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(Photograph by Alexander Heilner)
This is the oldest dwelling on Charles Street, reflecting early Chesapeake house design as identified by its one-and-a-half-story, gambrel roof, and frame construction fortified by brick end walls. Standing in stark contrast to its mid- to late-nineteenth-century neighbors, it began with a typical hall-and-double-parlor plan that was expanded to encompass a Georgian central passage flanked by double parlors. A hyphen joins the house to a rear three-bay, gambrel-roofed kitchen, originally a separate structure as typical of the era.
Jonas and Anne Green first leased the property from Charles Carroll in 1738, at the time they were designated “Printers of the Province.” They operated a printing press in a separate building on-site (no longer extant) and were well known for publishing the colonial government’s proclamations, acts, and proceedings, as well as the influential Maryland Gazette newspaper. Anne took over after Jonas’s death in 1767, operating the press until her death in 1775; this was an unusually powerful position for a woman of her time. The family continued in the printing business, publishing the newspaper until 1835. The house remained in the family until 2016.