Downtown Billboard: History Marches On
This spring, Historic Annapolis and our partners invited artists to submit original designs for a public billboard inspired by the theme “History Marches On.” As we celebrate America 250th birthday, […]
Beyond the Garment: Threading Together Denby at Historic Annapolis
Greetings! Welcome to the second part of our blog series featuring new displays at the William Paca House & Garden. Here, I will discuss an exciting new addition to HA’s […]
Anatomy of a Gown: Reinterpreting Mary Chew Paca at Historic Annapolis
Hello, readers! It’s been a while since I posted my last blog in 2025. Things have been quite busy at HA since then with celebrations of America’s Semiquincentennial! In this […]
Imagining One Martin Street
By Ciel Smith, intern at Historic Annapolis and rising senior architecture student at Princeton University / Published on July 15, 2026 Walking through downtown Annapolis is a lovely stroll through […]
Protecting Burtis House: My Observations
By Ciel Smith, intern at Historic Annapolis and rising senior architecture student at Princeton University / Published on July 1, 2026 The MWC is grossly out of scale with the attached Burtis House and […]
A Broadside’s Tale
An 18th-century broadside was a single sheet of paper printed on one side that was used to communicate news, advertise, and promote political and social causes. Broadsides were created by […]
To Inoculate Or Not To Inoculate?
I’ve written before about the scourge of smallpox and the potential risks and rewards of getting inoculated against it in colonial Maryland. Annapolis’s weekly newspaper, the Maryland Gazette, reported any […]
War And Peace
Through the past three months, we’ve witnessed the war in Ukraine through news reports and social media feeds viewed on our living room TVs, laptop computers, or mobile phones, often […]
A 1772 Road Trip
We often take our modern transportation technology and infrastructure for granted. Our nationwide network of highways, bridges, and tunnels makes it easy to drive a gas-powered, electric, or hybrid car […]
Earthshaking News
Fortunately, we don’t feel many earthquakes in Annapolis. When a magnitude 5.8 quake shook the city shortly before 2pm on August 23, 2011, my wife and I were three hours […]
Lost And Found
Like every old city, Annapolis has suffered its share of devastating fires. In my last blog, I mentioned the 1704 blaze that destroyed Annapolis’s first State House. Today, the Museum […]
Built In The Year 1772
Visitors to Annapolis: An American Story, now open at the Museum of Historic Annapolis, get an up-close view of the original metal-clad wooden acorn which stood atop the Maryland State […]