Anne St. Clair Wright

Annapolis Today

Preservation Pioneers and the
50th Anniversary of the National Historic Landmark District

Preservation Pioneers are gathered at the Brice House in Annapolis to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Historic Landmark District in the 18th century city of Annapolis, a celebration organized by the city government of Annapolis.

Lunch was served in the library and then awards were given out. The first awardee was Joseph Martin Pickett Wright, the eldest son of St.Clair Wright (seated front row, right hand side in the photograph), in her honor. Next was Pringle Symonds who was both past president and vice president of Historic Annapolis Incorporated. Pringle Symonds was followed by Alice Randall, Susan Carter and Minor Carter, Janet Hall, Judith Homorsky, Jean Russo all of whom volunteered with Historic Annapolis Incorporated. Orlando Ridout’s award was accepted by his daughter Molly Ridout. Loni Moyer represented her father the late Mayor Roger ‘Pip’ Moyer. Senator Joe Tydings (front row, on the left in the photograph) accepted his award as did Gavin Denhardt, an Annapolis resident who served on the city’s first Historic District Commission.

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Preservation Pioneers who received compasses
Preservation-Pioneer

Preservation Pioneers Presentation Gift

The presentation gift for each awardee was a Weems and Plath nautical Compass, especially engraved for the Preservation Pioneers Landmark Celebration.

Weems and Plath have been in business in Annapolis since the beginning of the 20th century and make high quality nautical precision instruments. Captain Philip Van Horn Weems was a career Naval officer who ran navigation school and developed precision tools and navigational instruments and G. Plath a German maker of navigational instruments in Germany. Weems sold Plath’s instruments and the two companies combined early on. One of the creeks in Annapolis is named for Captain Weems.

See More at Weems-Plath

St. Clair Wright’s Vision for Annapolis

By the late 1980s, with the Paca House being used for U.S. Government visitors and the garden open to the public, preservation was more accepted in Annapolis.

People saw that it was good for business. St.Clair Wright became less active publicly in preservation but still was concerned and worked behind the scene to encourage others.   

In 1992, the year before she died, she wrote her Legacy for Annapolis suggesting that there is “more to save and more to cherish”.   She advocated the adoption of an Historic Preservation structure partnership between the city, Historic Annapolis and other private organizations.  She advocated the reconstitution of a Revolving Fund for use in continued restoration.  She advocated the full use of the state’s Preservation Data Bank and easy accessibility for all who need it.   She advocated a museum of the City of Annapolis to enlighten its citizens and visitors as to the functions of preservation and historical organization and to show the evidence of four centuries of culture, technology, and everyday lives of the people who built the town and continue to live here today.    

Visit Historic Annapolis Museum
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In 2001 Historic Annapolis Foundation planned this museum and proposed dedicating it to her. The Historic Annapolis Museum at 99 Main Street, dedicated to St.Clair Wright, opened on April 28, 2006.  
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Changed Attitudes Towards the Historic District

Historic Annapolis Incorporated lost the battle in 1964 to stop the construction of a hotel down on the waterfront but they did succeed in lowering the height of the hotel by two stories. This hotel later became famous as the place where Spiro Agnew resigned from the Vice Presidency of the United States: some financial irregularities lingered from his term as governor of Maryland.

In 1965, the U.S. Department of the Interior designated the one third mile district of downtown Annapolis a National Historic Landmark. Stuart Udall, the Secretary of the Interior, visited Annapolis and presented the award.

But it was not until 1969 that the City of Annapolis, under the Mayor Roger Moyer, passed an historic district ordinance. A referendum approved the creation of the district and created a five member panel to review all downtown construction visible from the streets.

Annapolis Market House

Market-House

The same year that the city voted to demolish the Market House, a public market building on the waterfront built in 1868. A red colonial style gas station next to the Market House had been demolished earlier and the city wanted to turn the entire plaza into  a parking lot. St. Clair found that the original 19th century owners of the Market House property had given  the land to the City of Annapolis to be a market in perpetuity. Turning the property into a parking lot would cause the ownership of the land to revert to the descendants of those owners. St.Clair found descendants who would be willing to sue the city.  The city decided to save the Market House.

In 1982 Historic Annapolis in cooperation with the University of Maryland  began an effort to do archeological work on downtown sites. This program still exists, run by the Mayor’s office in Annapolis in cooperation with the University of Maryland. Dr. Mark Leone  was in charge of the archeological work during most of the program’s history. He has recently published a book about his years of work in Annapolis.

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Market-House
Market-House

Main Street 1965

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Main-Street-Annapolis

Main Street Annapolis Today

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