Oval Federal Room from Willow Brook 1799

The Oval room from Willow Brook 1799

In the 1790’s Baltimore newspapers were crowded with advertisements for India Nankeens, Barbados rum, Muscavado sugar, Marseilles quilting’s, Holland beer, Irish linens, Spanish cigars, Leghorn hats and for architectural supplies and services that made Baltimore a major international center on the East Coast that had an acceptance of the new American Federal style.

A 1797 advertisement offered a “parcel of the  much admired composition ornaments for chimney pieces, door caps, frontispieces, pillaisters, rich flower festoons, wheat festoons, neat small flowers, vine and ivy. In 1801 Thomas Leamen who came to Baltimore from London by way of Philadelphia offered his skills as a composition ornament maker.

The room is furnished with a very important set of early 19^th century Baltimore made painted Fancy furniture Attributed to Hugh and John Finlay circa 1800-1810. And believed to be made for Baltimore merchant and patriot John Morris. The 13 piece set consists of 10 arm chairs, 2 settees and one marble top pier table. Each chair contains on its crest rail a polychrome painting of a view of a Baltimore house or public building including Willow Brook.  

In the 1790’s Baltimore was the 3^rd largest city in America. The largest city below Philadelphia and in the South. Baltimore city has the western most port on the East Coast making it the fastest route out to sea. The Baltimore Clipper ship. One of the fastest ships of the time also played a important role in Baltimore wealth. They were especially suited to moving low-density, high value perishable cargoes such as food and slaves, and in that trade operated as far afield as the west coast of Africa. Similar vessels were built as privateers during the War of Independence and the War of 1812, and as pilot boats. 

The room is furnished with a very important set of early 19^th century Baltimore made painted Fancy furniture Attributed to Hugh and John Finlay circa 1800-1810. And believed to be made for Baltimore merchant and patriot John Morris. The 13 piece set consists of 10 arm chairs, 2 settees and one marble top pier table. Each chair contains on its crest rail a polychrome painting of a view of a Baltimore house or public building including Willow Brook.  

As the city of Baltimore begin to grow in people and wealth. The Wealthy citizens of Baltimore looked to the motherland of England for inspiration on fine living.  They built elegant townhouses in the city of Baltimore for Winter living, and Summer Villas on the hillsides to the north and west of Baltimore outside of the city, but most no more than a 30 min carriage ride from downtown Baltimore.

Baltimore Schoolgirl needlework sampler from the early 19^th century

The Summer homes offered an effort to escape heat, bad smells, large crowds &  yellow fever that visited the harbor each summer.  They also offer their owners and invited guest a country retreat of fresh air, rolling hills, and high style entertainment copied from the gentry of Georgian England. Visitors to theses elegant Baltimore country homes were delighted with “Strawberry parties” where berries, fresh cream, ices, pineapples and chilled champagne was served accompanied by fine music and dancing.  Also homes would host “House Parties” that could last for days or weeks also in the English Georgian style. 

Detail of ornate Neoclassical plasterwork in oval room

The Warner and Hanna Map of Baltimore and its environs published in 1801 showcases almost 50 country seats like Willow Brook around the city of Baltimore. Sadly only two of this Summer Villas remain in Baltimore today in their original settings. Homewood House built 1801 and Mount Clare ca, 1764.

Willow Brook was built for rich merchant Thoroughgood Smith between 1796-99. The exterior of the lovely home was in the Palladian style while the interior was a Adamesque-Federal style. The exterior was similar to the smaller farm houses illustrated in the books of Robert Morris and William Halfpenny, English popularizers of the Palladian design for less ambitious builders.

The oval room’s original mantelpiece had been replaced in the Victorian period. At the time the room was installed, a stylistically appropriative wooden mantelpiece of the 1790’s was removed from a house in Alexandria, Virginia was acquired. This mantelpiece could have been the work of a Baltimore craftsman since certain elements of its composition ornament are identical to some of the designs of the Willow Brook oval room.

Thoroughgood Smith had a Winter brick town house on Water street in Baltimore that is still standing. Willow Brook was built on a beautiful site overlooking both Baltimore city and the Patapsco River. Smith bought 26 acres of country property from Philip Rogers in 1785 and apparently soon began to make improvements and to create a neat landscape.

An advertisement placed in Baltimore’s Federal Gazette, 18 April 1800:

Sale by Auction on Monday. The 12th day of May, 1800, will be exposed to public sale on premises, that beautiful, healthful and highly improved seat, within one mile of the city of Baltimore, called Willow Brook, containing about 26 acres of land, the whole of which is under a good post and rail fence, divided and laid off into grass lots, orchards, gardens, &c. As this beautiful seat is generally known, and the premises can be viewed at any time previous to the day of the sale, it is considered unnecessary to go into minute description of the improvements and the many advantages it has over any other country seat in the vicinity of the city. The mansion house is a new brick building, upwards of eighty feet front, completely finished last Fall, in an elegant manner, having every apartment that can be necessary for a genteel family. The garden and orchard abounds with the greatest variety of the choisest fruit trees, shrubs, flowers, &c., collected from the nurseries in America and from Europe, all in perfection and full bearing. The garden is now plentifully stocked with vegetables of all kinds, and a good spring crop in the ground. In the garden is a new wooden house, with twelve foot passage, and five rooms, a gardeners house, wish house, spring house, stable and carriage house, a fish pond well stocked with fish, and a elegant bath with two dressing drooms {sic}, bath and spring house, well supplied with springs of fine soft water. Any person wishing to make a private purchase before the day of sale may know the terms by applying to Bentalou and Dorsey. Auctioneers

When Willow Brook was completed in 1799 Smith suffered severe financial losses when several of his vessels were seized by the French. In February 1800 he declared himself bankrupt and deeded this property to the trustees who in turn were to sell it for the benefit of his creditors. The new owner of Willow Brook was John Donnell who came to Baltimore from Castletown Ireland, just after the Revolution. In 1798 he married Ann Teackle Smith, Thorowgood Smith’s niece. The Donnell family were the first occupants of Willow Brook, Thorowgood Smith who recovered his fortune and in 1804 became Baltimore’s second mayor, should be remembered as it’s builder.

The Donnell family made many improvements to Willow Brook until 1864 and sold off most of the land around the house. In 1864 it was sold to the Roman Catholic Church to become a House of the Good Shepherd, a home for wayward girls. In the 1960 the building and grounds were purchased by the City of Baltimore for a public school site. Before Willow Brook and it’s many additions were demolished in 1965, the woodwork, plaster, flooring, and all other architectural elements of the houses late 18^th century oval drawing room and entrance hall were carefully removed, restored and installed in the Baltimore Museum of Art American Wing.

Willow Brook is a typical  example of a Palladian building adapted in America from such books as Robert Morris Select Architecture {London, 1757}, and particularly popular in Maryland and Virginia colonies. Willow Brook is built on a natural incline so that the garden façade has it’s full basement exposed showcasing a 3 story center block. On the entrance façade the basement level is not visible but is fully lit by a areaway that was spanned by an entrance porch. The oval room which formed a polygonal projection on the garden side was the most outstanding architectural feature of the home and consequently most embellished with architectural decoration. Oval rooms such as Willow Brooks were not uncommon in American architecture in the first decades of the 19^th century. One of the earliest and most influential uses of an oval form was in the Irish born architect James Hoban’s design of 1792 for the White House in Washington now known as the Blue Room.

The oval room derives from French civil and domestic architecture of the Louis XV and XVI periods, the oval room came to America through the English influence of architect-designer Robert Adam and others and was well-suited to the preoccupation of the late 18^th century and early 19^th century builder exploring new architectural forms and spaces.

The room is furnished with a very important set of early 19^th century Baltimore made painted Fancy furniture Attributed to Hugh and John Finlay circa 1800-1810. And believed to be made for Baltimore merchant and patriot John Morris. The 13 piece set consists of 10 arm chairs, 2 settees and one marble top pier table. Each chair contains on its crest rail a polychrome painting of a view of a Baltimore house or public building including Willow Brook.  

The decorative plasterwork of the oval room from Willow Brook is a remarkable survival. There is a marked similarity between the plaster and woodwork of Willow Brook and that of the Octagon House also built in 1799 in Washington and Woodlawn Plantation 1799 near Mount Vernon. The Maryland-Virginia Federal style to which Willow Brook and other houses belong is the regional equivalent of the McIntire and slightly later Bulfinch schools of architecture in New England. The plasterwork cornices at Willow Brook, both in the oval room and entrance hall, are related to surviving late 18^th century examples in Annapolis, especially to the cornices in the Paca and Adams-Kilty houses. In the 1780’s a John Rawlins was working alone in Baltimore in decorative plasterwork. John was hired by George Washington to execute the plasterwork in the banquet hall at Mount Vernon. 

This type of large Grand Tour painting is the kind that would have been brought back to Baltimore from European travels by wealthy Baltimoreans     

In addition to the plasterwork, most of the rich composition ornament applied to the woodwork of the oval room and the entrance hall has been painstakingly cleaned of many layers of paint. Composition work in the form of beading, lamb’s tongue, and ropework appears also on the window and doorframes and the top molding of the baseboard. The chair rail is inset with a Adamesque wave like pattern {rinceau} further enriched with bellflowers and beading. The plaster ceiling medallion is in the shape of an oval-fluted tent of canopy encircled by applied ornament of palmettes, bellflowers swages, acanthus leaves, and small rosettes in oval medallions.

The room is furnished with a very important set of early 19^th century Baltimore made painted Fancy furniture Attributed to Hugh and John Finlay circa 1800-1810. And believed to be made for Baltimore merchant and patriot John Morris. The 13 piece set consists of 10 arm chairs, 2 settees and one marble top pier table. Each chair contains on its crest rail a polychrome painting of a view of a Baltimore house or public building including Willow Brook.  

The oval room’s original mantelpiece had been replaced in the Victorian period. At the time the room was installed, a stylistically appropriative wooden mantelpiece of the 1790’s was removed from a house in Alexandria, Virginia was acquired. This mantelpiece could have been the work of a Baltimore craftsman since certain elements of its composition ornament are identical to some of the designs of the Willow Brook oval room. The double-hung sash windows are original with the center garden window having a jib doorway in the paneling under the window for guest to walk out onto the garden porch. The floorboards are all original and are two inches thick and originally secured by horizontal dowels.

Detail of Baltimore fancy pier table

Charles Carroll of Carrollton’s elephant-shaped mantel clock, probably made in Paris around 1770. And detail of a Baltimore Summer House painted on the front of the pier table

Charles Carroll of Carrollton’s elephant-shaped mantel clock, probably made in Paris around 1770.

The oval room’s original mantelpiece had been replaced in the Victorian period. At the time the room was installed, a stylistically appropriative wooden mantelpiece of the 1790’s was removed from a house in Alexandria, Virginia was acquired. This mantelpiece could have been the work of a Baltimore craftsman since certain elements of its composition ornament are identical to some of the designs of the Willow Brook oval room.

The plaster ceiling medallion is in the shape of an oval-fluted tent of canopy encircled by applied ornament of palmettes, bellflowers swages, acanthus leaves, and small rosettes in oval

. The double-hung sash windows are original with the center garden window having a jib doorway in the paneling under the window for guest to walk out onto the garden porch.

The plaster ceiling medallion is in the shape of an oval-fluted tent of canopy encircled by applied ornament of palmettes, bellflowers swages, acanthus leaves, and small rosettes in oval medallions.

Most of the rich composition ornament applied to the woodwork of the oval room and the entrance hall has been painstakingly cleaned of many layers of paint. Composition work in the form of beading, lamb’s tongue, and ropework appears also on the window and doorframes and the top molding of the baseboard.

The room is furnished with a very important set of early 19^th century Baltimore made painted Fancy furniture Attributed to Hugh and John Finlay circa 1800-1810. And believed to be made for Baltimore merchant and patriot John Morris. The 13 piece set consists of 10 arm chairs, 2 settees and one marble top pier table. Each chair contains on its crest rail a polychrome painting of a view of a Baltimore house or public building including Willow Brook.  

The plaster ceiling medallion is in the shape of an oval-fluted tent of canopy encircled by applied ornament of palmettes, bellflowers swages, acanthus leaves, and small rosettes in oval medallions.

Most of the rich composition ornament applied to the woodwork of the oval room and the entrance hall has been painstakingly cleaned of many layers of paint. Composition work in the form of beading, lamb’s tongue, and ropework appears also on the window and doorframes and the top molding of the baseboard.

Detail of cornice in hallway to Willow Brook room

The front Hall of Willow brook