TOME CARRIAGE HOUSE

Self-made lumber millionaire and philanthropist Jacob Tome had a major impact on Port Deposit in the nineteenth century, building schools, churches, and his own sprawling house on Main Street. Known as Hytheham, the house was demolished in 1948, with its retaining walls and terracing and its carriage house extant along S. Main Street. Constructed of Port Deposit granite with a cupola and bracketed eaves, the carriage house was used as a livery stable and taxi business in later years. A gas house (c. 1850; 1200 Rowland Drive) of similar design and also built in association with Tome’s house is located on the other side of the railroad tracks and now serves as a town visitor center.

Other buildings associated with Tome include Tome Memorial United Methodist Church (1872; 100 N. Main Street), built of Port Deposit granite in a Romanesque Revival mode, and Old Tome Bank (1834; 20 N. Main), converted into a school building with additions in 1899 and more recently renovated as an apartment building. He endowed the Tome Institute, which opened in 1894 as a free public school for white students of all ages (a surviving arch is located across from 66 S. Main). Unfortunately, Tome’s major legacy, the Beaux-Arts campus of the Tome School for Boys (1900–1908, Boring and Tilton, Frederick Law Olmsted), a boarding school built on the hill overlooking the town after his death in 1898, is now inaccessible with major buildings in ruins due to recent fires. After closing in 1941, the school was used as the Bainbridge Naval Training Center until 1974 and then leased to the U.S. Labor Department as a job training center in 1991. The series of stairs and landings leading from Main Street up the cliff to the Tome School are still a prominent feature of Port Deposit. They are positioned next to the Port Deposit Town Hall (64 S. Main), located in the former Tome Institute Adams Hall since 1983.