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(Lisa Pfueller Davidson and Catherine C. Lavoie)
This building serves as a reminder of Vienna’s early maritime commerce, built as the private wharf house or office for merchant James K. Lewis. Vienna was named one of Dorchester County’s ports of entry in 1706, although this building dates to a post-Revolutionary era construction boom driven by the emergent grain trade. The town once had a federal customhouse that operated from 1791 to 1866, along with a tobacco inspection station established in 1747, but neither is extant. Only this private office remains of the buildings that once facilitated the town’s lucrative maritime trade.
The diminutive, gable-front frame building is banked along the waterfront, with an entrance into a brick storage cellar facing the Nanticoke River and an office entrance at street level. A large board-and-batten door with strap hinges, and small openings to either side wall covered with iron bars provided a secure location for valuable goods (a post-shipment granary formerly stood adjacent). The office interior is finished with plaster, and a ladder stair provides access to an unfinished storage loft.
Lewis’s adjacent residence (1861; 100 Church Street) is one of the earliest and most noted Italianate houses in the county. It is built of pressed brick with fine mortar joints and is three stories in height, with distinctive half-story windows in the upper level and a low-hipped roof. A frame back building dates to c. 1840.