A house built by a black sheep from one of America's founding families serves as an inspiring classroom for students at the Johns Hopkins University.
Charles Carroll Jr. — spendthrift, drunkard, ne'er-do-well — would be long forgotten but for a single notable accomplishment: He built an exceedingly handsome house.
Begun in 1801 with money from his wealthy father — Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Roman Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence — the Federal-style home has near-perfect proportions and airy rooms. It boasts exquisite plasterwork, faux-marble baseboards, and, above its doorways, spectacular fan windows that usher light into the middle of the house. Even the privy is a gem, with chestnut paneling and a domed ceiling.
The house is called Homewood. In the early 1900s, after the Johns Hopkins University was given what had once been the younger Carroll's 130-acre estate, Homewood set the architectural tone for the university's new campus, to which the house lent its name.
There's just one problem, says Catherine Rogers Arthur, Homewood's curator: Hopkins students rarely venture inside, even though Homewood is now a museum that attracts tourists six days a week — and even though the house stands right next to the university library, and the privy is in plain view of several freshman dorms.
Now Ms. Arthur and a donor whose father paid for Homewood's renovation in the 1980s are working to make the house "an academic resource for students." Last fall Ms. Arthur and S. William Leslie, a professor of the history of science and technology, welcomed a group of undergraduates to Homewood's wine cellar for a full-credit course in which they researched and planned an exhibit that opened in the house this month: "Feathers, Fins, and Fur: the Pet in Early Maryland."
The show is rich with the bounty of the students' research.
Read entire article at Chronicle of Higher Education
Begun in 1801 with money from his wealthy father — Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Roman Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence — the Federal-style home has near-perfect proportions and airy rooms. It boasts exquisite plasterwork, faux-marble baseboards, and, above its doorways, spectacular fan windows that usher light into the middle of the house. Even the privy is a gem, with chestnut paneling and a domed ceiling.
The house is called Homewood. In the early 1900s, after the Johns Hopkins University was given what had once been the younger Carroll's 130-acre estate, Homewood set the architectural tone for the university's new campus, to which the house lent its name.
There's just one problem, says Catherine Rogers Arthur, Homewood's curator: Hopkins students rarely venture inside, even though Homewood is now a museum that attracts tourists six days a week — and even though the house stands right next to the university library, and the privy is in plain view of several freshman dorms.
Now Ms. Arthur and a donor whose father paid for Homewood's renovation in the 1980s are working to make the house "an academic resource for students." Last fall Ms. Arthur and S. William Leslie, a professor of the history of science and technology, welcomed a group of undergraduates to Homewood's wine cellar for a full-credit course in which they researched and planned an exhibit that opened in the house this month: "Feathers, Fins, and Fur: the Pet in Early Maryland."
The show is rich with the bounty of the students' research.