‘We have our work cut out for us’
National Park Service will fund window restoration at historic Brice House in Annapolis
Sometimes when historic preservation experts have to rebuild a wall, a major grant helps them open 73 windows.
Historic Annapolis, the nonprofit that manages several state-owned historic homes downtown, is celebrating receiving a $500,000 grant from the National Park Service to help fund a$22 million restoration project at Brice House.
The money will be used to create reproductions of the original window frames, sashes and shutters in the Colonial-era mansion, completed in 1774. Only two original sashes — inner frames that can be raised and hold the glass panels — remain. Thanks to the grant, a carpenter with special skills will re-create frames so that eventually, all 73 windows in the mansion will be historically accurate and functional.
“We have our work cut out for us,” said Michael K. Day, senior vice president for capital projects at Historic Annapolis, who is managing the restoration. The state purchased Brice House in 2014 from the International Masonry Institute and allowed the nonprofit to begin restoring the home two years later. Initial projects included replicating oystershell mortar to repair masonry and peeling two centuries of paint off the ballroom’s ornate plaster cornices.
“We had put the window restoration on the back burner,” Day said.
Currently, the windowpanes and frames are a hodgepodge, with a mix of original and replacement framework from the 1950s. Along the East Street front exterior, some frames are painted white, others are brick red. All need some TLC. Historic Annapolis has yet to sign the paperwork, Day said, but if all goes according to plan, the federal grant money should come through in October, allowing a carpenter who already built one prototype sash to resume work on the windows.
The money comes at a crucial time for the Brice House project. Work is running behind and over budget, thanks to pandemic delays and unexpected masonry issues discovered late last year, Day said.
Contractors spent most of last fall rebuilding the roof on the mansion’s West Wing, known as the carriage house. But when they set the roof back in place, the west wall suddenly began to crumble; outer brick fell out, inner brick fell in. Turns out, when the carriage house was converted from apartments to a corporate-style conference room four decades ago, the interior and exterior bricks were stacked next to each other rather than knit together. The entire wall — none of which was original — had to be replaced.
“The work they did 250 years ago was great. What they did in the 1980s and some of the 1990s was not,” Day said of the Brice House masonry. Carriage house walls must now be rebuilt and stabilized before work on the roof can resume.
“That wasn’t entirely expected, and that set us back a bit,” Day said.
Money for the Brice House project comes from a mix of private, state and federal funding. It was Kaelynn Bedsworth, a development associate at Historic Annapolis, who discovered the mansion would qualify for a new National Park Service initiative called the Semiquincentennial Grant Program honoring historical sites with ties to the nation’s founding in 1776.
Guidelines required properties to be both state-owned and on the National Registry of Historic Places.
“It was perfect for us,” Day said. The Park Service funded 17 projects in 12 states. Other sites receiving $500,000 grants include Old Fort Niagara, which was built by the French in western New York in 1729, and the Catoctin Furnace Historical Society in Thurmont, which will use its money to preserve 18th century buildings and upgrade the HVAC system in the Museum of the Ironworker.
“National parks and National Park Service programs serve to tell authentic and complete history, provide opportunities for exploring the legacies that impact us today and contribute to healing and understanding,” NPS Director Chuck Sams said in a news release announcing the grants. “Through the Semiquincentennial Grant Program, we are supporting projects that showcase the many places and stories that contributed to the evolution of the American experience.”
Although planter, lawyer and local politician James Brice is less of a household name than other former residents of historic homes in Annapolis, such as William Paca and Thomas Carroll, his house remains architecturally significant. The five-part Georgian mansion was one of the largest and most elegant in Colonial Annapolis. Brice also happened to be a meticulous record-keeper. Work began April 14, 1767, with the laying of a cornerstone marked “The Beginning.” Thanks to his well-preserved ledgers, the restoration team knows that construction took seven years, 326,000 bricks and 90,800 cypress shingles.
Once West Wing work is complete, the team will focus on moving the HVAC mechanical equipment from the East Wing into a new, semi-subterranean outbuilding. That will allow interpreters to restore the Brice House East Wing kitchen and slave quarters and provide visitors with a stark reminder of how enslaved people lived and worked in antebellum Annapolis.
Money for that project comes from a $3 million state appropriation, Day said. And hopefully, Maryland lawmakers will provide the same level of funding for fiscal year 2024. The team restoring Brice House has a “punch list that never goes away,” Day said, but he believes they are still on track to celebrate the semiquincentennial in 2026.