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(Lisa Pfueller Davidson and Catherine C. Lavoie)
Occupying a marshy lot outside of Crisfield, this building was the workshop of Lemuel Ward Jr. and Steve Ward, famed as the fathers of twentieth-century decorative wildlife carving in the United States. The brothers were barbers by trade and began carving in the folk tradition of wood hunting decoys by 1918. They started incorporating more lifelike features into their work, and by the 1930s their decoys were widely renowned. After a national award in 1948, they began expanding their interest in purely decorative wildlife carving, garnering national attention for this work in the 1950s and 1960s. They lived their entire lives at this property, in an adjacent c. 1880 house built by their father, which was demolished in 2013. The workshop consists of three frame structures that were combined in the early 1960s. The original two-room section at the north was the first shop. When the brothers gave up barbering to pursue decoy carving full-time, they moved their father’s c. 1900 barbershop back from the road and attached it to the workshop. They then added a lean-to structure on the south to serve as a painting studio and unified the three parts behind a false front. The Crisfield Heritage Foundation now offers tours of the workshop. In addition, many examples of their work are on display at Salisbury University’s Ward Museum of Waterfowl Art (1991, Davis, Bowen and Friedel; 909 S. Schumaker Drive).