![]() ![]() Sleeping quarters for the family and enslaved individuals, and later domestic servants, were on the second floor of the main house and above the kitchen and pantry. Adjacent to the hall were a front parlor, which looked out onto the street, and a back dining room with a view to a side yard. The front door opened into a side hall with a staircase leading to the upper floors. The Craig House followed a typical floor plan for Baltimore houses of the period. ![]() The building was originally two stories tall the third floor was added in the late nineteenth centuryįloor plan of a typical early-nineteenth-century Baltimore row house. Image: The Craig House on its East Pratt Street site around 1925. According to an 1811 fire insurance survey, the Craigs also owned a one-and-a-half-story carriage house and stable.Īlthough the architect and builder of the house are unknown, Craig lived two doors away from Ludwig Herring, a prominent Baltimore carpenter and housewright. A long, two-story extension at the back of the house contained a kitchen, a pantry, and other work spaces, with bedrooms above. Like most Federal-style structures, Henry Craig's house featured a flat, plain facade with external ornamentation limited to the brick flat arches above the windows and a brick arch leading to the recessed front door with fan- and sidelight decorations. With access to agricultural products and timber from the American interior and imports from Europe and Asia, Craig and his counterparts in the mercantile and shipping industries grew wealthy from the steady transatlantic trade. ![]() By 1810 it was the third largest city in the United States, with a population of about 46,500 people, which included approximately 4,600 enslaved individuals and 5,600 free people of color. The city's commercial success was manifested in the extensive development of its residential neighborhoods. In the period during which Henry Craig's house on East Pratt Street was being built, Baltimore, was emerging as a major Atlantic port. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. Merchants and ship owners such as Henry Craig built their houses close to the wharves. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Gift of Mrs. Since the Museum curators in the early 1920s found the architecture of the East Pratt Street house's parlor to be more interesting than that found in the actual dining room, they chose to interpret the parlor as the dining room in an effort to highlight this important social and architectural development. A new genre of literature devoted to domestic management espoused prescribed menus, seating arrangements, service practices, manners, decorative schemes, and tablescapes in an effort to define elegance and refinement amidst a growing middle class that sought to assert its gentility along with its newfound financial success. Throughout the nineteenth century, dining became increasingly ritualized. ![]() In the Craig's residence the dining room was located on the main floor, connected to the principal parlor but positioned to the rear of the residence-a common layout in middle-class town house. In the early Federal period, when the fashion for dining rooms had made its way into middle-class homes, such specialized rooms were principally outfitted with a dining table, a suite of chairs, a sideboard, a variety of silver plate, and ceramic and glass tableware. In the late eighteenth century, wealthier Americans began to follow European fashions and dedicate a specific room to dining, which they used in conjunction with a formal parlor to entertain guests. Image: The Baltimore Room in the American Wing.Īlthough the Baltimore Room served as the Craig family's parlor, the Museum has always furnished the space as a dining room. Accordingly, it contained the finest woodwork, which illustrates a delicacy and restraint typical of the Neoclassical style of the period. The parlor was the most important room in Craig's dwelling devoted to entertaining guests. The dates of construction can be defined rather precisely because in April 1810, Craig purchased an undeveloped lot for $1,500, and on November 1811, a fire insurance survey lists a completed house and outbuildings valued at $7,000. The architectural elements of the Baltimore Room are from the parlor of a brick row house located at 915 East Pratt Street (previously Queen Street, now demolished) that was built for Henry Craig in 18. ![]()
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