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FLEET STREET

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c. 1770 and later. Fleet St. between East St. and Market Space

Along with Cornhill Street, Fleet Street also was designated for artisan and worker housing, where modest one-room and two-room houses with basement kitchens were built, such as the Christopher Hohne House (c. 1770; 45 Fleet), purchased by African American waterman Benjamin Holliday in 1886. By the latter part of the century the street was increasingly occupied by Black residents. The first African American to purchase a house (51 Fleet) here was Henry Clay in 1860, beginning the trend toward Black owners and occupants. In 1878, Black physician William Bishop built a pair of simple two-bay frame houses (1878; 46–48 Cornhill). Speculative development resulted in further division of lots along Fleet and Cornhill streets. Smaller, more densely clustered, modest, two-bay frame row houses such as 32–34, 42, 44, and 46 (c. 1858–1878) were built by whites and rented to Blacks. The Workingmen’s Building and Loan Association also built rentals for working-class African Americans. Small frame houses continued to replace earlier dwellings into the turn of the twentieth century. By then, African Americans predominated on the street, only to be displaced by the rising real estate market of the 1970s and 1980s.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Lisa Pfueller Davidson and Catherine C. Lavoie
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Citation

Lisa Pfueller Davidson and Catherine C. Lavoie, "FLEET STREET", [Annapolis, Maryland], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/MD-01-WS55.

Print Source

Buildings of Maryland, Lisa Pfueller Davidson and Catherine C. Lavoie. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2022, 62-63.

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