The Hampton Mansion, National Historic Site

The Ridgely Family Furnishings – Only the Best Will Do!

By Gregory R. Weidman

Hampton National Historic Site, located in Towson, is a rich historical and educational resource for the people of Maryland and the nation. A National Park Service property established in 1948 for its architectural merit, the 62-acre park is one of the country’s best-preserved estates. The focal point of the site is Hampton Mansion, a handsome five-part Georgian house that was the largest private residence in the United States when completed in 1790. The park also features a farm site with a 1740s farmhouse, elaborate dairy and rare standing slave quarters; numerous outbuildings ranging from stables to green houses to privies; and formal terraced gardens and other interesting landscape features.

However, one of the most stunning attributes to Hampton is the Hampton collection, which currently contains nearly 45,000 artifacts and 100,000 archives principally dating from the 18^th through 20^th centuries, most original to Hampton and many recognized nationally for their historic and artistic importance. Hampton is thus a microcosm of life in Maryland, reflecting 200 years of American social, historical and economic development through the occupancy of seven generations of one aristocratic family – the Ridgelys – and their large and diverse labor force.

Hampton Mansion is used primarily as interpretive/exhibition space, with 10 of its principal rooms currently furnished to depict varying historic periods of family occupancy or for interpretive exhibits. Since the late 1980s, NPS staff and consultants have worked to upgrade the period room installations, thereby improving the historical accuracy and interpretive potential of the furnished interiors. These areas range from the early Federal Parlour and Master Bedchamber (1790-1815) to the recently reopened Guest Bedchamber that brings the history of Hampton into the 20^th century. Reinstallations of the period rooms are being completed sequentially to allow time to both raise the funding (principally from private sources) necessary to accomplish these complex projects and to write the extensive furnishing plans documenting every aspect of each interior as required by the National Park Service. Hampton’s extensive objects and related archival collections, including many thousands of documents plus numerous historic photographs dating from the mid-19^th to mid-20^th centuries, are the basis for the exhaustive research that underlies all the reinstallation efforts.

The Hampton collection ranges from archeological artifacts to archives and photographs, great works of art to items of everyday life. Highlights of this vast and important collection include:

• American and European paintings and portraiture, including works by American masters such as John Hesselius, Charles Willson Peale, Thomas Sully and John Wesley Jarvis.

• 750 pieces of American, European and Chinese furniture, including the largest and most important intact suite of Baltimore painted furniture, made for Hampton’s Drawing Room by John Finlay in 1832.

• Major works of silver, ranging from English Georgian examples by the renowned Bateman family to custom designed pieces by Baltimore’s leading silversmiths, including William Ball, Standish Barry, Samuel Kirk and Andrew Ellicott Warner.

• Textiles, including items as diverse as one of the nation’s largest collections of historic slipcovers (over 200 examples) to Hampton’s servants’ livery to one of the few examples surviving anywhere of an English “tapestry velvet” carpet made in 1850.

• Ceramics, including a custom-decorated Paris porcelain dinner service with the Ridgely coat of arms and the enormous early 19^th century Chinese porcelain temple vases that adorn the Great Hall.

• A huge variety of family-related artifacts, ranging from rare books to telescopes, farming tools to Society of Cincinnati badges, glass and ormolu chandeliers to Eliza Ridgely’s famous harp.

Of all these remarkable collections, one of the most important groups is the furniture. Extensive research has documented two major periods of Hampton’s furnishing, those implemented by Gov. Charles Carnan Ridgely (1790-1829) and by John and Eliza Ridgely (1829-1867).

Gov. Ridgely, the second master of Hampton, had inherited the estate from his uncle, Capt. Charles Ridgely, the builder of Hampton. Having begun work on the house in 1783, Capt. Ridgely and his family took up residence in December 1788, though the interior was not completed until 1790. Sadly Capt. Ridgely died in June of that year, so the major furnishing of “Hampton Hall” fell to his nephew. An entrepreneur (iron works being the main source of his fortune), a general in the state militia and three-term governor of Maryland (1815, 1816, 1817), Charles Carnan Ridgely was renowned for his “princely lifestyle” as he fashioned Hampton into a showplace. He purchased the finest pieces available, including from cities such as London and New York as well as Baltimore. Locally, he patronized Baltimore’s top cabinetmakers of the Federal era including Bankson & Lawson, William Camp and Edward Priestly. Another famous name in 18^th century Maryland cabinetmaking, John Shaw of Annapolis, is also represented in Hampton’s collection by a pair of Federal armchairs originally made by Shaw in 1797 for the Maryland Statehouse and later acquired by Gov. Ridgely.

Hampton’s Dining Room installation focuses on the period of 1810-1829 when the room was refurbished by Gov. Ridgely with the addition on several fashionable pieces in the Empire (or Late Neoclassical) taste. The setting for these objects is very dramatic, featuring vivid Prussian blue painted woodwork, a French scenic wallpaper called “Monuments of Paris” and elaborate silk drapery curtains in blue and yellow copied from a French design book of the period. Among the notable pieces of furniture are a “secretaire à abattant” or fall-front desk with distinctive satinwood veneered interior and a cellarette (wine cooler) in the form of an ancient classical temple, both pieces attributed to the shop of preeminent Baltimore cabinetmaker William Camp.

Baltimore is justifiably renowned for the manufacture of painted furniture, and the Ridgelys acquired several important groups of these highly decorative pieces. Gov. Ridgely frequently patronized the shop of John and Hugh Finlay, considered to be the top firm in the city (they made furniture for the White House in 1809). A pair of painted pier tables from the Finlay shop was purchased by the Governor in 1822. Another suite of painted pieces, possibly from the shop of the Finlay’s rival Robert Fisher, now graces the Great Hall at Hampton. This unusual large set of settees and armchairs is decorated with different bouquets of flowers on the crest rails of each piece. The most important suite of painted furniture at Hampton, indeed one of the most important anywhere, was made for the Drawing Room by John Finlay in 1832. The set consists of a center table, pier table, 14 side chairs and a remarkable sofa with fully carved and gilded swans supporting the arms.

This last set of painted furniture was acquired by the next significant individual responsible for furnishing Hampton: Eliza Ridgely, wife of Hampton’s third master John Ridgely. A woman of great taste and sophistication, Eliza’s purchased the most fashionable objects in Europe as well as the United States. The newly reinstalled Drawing Room reflects her era (1830-1860), when the prevailing taste for neoclassical design gave way to the early Victorian fashion for the French-inspired Rococo Revival. Eliza bought a pair of enormous custom-made gilt pier mirror and matching window cornices, all embellished with the Ridgely family crest, from the Baltimore firm of Samson Cariss in 1843. Around the same time, she bought a suite of Rococo Revival seating furniture, comprised of a pair of couches, a tete-a-tete and four side chairs, all of which have been reupholstered in a reproduction of the original fabric, a rich crimson silk damask. Eliza also bought a large pair of Rococo style armchairs, possibly from the shop of John and James Williams in 1845. All these pieces are now on exhibit for the first time in 60 years in the Drawing Room, amid a setting featuring elaborate reproductions of period curtains, French floral wallpaper and a “tapestry velvet” carpet.

The Music Room at Hampton reflects the post-Civil War era at the height of the Victorian aesthetic, with a room filled with diverse pieces of furniture, the walls virtually lined with paintings and a plethora of decorative objects covering all surfaces. Distinctive pieces acquired for the room by Eliza Ridgely include a large and rare three-part sofa, called a “confidante” during the period, and an intricately carved lady’s chair made in 1858 by Robert Renwick, the leading Baltimore cabinetmaker of the time. This second great era of Ridgely patronage can be summed up by noting that of the eight leading cabinetmaking firms in mid-19^th century Baltimore, the Ridgelys purchased goods from at least six (Renwick, Henry Jenkins, John Needles, Wesley B. Tarr, J. H. Weaver and J. & J. Williams).

Through its remarkable holdings, Hampton NHS is an important resource for the community, and the NPS interprets the site so that visitors understand the history of the site in all its complexity, including the history of the Ridgelys, the operations of the estate and the social hierarchy required for its support. In the Mansion’s period rooms, park staff and docents discuss not only the historically correct interior settings and important collections of fine and decorative arts but also the interaction of several diverse human communities and the major economic, political and social influences such as the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the emancipation of slaves and the development of new technologies. Installations are also modified seasonally to show different activities, historical events and lifestyle patterns.

Weidman is the Furnishings Project Coordinator of Historic Hampton, Inc. Hampton Mansion is located at 535 Hampton Lane in Towson and is open Wednesday through Sunday from 9am to 5pm, with tours on the hour beginning at 10am. For more information on tours and special programs, call 410-823-1309, ext. 237 or www.nps.gov/hamp.