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ANNAPOLIS, Maryland – Legend has it that when Horatio Sharpe, Maryland’s colonial governor, began work on Whitehall in the 18th century, he hoped the palatial mansion on the Chesapeake Bay would win the heart of his beloved. Unfortunately, the young woman fell in love with Sharpe’s friend and private secretary instead.
But Whitehall’s recent owners are now hoping to win over the American people — and perhaps enlist Uncle Sam’s help to keep it running.
Long overshadowed by its larger and more accessible cousins like Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, Whitehall could become a major attraction in the proposed Chesapeake National Recreation Area, according to lawmakers and others promoting federal designation.
The Annapolis location would provide visitors with a home base from which to explore the Bay’s paradoxical history as the birthplace of American democracy and slavery. The National Register of Historic Places also lists it as “an important milestone in American architectural history” because of the scope and quality of a classic design that predates Monticello. The bill would allow the National Park Service to acquire or partner with Whitehall and other designated sites in the bay.
The idea of turning Whitehall into a national travel destination is also blessed by a key figure: Charlie Scarlett, one of the last people to live there.
Scarlett said he remembered family dinners on the grand portico overlooking the bay, learning to swim with a piece of two-by-four for a buoy, raising a pet red fox and living with a portrait of Edgar Allan Poe in front of his bedroom.
“This is my home,” he said recently during a tour. “And I love everything about it.”
His late father, Charles E. Scarlett Jr., a Baltimore shipping executive with a fondness for history, purchased Whitehall in 1946 and spent more than a decade restoring the building to its original design, right down to the hand-painted wallpaper that cuts out China were imported . He lived with his wife in Whitehall until her death.
Charlie Scarlett, who runs the family-run Brandywine Foundation, which owns the property, is taking steps to open Whitehall to the public. Part of his motivation is practical: He said the nonprofit is struggling with the huge costs of maintaining a nearly 260-year-old building.
But Scarlett, 70, a business executive who lives in St. Louis, said he also believes Whitehall’s historical significance should make it more accessible to all Americans, including the many descendants of enslaved people who lived and worked there.
If Congress incorporates the bay into the national park system, Scarlett envisions Whitehall becoming a national attraction modeled after the nonprofit Mount Vernon or managed by the National Park Service within a network of landmarks, such as those at Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco.
Scarlett has even considered allowing Brandywine to sell his former home to the federal government. The foundation’s most recent publicly available income tax form values the property at $7.8 million.
“You know, if you’d asked me ten years ago, I would have said, ‘Damn, no.’ But that was 10 years ago,” Scarlett said. Just repairing the mansion’s leaking roof, which has caused significant water damage, is costing nearly $1 million, he said.
Janice Hayes-Williams, who lives in Severn, Maryland and traces her family back to Whitehall’s enslaved Africans and slaveholders, said the historic site is an asset to the country in helping people learn about the enduring effects of slavery to clear up. She said her late father dreamed of the day when he and other descendants of the enslaved residents could walk the halls.
“He’d say, ‘Baby, whatever you’re doing, go in there because your ancestors built this,'” recalls Hayes-Williams. He never got the chance, but when Hayes-Williams visited her during an open house about five years ago, she cried. “The slaves are my family members,” she thought.
Unlike Jefferson and others, whose homes have become national shrines, Sharpe was a British Loyalist. He was born in Yorkshire to a large, prominent family whose connections probably played a role in his appointment as governor by Lord Baltimore, according to an article in the 1937 journal of the Maryland Historical Society.
Sharpe had also been commissioned as a captain in the Royal Marines and had risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel with an infantry dispatched to the West Indies – an experience that made him a wise decision to lead the colony on the eve of the French and Indian War. According to Lady Matilda Ridout Edgar’s 1912 book A Colonial Governor In Maryland, he was 35 when he sailed from England, accompanied by his private secretary, the Oxford-educated John Ridout.
Legend has it that Sharpe began building Whitehall in late 1764 to impress Mary Ogle, daughter of a previous governor, according to a 1951 article by Charles Scarlett Jr. She fell in love with the younger Ridout, who eventually married her married.
Col. Sharpe, as he was known, commissioned the finest architects to build Whitehall and oversaw its construction, using enslaved Africans and indentured European labourers, including a skilled woodcarver who died of tuberculosis before he could gain his freedom .
The building drew on the design of the influential Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio, whose clean, simplified Neoclassical Roman and Greek style – characterized by columns, domes, and pediments – became popular in London in the mid-18th century, according to a 1974 report became National Registry. The Palladian style also influenced Monticello, the James Semple House in Williamsburg, and other colonial homes.
Whitehall was one of only two pre-Revolutionary homes in the United States to feature a “full temple portico” with massive white cedar Corinthian columns, the 1974 report said. (The other was Roger Morris’ 1765 mansion on the Harlem River .) The spacious interior was also “extraordinarily rich” with elaborate woodcarvings, including satyr-like faces in each corner of the central salon, meant to represent the four winds. A phoenix looks down from the top of the great square hall.
“And so there arose in our part of the world a Palladian dwelling which in all probability marked the beginning of the full Classical revival in America,” wrote the elder Scarlett. “Thomas Jefferson took it to heart and promoted it, and it should become the foundation of our national architecture.”
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Lady Ridout’s book describes Sharpe’s 1,000-acre estate, filled with activities, mostly carried out by enslaved people, in well-tended gardens, orchards, a sawmill, a brickworks, and a workshop spinning cotton, flax, and wool.
In 1773 Sharpe sailed to England expecting to return to Whitehall, but he never did. He entrusted Ridout with his beloved villa, sometimes sending back cuttings for the vineyards, or often writing to inquire of affairs there, wrote Lady Ridout. In a letter, Sharpe granted Ridout the freedom to sell enslaved laborers if it was economically necessary to do so, instructing that they would only go to buyers “You are sure you will treat them with humanity.”
Still, Hayes-Williams spent hours rummaging through state archives, including correspondence between Ridout and Sharpe, in which she discussed her ancestry in the same context as Furnishings.
“He’s basically saying, ‘Oh, the pigs are fine, the horses are fine, the slaves are fine,'” she recalls.
After Sharpe’s death in 1790, Ridout inherited Whitehall and his heirs owned it until 1895. The property changed hands several times thereafter, including in the early 20th century when a buyer considered offering it to the President as a White House summer home. When the Scarlett family bought Whitehall the property was in poor condition.
In recent years, her family foundation has launched a variety of business ventures, including using the now 115-acre site as a wedding venue. For a rental of $19,000, up to 12 weddings are hosted annually. Part of it is shared with a wedding planner who takes care of the rest of the arrangements. Other income comes from housing horses ($500 per head per month) and renting out a small 17th-century cottage ($500 per night on weekends). But it’s nowhere near enough to cover capital expenditures and needs, such as roof repairs.
To help cover costs, Sens. Chris Van Hollen and Ben Cardin, both Maryland Democrats, secured $500,000 for the restoration of Whitehall in fiscal 2023 as part of a $10.2 million package of local investments. The foundation also received a $100,000 conservation grant in 2021 from the Maryland Historical Trust, an agency of the state planning department.
The Scarletts Foundation has applied to join the agency’s Chesapeake Bay Gateways Network and is exploring a future partnership with the National Park Service to open Whitehall to the public.
Charlie Scarlett said possible options include creating a ferry service between Annapolis and Whitehall Creek west of the mansion. Visitors would likely board at the Burtis House, a former Aquarius home that is also expected to be a focal point in the proposed national recreation area. (Others include the Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse and the North Beach of Fort Monroe in Virginia, where ships delivered enslaved Africans in 1619, as key attractions anchoring the new park.)
“I think what makes it interesting from a historian’s perspective is that it’s a place where you can connect closely to Loyalist history,” said Mary-Angela E. Hardwick, Historic’s vice president of education and interpretation Annapolis, a non-profit organization that operates a museum and colonial homes.
Wendy O’Sullivan, director of the National Park Service’s Chesapeake office, said the Brandywine Foundation has sought recognition as a gateway site but has not yet qualified because the site is not fully open to the public. She said the Park Service consulted with the foundation on how that could happen.
In the meantime, Scarlett said his family is trying to accommodate informal requests for visits as well as archaeological research, while also planning for a future that could allow many more Americans to experience his former home.
“It’s a treasure,” he said.
