Maryland’s historic mansions offer a comprehensive view of architectural trends and regional adaptation over the centuries. From the clean lines of Georgian symmetry to the eclecticism of Gilded Age opulence, these estates tell a story of evolving aesthetics and societal structures. The Hammond-Harwood House in Annapolis is a clear example of Georgian architecture’s disciplined proportions. Designed in 1774 by William Buckland, its façade showcases Palladian principles, emphasizing balance and formality. The curving staircase and detailed woodwork reflect a colonial-era focus on craftsmanship, aligning with European ideals while remaining accessible to the American context. By contrast, Evergreen Museum & Library in Baltimore demonstrates the layering of architectural styles as wealth and tastes shifted. Originally built in the Italianate style, it later incorporated late-19th-century embellishments like Tiffany glass and a private theater, signaling a turn toward personal luxury and technological advancement. Its evolution mirrors broader changes in how architecture represented status and innovation. Estates like Mount Clare in Baltimore and Sotterley Plantation in Hollywood adhere to the Georgian template but reveal subtler regional adaptations. Their reliance on local materials and craftsmanship ties them to Maryland’s landscape, while their designs reflect the social hierarchies of their time. Together, these mansions provide a textured portrait of architectural and cultural history.
15. Glenview Mansion – Rockville
Glenview Mansion in Rockville, Maryland, is a prime example of Neo-Classical Revival architecture, with roots stretching back to 1838. Originally a modest two-story house built for Catherine and Richard Johns Bowie, the structure was transformed in 1926 into a grand five-part estate by architects Lochie and Porter.
The Neo-Classical façade, added in the 1920s, features a portico supported by Ionic columns, lending the mansion an air of Georgian-inspired grandeur. The symmetrical design incorporates the original 1838 house at its core, now flanked by later additions that create a sprawling yet balanced structure. A fanlight-topped doorway and oversized windows enhance its appeal, while the interior boasts high ceilings, detailed plasterwork, and rooms designed for large-scale entertaining.
Set on 65 landscaped acres, the property retains remnants of its agricultural past while showcasing formal gardens and open lawns. The original Glenview house, built on the estate’s highest point, anchors the newer construction, symbolizing the evolution from working farm to fashionable retreat. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007, Glenview Mansion stands as both a cultural hub and a layered historical artifact.
14. Oxon Hill Manor – Forest Heights
Oxon Hill Manor in Forest Heights, Maryland, represents the restrained elegance of early 20th-century Neo-Classical Revival architecture. Constructed in 1929 for Sumner Welles, a prominent financier and diplomat under Franklin D. Roosevelt, the manor commands a prime position overlooking the Potomac River, offering expansive views that seem almost diplomatic in their reach.
The mansion’s design is rooted in classical symmetry, with a façade defined by clean lines, stately columns, and a central portico that anchors the composition. Built of red brick with white trim, the manor achieves a balance of formality and grace. The interior features high ceilings, marble fireplaces, and wood-paneled rooms.
The surrounding grounds, meticulously landscaped, extend the house’s grandeur outward, framing it in manicured gardens and gently sloping lawns. Paths and terraces create a seamless connection between the interior spaces and the landscape. Now managed by Prince George’s County, Oxon Hill Manor serves as a cultural venue, preserving its architectural significance while adapting to contemporary use. I
13. Hammond-Harwood House – Annapolis
This 1774 Annapolis gem is an architectural love letter to Palladio, courtesy of colonial architect William Buckland. The façade balances geometric perfection with a genteel staircase that curves like a slow waltz. Built for tobacco planter Matthias Hammond, the house’s façade is a study in symmetry, with its central pediment, arched windows, and balanced wings.
Constructed of red brick laid in Flemish bond, the house features elegant limestone accents that highlight the five-bay frontage. A semi-circular entry porch leads to a doorway framed by ionic pilasters and topped with a delicately carved fanlight, setting the tone for the refined interiors. Inside, Buckland’s craftsmanship shines in the intricate woodwork, from the elaborate mantelpieces to the finely turned staircase balusters. The grand reception rooms are notable for their high ceilings and detailed cornices, creating spaces as stately as they are inviting. The garden, originally laid out in the formal style of the period, reinforces the classical symmetry of the house.
12. Hampton Mansion – Towson
Hampton National Historic Site in Towson, Maryland, is a striking example of late-18th-century Georgian architecture, standing as both a mansion and a marker of Maryland’s layered social history. Built in 1790 for Capt. Charles Ridgely, the estate sprawled over 25,000 acres at its peak, showcasing the Ridgely family’s wealth from ironworks, agriculture, and enslaved labor. The mansion was the largest private residence in the United States when completed, with a symmetrical façade, Palladian windows, and formal proportions that reflect Georgian ideals of order and balance.
Original stone slave quarters and an overseer’s house provide stark reminders of the labor that sustained Hampton’s grandeur. Terraced gardens, meticulously designed between 1799 and 1801, featured parterres and an orangery. Over time, orchards and pastures replaced ornamental gardens. In 1948, the U.S. government recognized Hampton as the nation’s first National Historic Site for its architectural merit. Managed by the National Park Service, the site preserves 62 acres of the once-vast estate.
11. Chase-Lloyd House – Annapolis
The Chase–Lloyd House in Annapolis, Maryland, is a three-story Georgian brick mansion completed in 1774. One of the earliest examples of its style in the Thirteen Colonies, the house is known for its symmetry and formal design. Samuel Chase, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, began construction but sold the property unfinished to Edward Lloyd IV, who completed it with the help of architects William Buckland and William Noke. Their work added fine details that make the house a significant example of Georgian architecture in America.
The façade features Flemish bond brick walls accented by belt courses and a central projecting pavilion. The entrance includes a triple-section doorway with pediment and fanlight, unusual for the pre-Revolutionary period. Above, a triple window and an arched third-story window reinforce the vertical perspective. At the rear, a Palladian window illuminates the stair landing, a focal point of the house’s spacious center-hall plan. Inside, freestanding Ionic columns frame the entry hall, leading to a staircase. Plaster moldings in the Adam style crown the ceilings, while intricate woodwork and six-panel mahogany doors with silver hardware underscore the house’s exquisite design.
10. Homewood House – Baltimore
Homewood Mansion in Baltimore sits on the Johns Hopkins campus like a lesson in architectural ambition and family dysfunction. Completed in 1808 by Charles Carroll Jr., son of Declaration signer Charles Carroll of Carrollton, this Federal-style gem managed to strain a father-son relationship to its breaking point. Originally budgeted at $10,000, the project ballooned to $40,000 — an astronomical sum in its day. Carroll Sr., unimpressed by Junior’s financial management, dubbed the estate an “improvident waste.”
The design, however, is anything but wasteful. Homewood’s Palladian-inspired five-part layout is masterfully planned. The facade’s red brick and white marble, paired with Adam-style Federal details, strike a balance between Georgian solidity and neoclassical refinement. The central block — flanked by connected wings — offers symmetry without redundancy. Inside, the first floor unfolds with understated elegance: reception rooms and parlors punctuated by restrained ornamentation, smaller-scale moldings, and flat reliefs.
By 1824, Charles Carroll Jr.’s finances and reputation were in ruins, and Dad swooped in to manage the estate. Homewood eventually passed through generations and owners, briefly serving as Baltimore’s original Gilman School, before landing with Johns Hopkins. The university has preserved its delicate Federal bones, with furnishings evoking the restrained luxury that Carroll Jr. so extravagantly overshot.
9. Oakland Manor – Columbia
Built in 1811 by Charles Sterrett Ridgely, Oakland Manor in Columbia, Maryland, is constructed from locally quarried stone, with clean, proportional lines and understated ornamentation. The symmetry of the central block, flanked by functional wings, is an example of the era’s architectural trends while accommodating the practical needs of a working estate. The 100-foot-long stone carriage house, built concurrently with the manor, is a striking extension of the property’s architectural integrity. Its presence, along with the nearby grist mill and outbuildings, anchors the estate in its original role as an agricultural hub.
Oakland’s evolution mirrors its architecture’s adaptability. From a plantation to a site of agricultural innovation under Francis Morris, to its later roles as a civic and cultural hub, the manor’s Federal lines remain a constant. The understated elegance of its stone façade and practical layout continues to assert its place as a historic landmark .
8. Montpelier Mansion – Laurel
Montpelier Mansion in Laurel, Maryland, exemplifies Georgian architecture with its precise symmetry and five-part layout. Built between 1781 and 1785 by Major Thomas Snowden and Anne Ridgely Snowden, the house serves as a striking reminder of late-18th-century plantation wealth and craftsmanship. The central block, with its two-story, five-bay facade and pedimented pavilion, anchors the design, flanked by low, hyphen-connected wings that extend to pavilions on either side. This composition, common in Georgian country houses, creates a balanced yet grand aesthetic.
The hipped roof, punctuated by robust chimneys, adds a stately profile to the house, while carved woodwork throughout the interior demonstrates the fine attention to detail typical of the period. The drawing room includes a hidden doorway integrated into the paneled walls, leading to a staircase. The surrounding grounds, though altered over time, were once defined by formal gardens and terraces framed by boxwood hedges, with a historic maze and an elegant hexagonal summerhouse.
7. Mount Clare Mansion – Baltimore
Mount Clare Mansion in Baltimore, Maryland, stands as a Georgian architectural milestone and the city’s oldest surviving colonial structure. Built between 1760 and 1768 by Charles Carroll the Barrister, the house combines elegance with practicality on what was once an 800-acre plantation. Its original structure involved a nine-part composition — a central two-and-a-half-story block with symmetrical wings and hyphens — although later additions altered its layout.
The facade is dominated by a Palladian window above a projecting central bay and a classical portico. The house originally featured outbuildings including a kitchen and orangery, later expanded into Federal-style structures by Carroll’s widow. These additions created a 360-foot-long estate.
Mount Clare’s location near Ridgely’s Cove and the Baltimore Iron Works tied it to early American industry, while its later history intertwined with the rise of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, whose Mount Clare Shops were built nearby. The mansion eventually became a Union Army headquarters during the Civil War, and later, a German beer garden. Purchased by the city in 1890, it now serves as a museum, preserving the architectural legacy of colonial and early industrial Baltimore.
6. Paca House – Annapolis
The William Paca House in Annapolis, Maryland, is a Georgian jewel that seamlessly blends architectural finesse with political legacy. Built between 1763 and 1765, this five-part brick mansion was largely designed by William Paca himself, a Declaration of Independence signatory and Maryland governor. The central 2½-story block, flanked by 1½-story end pavilions connected by hyphens, is a study in the measured elegance of 18th-century Georgian design.
The interior follows a center-hall plan, with rooms on either side. Though much of the original woodwork was lost during its later conversion into the Carvel Hall Hotel, key features remain intact, such as the Chinese Chippendale balustrade that ascends through the stair hall. Dominated by a two-story summer house, the two-acre walled garden was meticulously restored to its original layout, making it one of the finest surviving examples of a colonial-era pleasure garden.
5. Sotterley Plantation – Hollywood
Sotterley is a hodgepodge of architectural eras, its 1703 timber-frame core flanked by Georgian and Victorian add-ons. The property unfolds across 95 acres of history-laden Tidewater terrain, its structures a time capsule of architectural evolution. The centerpiece is a long 1½-story frame house, with wide clapboard siding and beaded detailing. This early post-in-ground structure, incredibly rare for the region, makes Sotterley one of the oldest surviving plantation houses in the United States. Expanded over centuries, the nine-bay facade offers a visual chronology of Maryland’s shifting architectural styles.
4. Cylburn Mansion – Baltimore
This Italianate marble confection perches regally in Baltimore’s Cylburn Arboretum. Built in 1863, its symmetry and stately columns recall Renaissance ideals, while its hilltop position lords over 200 acres of gardens and woods like a land baron surveying his dominion. Tucked into Baltimore’s urban sprawl, the property offers a rare blend of 19th-century elegance and horticultural splendor. At its heart is the mansion, a gneiss fortress commissioned by industrialist Jesse Tyson in 1863 and completed in 1888. Designed by George Aloysius Frederick, the architect behind Baltimore’s City Hall, the house features a mansard roof, Italianate cupola, and a tower. Cylburn’s stone construction was sourced from Tyson’s quarries at Bare Hills.
The mansion, flanked by greenhouses and gardens, anchors the 200-acre arboretum, which evolved from Tyson’s original estate plantings into an expansive catalog of trees and shrubs. Visitors stroll past azaleas, Japanese maples, chestnuts, and oaks, as well as curated flower and vegetable gardens. Its cinematic charm even caught the eye of HBO’s The Wire, grounding fiction in its serene, textured reality.
3. Clifton Mansion – Baltimore
Clifton Mansion in Baltimore, originally a Georgian plantation house, has undergone more transformations than a shape-shifting protagonist in a Victorian novel. Built in 1802 by Captain Henry Thompson, the estate began as a dignified stone house on 166 acres. Thompson, a merchant-turned-militia-leader, expanded it in 1812, and it stood as a symbol of Baltimore’s resilience during the War of 1812 when he rallied the city’s business leaders into defending against British forces.
By 1841, Clifton changed hands and aesthetic direction. Enter Johns Hopkins, the railroad tycoon and philanthropist with a penchant for living large. For $16,000, he snapped up the property and commissioned B&O Railroad architects Niernsee and Neilson to reimagine the house as an Italianate villa. They expanded the structure in every direction, topped it with a five-story tower, and added wraparound porches, a porte cochere, and walls dripping with trompe l’oeil murals. The interior includes enameled glass, garlanded plaster moldings, and a Bay of Naples mural.
Landscape designer Andrew Jackson Downing likely influenced the estate’s sprawling 500 acres, complete with lakes, gardens, and a gardener’s cottage. Baltimore City acquired Clifton in 1895, converting much of the land into parks and infrastructure. While the mansion suffered periods of neglect, Civic Works began its revival in the 1990s.
2. Evergreen Museum & Library – Baltimore
Evergreen Museum & Library in Baltimore mixes Italianate roots with extravagant upgrades courtesy of the Garrett family. Originally a modest mid-19th-century mansion, it evolved into a 48-room statement piece after its purchase by John W. Garrett, president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, in 1878. Railroads may have driven the Garrett fortune, but the mansion’s architecture reflects an appetite that extended far beyond tracks and freight.
The Garretts added wings including a billiard room, a gymnasium, and a bowling alley, later converted into an art gallery and private theater painted by Russian artist Léon Bakst. The house boasts a 23-karat gold-plated bathroom, a red Asian room filled with Japanese and Chinese artifacts, and a library of over 30,000 volumes. Highlights include Shakespeare Folios, rare natural history plates, and an early Maryland-printed booklet. Johns Hopkins University, which received the estate in 1952, manages the 26-acre property as a museum.
1. Graham-Hughes House – Baltimore
Graham-Hughes House in Baltimore’s Mount Vernon Place Historic District is a Châteauesque tour de force, completed in 1888 in white marble. Designed by local architect George Archer, the house contrasts with its red-brick and brownstone neighbors. The corner tower, a bold statement of verticality, does more than define the house — it anchors the northern end of Washington Place, giving architectural punctuation to the park’s landscape.
The design channels the French Renaissance with steep gables, intricate stone ornamentation, and asymmetrical massing. Built for George and Sarah Graham, the house transitioned seamlessly into the hands of their daughter, Isabella, who married Thomas Hughes and lived there until her death in 1977. Its longevity as a private residence underscores its historical appeal as a standout piece of Baltimore’s urban fabric.
