibly to avoid contact with marauding Susquehannock Indians from Pennsylvania, a few years or decades before Captain James Smith mapped the coastline in 1607/8. His map, published in 1612, depicted villages--many of which he learned and recorded the names--throughout the region, except along the shore of the bay in Calvert and Anne Arundel counties.
From what has been gleaned from sites throughout the area, I can guess that the numerous Indian sites scattered around Annapolis Roads date mostly to between 1000 B.C. and A.D. 1500 and, more likely, between A.D. 500 and 1300. For the most part, these sites were places where generations of Middle and Late Woodland peoples came to harvest oysters. They fished and hunted to a limited extent while here, mostly to feed themselves while collecting and drying oyster meat. They carried the preserved oyster meat to larger, longer-term campsites and villages near the heads of the larger tributaries. Again, no excavations have been undertaken on the sites that I have found around Lake Ogleton and Otter Lake, but there is no reason to think they differ significantly from a number of prehistoric Indian sites that have been studied in coastal Anne Arundel County.
Visiting the area on a seasonal basis, the Indians little effected the environment of Annapolis Roads. Their stays were too short, the groups too small. Moreover, they were here to collect and preserve oyster meat, perhaps as much as they could carry back to their main settlements, but no more. They had no need to cut down trees, they hunted, fished, and collected plant foods only to meet their immediate needs, and they intended the oyster meat for the use of their own community, or perhaps for limited trade. They were not participating in the international markets that led Europeans to discover and colonize the New World, and eventually to compromise an environment that had, for millennia, supported human communities.
Nothing that archaeologists have found to date suggests any effort on the part of the aborigines to preserve their story, their history, for the area's future inhabitants. That they had detailed oral histories, there can be little doubt: all American Indian groups encountered by Europeans transmitted the sum of their history and general knowledge to subsequent generations through stories. But none had a written language, or at least none has survived, and more than a century of archaeological research in Maryland, and across the country, leaves little hope that any written records, if they ever existed, survive. Perhaps the Indians didn't see the need for such a record; perhaps they lacked the sense of self- importance that inclines modern generations to set themselves apart from other species the way aristocrats set themselves apart from the rest of the human family by reciting their genealogies and chronicling their exploits. In any case, the Indians of Maryland have left a record of themselves and of their activities in Annapolis Roads before history--however unintentionally-- but if we are interested in learning that history, we must do so by analyzing the only record they left: their trash.
Belmont stretched along the south shore of the Severn River, at a point where the river and the Chesapeake Bay meet and mingle. Surveyor E. Lacey Chinn described this 341-acre farm in 1894, providing not only the metes and bounds--the linear courses and angles measured by chains and a transit--but drawing a map of the farm's property lines, buildings, woodlots, and clearings. 1 He could not have known what would become of this large, but otherwise undistinguished farm, nor of the prominent architects who would design a community beloved of its residents, and a showcase of early 20th-century planning: Annapolis Roads. This family farm became the home of thousands; a cause for acrimony and good-neighborliness, a wonderful place to raise children and to retire, a place to develop and to defend against development, a place to create a certain quality of life and to protect that quality of life from all who may impinge upon it. Annapolis Roads, in many ways, is the story of suburban America.
Paul Shapiro, a twelve-year-old resident of Annapolis Roads in 1964, traced the origin of the name 'Belmont' to Jeremiah Chase with his 1816 patent of 400 acres. 2 Belmont remained in the Chase family until they sold it to James and Elizabeth Allen in 1855. They, / in turn, sold 341 acres to Jacob and Miriam Brandt in 1864. Jacob Brandt's name appears on the portion of the 1878 Hopkins map of Anne Arundel County depicting Annapolis Neck, although he had mortgaged the property to Oliver Horwitz in 1873 (Figure 1). The widow Maria Horwitz and other heirs sold the farm in 1907 to Bernice W. Gladden. She sold the land immediately to Daniel R. Randall and others, and they in turn sold it to Paul Armstrong six months later, excepting the 60 ft by 2100 ft right of way previously conveyed to the Annapolis and Bay Ridge Railroad Company and illustrated on the 1894 Chinn survey (Figure 2).3
For nearly 20 years, Paul Armstrong owned Belmont, possibly using it as a country retreat since he spent some of his time in New York City. We know little about Armstrong or what his plans for Belmont might have been. He was not a farmer, but a playwright and screen- Figure 1. G. M. Hopkins atlas of Anne Arundel County (1878), detail. writer for some of the earliest motion pictures. Reviews in Variety magazine of some of his films and a divorce suit brought against him by his wife, Rella Abell Armstrong, provide the best evidence uncovered to date. The Armstrongs married in London, England in July of 1899, and raised three daughters: Annabel, Myrell, and Elizabeth. In 1910, they separated, Rella suing for divorce on the grounds of her husband's adulterous affairs and brutal treatment. Paul pleaded innocent of the charges through his attorney Daniel Randall (the same Randall who sold Belmont to the Armstrongs three years earlier). The suit declined into a protracted argument as to who should pay the attorney's fees, Rella withdrawing the suit four months later in April of 1911. The couple appears to have continued living apart, Rella residing in New York City.4
Figure
2. E. Lacy Chinn,
Surveyor, Feb 1894
In her suit, claiming alimony, Rella Armstrong stated that her husband earned $3,000 a month, a very substantial sum at a time when the average daily wage for workers remained at about a dollar a day. Paul Armstrong, admitting that he had in fact earned as much as $3,000 in one month, claimed that his average income was far less. In coming years, he would work with director D.W. Griffith and actors William Demerest and Vola Vale, generally to good reviews for his original work (The Escape, The Heart of a Thief, and, co-authored with Wilson Mizner, The Greyhound) and adaptations of stories by Bret Harte (Salomy Jane) and O. Henry (Alias Jimmy Valentine). Paul Armstrong's last play, The Heart of a Thief, closed within one week of its opening in 1916. According to a review of the screenplay in Variety, "That play broke his heart. He never wrote another line, and he died soon after" (Variety, July 1, 1925).
All in all, Paul Armstrong appears to have been a moderately successful and respected writer. Upon his death, his widow became trustee of his estate for their three daughters, and this is where the Annapolis Roads story begins in earnest.
1 Anne Arundel County Land Records SH7/541 and Plat Book 8/46, dated February 1894.
2 Published in The Capital, 22 October 1964.
3 Land Records SH7/541, GWD56/72, and GW57/338.
4 Equity Papers of Anne Arundel County 5/242.
5 EquityRecords #4023, 21 December 1925. Figure 2. E. Lacy Chinn, Surveyor, Feb 1894
Here, in its entirety, is one of the founding documents of Annapolis Roads. Not exactly comparable to the Articles of Confederation or the Federalist Papers, so integral to the founding of our nation, but it does show a decidedly modern view of suburban design and the value of maintaining forested slopes for aesthetic and economic reasons. The writer appears to have been Percival Gallagher, a senior designer in the Olmsted Brothers landscape architecture firm of Brookline, Massachusetts. Note references to the layout of the golf course, placement of the hotel (which, eventually, became the beach club house), and the design of the community's entrance on "the County Road," now Old Bay Ridge Road. Note also that residential development--specifically the sale of lots--was intended to support the development of the hotel and gold course. The original letter is in the archives at Fairsted National Historic Site, Brookline, Massachusetts. -- Jim Gibb
Mrs. Rella B. Armstrong
1st March, 1926
348 West 23rd Street
New York City
Dear Mrs. Armstrong:
In accordance with your request, I am sending you under separate cover a sketch plan of your property near Annapolis on which I have indicated, in a general way, the lines of development as I conceive them after having visited the ground. As I explained to you a day or two after this visit, it seemed to me unwise to give over so much of the rough wooded land, adjacent to Lake Ogleton, for residence lot purposes, because of the extreme roughness of the topography making it not only a costly operation to carry roads through it, but doubtful whether much of the land could be utilized for house sites without destruction of a great deal of the natural conditions.
Furthermore, the importance of the hotel you are proposing calls for an environment such as is provided by this natural wooded and picturesque water frontage. It seems to me therefore that it would be wiser for you not to develop so much of this land in house lots but to include a fair measure of it in the general grounds of the hotel. It is especially desirable to extend the Golf Course southeastward and on to the marsh below the bluff. By so doing, holes No. 1, No. 9, and No. 18 can be laid close to the hotel, as they should be to be thoroughly satisfactory. I should not regard the fairgreens crossing through the hotel grounds in order to reach the marsh as a drawback to their use by other patrons of the hotel. I believe that golf would not entirely monopolize this ground and there would be large sections of it well to one side of the course so that those not playing the game could enjoy the wooded shores.
Thus instead of extending the residence lot development continuously along the southerly edge of the property following the edge of Lake Ogleton around to the hotel, I am proposing that the lot development follow around to the northeast along the main road to the hotel, with a belt of lots along the "Railroad" way.
It looks to me that a larger area than 134 acres will be needed to secure an 18 hole golf course. In fact, the sketch I am sending you comprises 170 acres in the golf course. It is also clear to me that the golf course should, if possible, be laid out all on one side of the main road to the hotel, so as to avoid crossing of the road, which would be necessary if the road to the hotel followed around the shore of Lake Ogleton as originally proposed. This could be avoided by not extending the course down into the marsh, but the loss of this acreage would have to be gained elsewhere, and this cannot be done without crowding the lot development. There is this to be said, however, that the final survey of the property which Mr. Carr is making may reveal a chance of a more compact location of fairgreens and hotel.
You will note on the plan that I have indicated a well defined entrance to the property on the "Railroad" way as one approaches it from Annapolis. It seems to me that you need to mark the principal entrance by some spaciousness other than what the ordinary street demands and the suggestion of a small village square would seem to me to be appropriate. It will be connected (as you note on the plan) with the County Road so that any one approaching from the direction of Washington would find there another well defined entrance way communicating directly with the village square.
You understand, of course, that these suggestions are very general in their nature, and based rather more on impressions received on the ground than on the data in the way of survey which I now have. But it is my belief that on the basis of the more complete and accurate surveys which Mr. Carr is making, the general lines would not change and, on the other hand, a great deal more of interest in the scheme could be developed by the careful utilization of the topography and the tree growth. In fact, it would be my thought (and it is in this particular field that I can help you most) to secure, in the design of your property, a distinctive character which will enhance rather the natural charm of the property. I was very much impressed with the wooded ravines and slopes, especially at the Point where the hotel is to be located and it seems to me that, in conjunction with the dignified and refined character of the architecture proposed, the old trees composing the woods that extend down the several ravines, would make most interesting pleasure grounds and of such extent as to give a satisfying environment to the hotel itself. These wooded slopes very much enhance glimpses of the Chesapeake and of Lake Ogleton and to me appealed much more strongly than an unbroken sweeping view of the Chesapeake shore. For this reason among several others I felt the desire to place the hotel back from the brink of the bluff and so turned it as to look a little south of east and down the Chesapeake. In this way is would be possible to avoid a too direct view of the tall towers of the government wireless station which, while interesting, rather hurts than otherwise the natural scene. This is briefly indicated on the sketch plan I am sending you.
Original plan (1926) for the Annapolis Roads entrance. Note the "Village Green"and two planned, but unbuilt lanes. The design was modified to a single through- lane for Carrollton Road to Bay Ridge Road, the entrance flanked by the two brick walls and a small gatehouse.
Who thinks about why a particular street goes one way rather than another, or why the community boat ramp is on Paca Lane, or why, for that matter, it is called Paca Lane? In the hurly-burly of daily life, we take for granted those places in which we live and work; and yet all neighborhoods are, to a greater or lesser extent, designed. And every designer has a vision: a 'cash cow' from which the developer might draw the greatest profits, a utopia where all residents might prosper, or some middle ground benefiting developer and resident. Annapolis Roads lies closer to the utopian end of the spectrum, at least in terms of the intentions of its first developer, and its creation is well- documented in the records of one of the foremost landscape design companies in the world: the Olmsted Brothers.
Several years after the death of her husband, playwright Paul Armstrong, Rella Abell Armstrong decided to develop the family's 341-acre farm, called Belmont. Resort and residential communities had been popping up all along the Chesapeake Bay in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as safe and reliable electric train service, then automobiles, eased access for urbanites. Rella Armstrong undoubtedly was aware of the newly developed communities of Wardour (1907- 1915) and Gibson Island (1923), both designed by the Olmsted Brothers firm, the sons and intellectual heirs of Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903), designer of Central Park in New York City and the grounds of Commodore Vanderbilt's Biltmore estate in North Carolina. The Olmsteds designed Roland Park, Guilford, and other residential neighborhoods in Baltimore, as well as parks, university campuses, and residential subdivisions across the United States. Frederick, Sr., believed that landscape design was a fine art--on equal footing with painting, sculpture, and music--that employed the healing power of nature. His firm's naturalistic designs sought to "suggest and imply leisure, contemplativeness, and happy tranquility."
Rella Armstrong approached the Olmsteds, whose offices were in Brookline, Massachusetts (now a Armstrong, on a piece of hotel stationary, sketched the road layout and named each of the streets after figures important in Maryland's Colonial history. In April of 1926, the Olmsteds worked on grading plans for the main road (now Carrollton), planning a 50 ft right-of- way with an 18 ft wide graveled road bed, but noting that "as the place grows, it will be necessary to widen the 18-foot graveled space to at least 28 feet, in order to permit parking in front of each lot." Gallagher, in this letter, discouraged Armstrong in proceeding with her idea to have a bridal path flanked by incoming and outgoing lanes. The bridal path, he asserted, might best be run around the perimeter of the golf course.
The golf course was built in the late 1920s. Gallagher had recommended golf course architect Charles H. Banks of New York City, with whom the Olmsteds had several design projects in common. Both Banks and Gallagher agreed that an 18-hole course was not feasible with the land allotted, and advised Mrs. Armstrong that a larger course might be built in the future south of Bay Ridge Road and the Bay Ridge and Annapolis Railroad. (The railbed followed Old Bay Ridge Road and a portion survives at the east end of that road, at the head of Lake Ogleton.) She settled for a well-designed 9-hole course, a clubhouse, and the beach clubhouse.
Gallagher suggested in a letter to Mrs. Armstrong, dated June 6, 1927, that lots 18-22 on the golf course side of Carrollton Road, probably just west of the west entrance to Claiborne, be reserved for the golf clubhouse. This was, according to Gallagher, "the site of the old house," presumably the farmhouse bought and occupied by the Armstrongs in 1907.2 Those lots eventually were sold and the golf club house built near the Beach Club house on the proposed hotel site. The clubhouse (demolished c. 1970) was a brick Colonial Revival building with a gambrel roof and, along with the surviving gate walls and the now demolished gatehouse, was purportedly designed by the firm of John Russell Pope. Pope designed some of the most prominent American public buildings of the first third of the 20th century, including: the Jefferson Memorial, the National Archives, the National Gallery of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His firm was contracted to review all house designs for the community
The hotel was to be placed just back from the bluff on the site of what is now L'Altura at the intersection of Carrollton and Ogleton Roads, facing south of east "to avoid a too direct view of the tall towers of the government wireless station," Gallagher wrote to Mrs. Armstrong on March 1, 1926, "which, while interesting, rather hurts than otherwise the natural scene." I have been unable to determine who designed the 'wedding cake' beach clubhouse. Originally intended to be the Belmont Hotel, the focus of Mrs. Armstrong's resort, this large, white, multi-tiered frame building housed a restaurant, snack bar, and a variety of other public spaces. It stood as a landmark on the shore of the Bay for a quarter century before succumbing to a spectacular blaze on June 8, 1953. Fragments of tile from the shaded terrace still wash up on the beach.
Other parts of the community design never materialized. Gallagher recommended a well-defined entrance to the community by the Bay Ridge Railway tracks (now Old Bay Ridge Road), suggestive of a "small village green," with the real estate office located at the entrance. Armstrong's realtors rejected the idea, the site being too close to the dust and noise of the main road, and too accessible to "idle people and curiosity seekers." The brick walls flanking Carrollton at the original entrance and a brick gatehouse, just north of the east wall, are all that were built. The gatehouse has since been dismantled. A park with the provisional name "Washington Square" was sited on the north side of Carrollton Road, about halfway between the two entrances to Claiborne Road, but--like the sidewalks that were supposed to have lined at least the main roads--was never built.
Although Mrs. Armstrong was principally interested in building a resort community, she knew that the sale of lots for residences would provide funds for the larger project, and Percival Gallagher was responsible for dividing the one-time farm into as many building lots as possible, the lots averaging one-third of an acre. Those along the road sold for 10 to 12 cents per square foot, or about $1,600 per lot, while those in the Otter Lake section were offered at 14 to 18 cents (about $2,500 per lot) and those along the shore of the bay were offered at 20 to 22 cents per square foot (about $3,500 per lot). In a letter dated March 1, 1926, Gallagher recommended against residential development of so much of the rough, wooded land adjacent to Lake Ogleton: road construction there would be expensive and the proposed hotel called for "this natural wooded and picturesque water frontage."3 As financial pressures mounted, Mrs. Armstrong became keener on the sale of lots. Difficulties of an unspecified sort between the Munsey Trust Company, contracted as trustees for the project in May 1927, and the Armstrong Company slowed the transfer of funds in an already sluggish real estate market, and a court-imposed payment schedule was set up in the early 1930s to satisfy the terms of the mortgage. In February 1934, within weeks of the death of Percival Gallagher, the Equitable Company of Washington, D.C., foreclosed on the mortgage and acquired the unsold lots. The balance owed the Olmsted Brothers appears to have come out of Gallagher's estate.
While Rella Armstrong's vision was never fully realized during her ownership of the property, and Percival Gallagher died before seeing the project to completion, the layout of the Annapolis Roads of today is, essentially, that of the 1920s. The resort aspects of the community burned or were demolished during the third quarter of the 20th century and there has been considerable residential infilling since the 1950s.
1 Olmsted Plans & Drawings Collection, Plan #7591-25.
2 Land Records of Anne Arundel County, Deed GW 57/338, November 13, 1907.
3 All of the surviving correspondence between Rella Abell Armstrong and the Olmsted Brothers, including drawings, are preserved at the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, Fairsted, in Brookline, Massachusetts. Microfilm copies are available at the Library of Congress, Special Collections.
New York
City has its brownstones, Levittown its Cape Cods, and northwest Washington
its turreted and pinnacled Queen Annes. Why doesn't Annapolis Roads have a signature
architectural style? It does, or rather it has several, and those styles represent
the episodic growth of our community. Unlike the Levittowns that sprouted along
the East Coast after World War II and the development of entire city blocks
over the course of a few years, Annapolis Roads grew in four distinct spurts
over nearly 80 years. Here is a brief account of those building booms and of
their characteristic building styles. The graph below charts the number of new
houses built each year from the community's inception in 1926 until the end
of 2003, for a total of 328 dwellings. I have taken the dates from tax records
that are available on the website for the State Department of Assessments &
Taxation: http:// sdatcert3.resiusa.org. Dates after 1950 appear to be accurate;
earlier dates are less certain, but probably approximate the true dates of construction.
(Tax records, for example, date the Spalding house on Eden Lane to 1925, but
J. Revell Carr didn't survey the land until the following year.) The graph illustrates
two early periods of development, with eight houses constructed at the end of
Carrollton, on Eden Lane, and on Claibourne between 1926 and 1930, and five
houses built on Carrollton, the corner of Ogleton and Old Bay Ridge, Claibourne,
and Paca between 1944 and 1950. Between the years 1953 and 1973, Annapolis Roads
experienced sustained growth with 209 new houses, an average of ten per year.
The latest growth spurt occurred between 1988 and 2003, with 65 new builds averaging
five per year. With the exception of one house on Ogleton, all of the pre-1950
houses were built near the Annapolis Roads Beach Club house, which burned in
1953. Claibourne and the "Land's End" portions of the community were the first
sections platted; developer Rella Abell Armstrong intended the proceeds from
lot sales to support construction of a hotel (the Beach Club house) and golf
course. She needed the money: Armstrong had contracted the prestigious Olmsted
Brothers of Brookline, Massachusetts, to develop plans for turning her 341-acre
Belmont Farm into a resort, and the internationally renowned architectural firm
of John RussellPope to review architectural plans for all proposed buildings.
Perhaps reflecting the conservative aesthetic of Pope, and certainly the historical interests of Armstrong (she named all of the streets after prominent Colonial Marylanders), the earliest houses had a decidedly Colonial look, as did the gambrel-roofed golf clubhouse and the gatehouse, both razed in the early 1970s.(pictutes below)
Small, single-story ranches epitomize the style built during the 1950s and 1960s, and they may constitute the predominant architectural style of the community. Beginning in the 1970s, two-story ranches became more popular. Little construction occurred during the late 1970s and 1980s, possibly due in part to the protracted law suit between the Annapolis Roads Property Owners Association and developer Stanley Rosensweig (1974-1987). The last wave of development began upon settlement of the suit, continuing the trend of two-story ranches and, in the late 1990s, introducing to the community what might best be described as the northern Virginia suburban tract house. These two-story houses have a prominent central gable and larger volume to footprint ratios then their predecessors. Construction of these recent houses has completed infilling along most of the streets. While some individual lots remain undeveloped, most of the undeveloped land lies between Ogleton Road and the golf course, and between the rear lot lines along Harbor Drive and Bay Ridge Road. The correlation between architectural styles and development periods is not perfect. Some Colonial Revival houses were built after 1950, and not all houses built between 1950 and 1973 are small one-story ranches. But there is a pattern that, in the main, holds true. Certainly the episodic character of Annapolis Roads' growth accounts for some of the diversity in style and the abandonment of what developer Armstrong had envisioned: a community of Colonial Revival houses encircling a resort constructed in the same style. Most, if not all, of those Colonial Revival houses have been modified over the years. Slow sales, expensive design consultants, inadequate capital, and the Great Depression bankrupted Armstrong's Annapolis Roads Company in 1934. The lingering depression and World War II rationing effectively stalled further development until the late 1940s. It wasn't until after 1950, when Roy and Ray Shields, and Paul S. Anderson, purchased the unsold lots and clubhouses (forming the Club Estates, Inc.), that the building boom began in earnest. Lot development occurred mostly along Carrollton Road until 1960, at which point Ogleton Road rapidly developed. Between 1960 and 1973, almost twice as many houses were built along Ogleton (59) as opposed to Carrollton (31). Lot purchasers on the smaller streets built houses on their properties during this same period. Most of the houses on Jenniper were built between 1953 and 1963. The newer portion of the community (Section F), south of Old Bay Ridge, was not part of the original Olmsted plan, which accounts for its rigid grid layout of streets, rather than the curving roads and cul-de-sacs favored by the Olmsteds. Platted in 1952, Section F grew steadily throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Small, single-story ranches epitomize the style built during the 1950s and 1960s, and they may constitute the predominant architectural style of the community. Beginning in the 1970s, two-story ranches became more popular. Little construction occurred during the late 1970s and 1980s, possibly due in part to the protracted law suit between the Annapolis Roads Property Owners Association and developer Stanley Rosensweig (1974-1987). The last wave of development began upon settlement of the suit, continuing the trend of two-story ranches and, in the late 1990s, introducing to the community what might best be described as the northern Virginia suburban tract house. These two-story houses have a prominent central gable and larger volume to footprint ratios then their predecessors. Construction of these recent houses has completed infilling along most of the streets. While some individual lots remain undeveloped, most of the undeveloped land lies between Ogleton Road and the golf course, and between the rear lot lines along Harbor Drive and Bay Ridge Road. The correlation between architectural styles and development periods is not perfect. Some Colonial Revival houses were built after 1950, and not all houses built between 1950 and 1973 are small one-story ranches. But there is a pattern that, in the main, holds true. Certainly the episodic character of Annapolis Roads' growth accounts for some of the diversity in style and the abandonment of what developer Armstrong had envisioned: a community of Colonial Revival houses encircling a resort constructed in the same style.
1991:
Frank Peterson is President of ARPOA
1994-96:
Marjorie Crain is President of ARPOA
1997:
Joe Hogan becomes President of ARPOA, succeeding Marjorie Crain.
1999:
Hurricane
Floyd dumps more than 11.60 inches on Annapolis, causing lots of damage in Annapolis
Roads.
2000:
Joe Hogan resigns as President. John Coche becomes interim President.
2001:
Larry Beers becomes President of ARPOA.
2003:
Bay Ridge Trust (now Bay Land Trust), agrees to support ARPOA in its efforts to preserve land in the community. Led by Anastasia Hopkinson, Chair of the Land Use Committee, ARPOA secures a $26,000 grant from from the County to pay for a survey of the Ogelton Woods and Green Willow properties.
ARPOA President Larry Beers moves and is replaced by Walter Bigelow.
Hurricane Isabel wrecks havoc on Annapolis Roads.
2004:
The Anne Arundel County Conservation Trust Fund approves a second grant to the Bay Ridge Trust of $20,000 to further support land preservation efforts in Annapolis Roads.
2005:
August 10, 2005: ARPOA buys Ogleton Woods, a 33-acre wooded tract, from Lake Ogleton Associates.
2006:
Green Willow property purchased.
2007:
Anastasia Hopkinson becomes President of ARPOA, succeeding Walter Bigelow.
The ARPOA Board signs a contract to rebuild the rock revetment along the front of the overlook bluff which was devastated by Hurricane Isabel. This revetment is critical in protecting this valuable community property from further erosion due to future nor’easters and hurricanes.
2008:
Completion of the Ogleton Woods survey in May and transfer of the property title from the Bay Land Trust to ARPOA in September.
2009:
May1, 2009: New fire station opens off of Bay Ridge Road (Fire Station # 8) - Annapolis Neck Penninsula
