New Building - Historic Annapolis, Maryland

Left and above:  Proposed Main Street facade.  Bohl Architects' sensitive design integrates the new buildings into the existing streetscape by recalling the form, scale and massing of the original buildings.

Left and above:  Proposed State Circle facade.

Visit www.7StateCircle.com for more information on this project.

This project will feature a state of the art automated parking system to maximize the number of parking spaces in the garage (see rendering at left).

This project required extensive review by many City groups and approval from the Annapolis Historic Preservation Commission.  Bohl Architects successfully worked with the Commission and other community groups to create a design that is highly praised by all.  The design received unanimous approval form the Annapolis Historic Preservation Commission.

Following is the report prepared by Bohl Architects and presented at the Annapolis Historic Preservation Commission meeting.  It explains the design in context with the existing architecture of Annapolis, and presents an extensive review of Annapolis' historic architecture.

Annapolis Streetscape

State Circle Streetscape

State Circle is a unique streetscape that is also a microcosm of Annapolis. The street announces grand aspirations with the size of the circle (approximately 3.2 acres), but it is not a pure geometric circle or oval. The fact that there was no attempt to manipulate the topography into a more monumental base for the State House is as significant as the fact that the State House dome does not define any actual center of the Circle.  The State House dome is also not in the center of any of the streets which radiate out of State Circle. The views up East Street, or Francis, or Maryland Avenue, will find the dome slightly off axis. This "near miss" is a fundamental characteristic of the built environment of Annapolis.

This "near-miss" exists at all levels in the city: urban plan, individual building, and building detail. The Nicholson urban plan of circles with radiating streets overlaying a 90 degree street grid leads to the idiosyncratic buildings at acute and obtuse intersections, such as the Maryland Inn, Farmers National Bank, and buildings at the intersections of Fleet with Cornhill, Northwest with College Avenue, and Prince George with East. The construction of buildings over a long time causes the idiosyncratic juxtaposition of grand and modest. The startlingly abrupt contrast of the modest twentieth century buildings between the Paca House and the James Brice house with those two older and grander buildings; and the way Cumberland Court slices out the Hammond Harwood House side garden are just two of many examples.

Everywhere there are "near-misses" in building details: the way the round headed second floor window trim of the James Brice house collides with the bracket roof cornice, the way the same cornice terminates at each side with a haphazard brick corbel in place of the forgotten pilasters; and at the garden side of the James Brice House there is the start of a black brick header chevron pattern that is started, then abandoned before the second floor. All of these "near-misses" are attempts at grand gestures that get derailed in the practical ride of complex daily urban life.

This is the great charm of Annapolis. It is grand, formal, monumental, and simultaneously modest, haphazard, and unceremonial.

Main Street in Annapolis is a horizontal composition from the top at Church Circle, down the hill to the City dock. The vertical spire of St. Anne's terminates the horizontal line at the top; at City Dock, the diagonal turns to a perfectly horizontal line, racing across the Bay to the Eastern Shore. The outward flare of the street at the bottom accentuates both the spike of church steeple, and the broad horizon on the other side of the Chesapeake Bay.

Most buildings are taller than wider. From the sidewalk, this verticality generates an energy of commerce and city living.

In the early twentieth century, owners of wider lots still created vertical building compositions by the use of pilasters and corner piers, as at 123 Main Street.

The natural cart paths from land to the harbor would follow Spa Road (which clears the headwaters of Spa Creek), Taylor Avenue (which clears the headwaters of College Creek), and outer West Street (which goes on to clear the headwaters of South and Severn Rivers). That these paths would naturally converge on the topographic ridge of Inner West Street, the most natural topographic and direct approach to the harbor, is evidenced by the near-alignment of Main Street and the first block of West Street.

New Building - Main Street Facade

Vertical Composition

The new building divides the 47 foot wide lot into two distinct building elements. This allows each element to achieve a vertical proportion. The height of each conforms to the building program, and reflects the great variation of  cornice height on Main Street.

Vitality of Retail Spaces

Annapolis store fronts have a distinctive scale. The display windows are wide and allow visual penetration deep into the store. The doors are recessed from the sidewalk edge, coaxing passersby to step off the sidewalk for a closer look at additional display windows. The store fronts also have small roofs above the display windows, frequently with clerestory windows above. These roofs hold awnings and larger store signs that are visible from across the street.

Apart from the similar function of the display windows, the store fronts exhibit a great deal of variety due to modifications by retailers over time. There is also a great variety at the vertical plane of the property line. Most buildings are placed directly at the property line, and many store fronts project into the sidewalk right of way. This increases display area and visibility into the store. 

Projection of store fronts into the sidewalk right of way is no longer permitted. The proposed design takes advantage of a minor angle of the property line to create variety of store front display windows. This creates variety at the intersection of the sidewalk and building. The proposed design features three distinctly different store display windows. The retail entrance has recessed flared display windows typical of retail entrances. The middle display window is a plain direct opening. The display window at Tate Alley is an idiosyncratic form that expresses the force of retail use over time. It appears to have once been a more regular pure form, but then modified by use. There are many examples of Annapolis Main Street store fronts that have been modified for retail use over time.

Unclear boundaries and uncertain property lines result in the haphazard collision of forms made gradually and by chance.

The painted steel cornice at 53 Maryland Avenue is simply sheet steel, bent to form a stepped fascia. The projected cornice is sheet steel bent to form a cyma recta molding. The full cornice is a clean, modern design with a good balance of historical reference and early-20th century design. The building to the right of 53 Maryland Avenue is also painted sheet steel, pressed to brick shape, and molded brackets at the cornice. 

Variety continues at the upper levels. There is a wide range of cornice heights on Main Street - from 14 to 38 feet above the sidewalk. The former building at 184-186 Main Street had a cornice height of 38 feet. Some cornices are heavily bracketed Italianate, while others are very plain with slightly recessed panels.

The design of the cornice of the proposed building is inspire by the variety of cornices on Main Street and the steel cornices on Maryland Avenue. While inspired by these cornices, the proposed design does not mimic or interpret them. Overall, the cornice has the scale, texture and massing typical of Main Street. The exact assembly of the cornice has an architectural interest that is fresh and genuinely reflects the period of construction.

Building design on Main Street since the late nineteenth century has been all about transparency. Highly prized are first floor designs that maximize the flow of the sidewalk into the retail interior. On upper floor levels, designs created large openings for the projection of interior spaces out into the street.

Great transparency is created at the proposed display window at Tate Alley. This window provides interior retail display area that is immediate to the sidewalk, cuts the corner to the alley, and sets up the ambiguity of the granite wall. The projecting double bay windows above the retail entrance are a familiar design strategy to connect interior rooms to the street. The top floor fully glazed area further connects the activity of the street to the activity of the building interior.

Large windows and wide expanses of glass provide light and views, connecting the interior of the buildings to the activity of the street.

Wide windows at both the street and upper levels at 34 Market Space. (MdHR G 2140-194A)

The outline of an oval window, shown on the sketch, is still visible behind the sign at Zachary’s on Main Street. The Moderne style facade eliminates structural contact with ground and the sidewalk flows into the building.

A charming feature of Annapolis is its plethora of building fragments sprinkled around the city. There are all kinds of parts of walls, steps, doors, fences that have been discarded and reused over the years. With the recent wholesale repaving of Main Street and its sidewalks, the City lost all of the idiosyncratic mismatched patina of years of sidewalk modifications.

The granite wall element of the proposed building creates a new idiosyncratic feature for the street. The wall will use rough quarried granite. It will step down in height contrary to the slope of the sidewalk. As it steps down to Tate Alley, the top of it becomes a walking surface, flush with the brick sidewalk. The wall follows the property line, so it is slightly skewed to the building face. The wall reduces in thickness as it descends the street. The depth of the wall is visible from the interior of the retail area. The architectural goal of the granite wall is to create a building fragment, and to reintroduce idiosyncratic paving back to Main Street.

New Building - State Circle

Ghost of Former Buildings

The new building design recalls the form, scale and massing of the buildings lost in the 1997 fire. The new three-story form on the left is precisely the same height, width and location of the former building. This new form is to be built of smooth, featureless pre-cast concrete. The window openings are proportioned to recall the buildings at 3 Church Circle and the Main Street side of the Shaw House. These older buildings are also “ghosts” of former buildings; their stucco finishes cover the previous frame or brick surfaces.

State Circle view of buildings destroyed by fire.

3 Church Circle

Main Street side of Shaw House

The proposed building form has an overall form, scale and massing that relate directly to the unique aspects of Annapolis.

The great architectural challenge of designing a new building to infill a gap in the Annapolis city fabric is to balance two requirements: one, the building must fit within the unique context of Annapolis; two, the building must not imitate a historical style, or be confused as a building of an earlier period. The architectural solution of the proposed design is to create an overall form, massing and scale that are consistent with the City, and simultaneously remove any reference to historical detail. The proposed design has no arches, keystones, window sash, or molding trims that pretend to make a reference to historical style details.

The Donner Building, designed by Annapolis architect James Wood Birch in the 1960’s, expresses the architectural concept of a building mass that fits the context of Annapolis, and does not imitate historical detail. The building attempts symmetry but does not achieve it. The creation of the idiosyncratic dormers recalls the great variety of unique building shapes in Annapolis, yet is without precedent in the city.