Maryland Day

March 25, 2013 marks the 379th Anniversary of the legal entity that is Maryland. On this day in 1634 English Catholic settlers landed on St. Clements Island in the Potomac River, land now belonging to St. Mary's County, Maryland. As an original state, Maryland's borders and names for local governance changed over the centuries but St. Clements Island remains firmly in the history of Maryland rather than its older brother Virginia. For a step-by-step look at how Maryland's county borders changed click here. There is a lot more history to remember and analyze than in previous states of residence. The social and political history of Minnesota and Wisconsin were in their infancy when Maryland was colonized. The history of the Upper Midwest until the Revolution is written in French as fur traders and Indians engaged in commerce and marriage, supplying pelts and sons for the booming fur industry; the effects continued well into the 19th century, with my girlfriend Esther's ancestor and founder of Milwaukee Solomon Juneau, but largely dissipated as English speakers moved west. My hometown of Owatonna, Minnesota was settled in the 1850s by people from New York state. Gradually this gave way to Germans and Scandinavians but this frontier attitude lingered. The National Farmer's Bank designed by Louis Sullivan and completed in 1908 is an exemplar of the Prairie School of Architecture, a style partially emulating Wisconsinite Frank Lloyd Wright.

Often called "jewel boxes" by their admirers and detractors, these institutional buildings possessed lavish interiors with superfluous decorations and murals reminiscent of the wilderness giving way to the slow creep of civilization. The National Farmer's Bank's most recent tenant is Wells Fargo. Following the 1998 merger of equals between the Norwest Corporation of Minneapolis and the well branded Wells Fargo of San Francisco, the former adopted the latter's name. The human-sized jade and aqua logo of Norwest on the western and southern faces of the bank were changed to a clashing black, red, and gold logo. Outraged by this, world renowned Chinese brush painter Dee Teller and the local arts community made their opinions known. Wells Fargo's solution was elegant to say the least. Rather than abandon the sign or make an exception by changing their brand's colors, Wells Fargo replaced the offending sign with an embossed copper panel. Although it does not complement the bank's colors at the moment, over time the copper will oxidize and match the brilliant jade-colored glass and brickwork.

 Maryland's history and its buildings are far older. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than Annapolis where I live. While the love of local history is perhaps strongest on the Eastern Shore, there are fewer externals signs of it. On my walks to and from work I trod brick sidewalks and streets, passing a General Marquis de Lafayette campsite, the birthplace of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the Maryland State House, and dozens of other buildings older than the United States. One of my favorite buildings however is technically two buildings and they are directly west of City Hall. The houses on 166 and 168 Duke of Gloucester Street are likely connected by a common doorway since I've only spotted one mailbox but they could not be more different from a historical standpoint. The building on the left side of the image, quite obviously the original structure, and the building on the right, quite obviously an addition, have several striking differences between them.

Can you find additional differences?  Click to enlarge

The plaque is an invitation to public scrutiny and the judgment of local historians. Fixing your roof or repairing your sidewalk probably is not a simple matter of going to Home Depot. The neighbor kid who hit his baseball may think he will have it easy because the panes are so small; turns out he will need to mow his neighbor's lawn longer than expected because the glass comes from a specialist. But why is any of this important? Why do bricks made of the right materials or imperfect glass that warp reflections matter? Because, 379 years ago the Province of Maryland began on a small island at the mouth of the Potomac River in a land virtually unknown to Europeans.