On your right are the Historic Inns of Annapolis. You are looking at a collection of three buildings, starting with the prominent brick facade of the Maryland Inn. When we think of the founding era, we tend to picture marble statues and statesmen quietly signing the Treaty of Paris, which incidentally was ratified just a block from here and lends its name to the inn's restaurant. But the actual machinery of early Annapolis was much louder and far less dignified.
Before the merchant Thomas Hyde constructed this twenty-fireplace structure in 1772, this corner was officially known as Lot 49. It was the designated post of the town drummer, a man named William Butterfield. Butterfield was the eighteenth-century equivalent of a push notification. He stood right about here, furiously beating his drum to announce the daily news and summon the State Legislature to session. If a politician ignored the third drum roll, they were hit with a fine of one hundred pounds of tobacco. Since tobacco functioned as legal tender, that was a brutal penalty, roughly equal to a few thousand modern dollars.
It was a thoroughly practical town. By 1784, a woman named Sarah Ball managed a busy tavern on this spot, dealing with the daily chaos of travelers, merchants, and lawmakers.
Of course, mundane daily life occasionally crashes headlong into melodrama. Take a glance at your phone to see a shot of the inn. Notice the upper windows. Local legend insists that a Navy Captain named Charles Campbell finally returned from a long deployment and marched up Main Street to reunite with his fiancée at this inn. The glorious, heroic reunion ended instantly when he was run over by a horse-drawn carriage just steps from the front door. Witnessing the accident from a fourth-floor window, the grieving bride threw herself to her death. Today, guests claim the captain haunts the basement while the bride paces the upper hallways.
Just down the street is another of the historic properties, the Governor Calvert House. During an archaeological dig in the 1980s, engineers uncovered a hypocaust. A hypocaust is a brilliant piece of ancient Roman technology, essentially a sub-floor heating system where hot air is channeled through hollow chambers beneath the floorboards. The governor used it to heat an extravagant indoor greenhouse, allowing him to grow exotic lemons and oranges indoors. The inn actually installed a transparent floor over the site so you can look straight down at the original brickwork.
The man responsible for uncovering that clever engineering was a developer named Paul Pearson. He poured his life into restoring these inns in the 1970s, even building a legendary jazz club in the basement here. His preservation efforts were universally praised. They also ruined him. The project drove him into total bankruptcy. The immaculate, polished history we admire today is almost always subsidized by someone else's personal disaster.
Speaking of ambitious plans completely falling apart, let us continue to Government House, about a three-minute walk away. There, you will hear about a spectacular political and architectural failure.
