Archival Information

Years before the construction of Carvel Hall Hotel, two paintings, one in 1772 and another in 1884, were created of the historic garden. Charles Willson Peale, a renowned painter, was hired by William Paca to paint his portrait in 1772. The painting depicts Paca standing along a wall with his Annapolis garden in the background. While Paca is the focus of the portrait, a number of garden features can be identified as well: summerhouse in the center rear of the garden, a one story brick structure with a pyramid roof to the right of the pavilion, a slotted brick wall behind the two structures running along King George Street, and finally a small pond located just in front of the pavilion. The Peale painting identifies several of the garden’s outbuildings, but fails to provide any detailed information about the landscape of the garden aside from the pond and pavilion.

Figure #3

American artist Frank B. Mayer, created a second painting of the garden in 1884. The painting depicts the upper garden elevation as well as the rear of the house. In the Mayer sketch one can identify a slotted brick wall along the southwest portion of the garden, identical to the wall depicted in the Peale portrait. In addition, two falls and three terraces are shown extending toward King George Street with a central pathway originating at the upper terrace directly across from the southeast hyphen and bisecting the garden. While the portrait was created in the late 19^th century, little modification to the landscape is recorded to have been done between 1765 and 1884 suggesting that many of the features identified in the Mayer sketch may have existed during Paca’s ownership of the house and garden.

Figure #4

Additional information about the garden was also found in a number of documents from the 19^th and early 20^th centuries:

“Our new house is enormously big, four rooms below, three large and two small ones on the second floor besides the staircase, and the finest garden in Annapolis in which there is a spring, a cold bath house well fitted up and a running stream. What more could I wish for?” (Stier 1797)

“This garden, perhaps, more than any other spot, indicated the delightful life of Annapolis a century ago. The springhouse, the expanse of trees and shrubbery, the octagonal two-story summerhouse, that represented ‘My lady’s bower’, the artificial brook, fed by two springs of water, that went rippling along to the bath house that refreshed in the sultry days, and gave delight to the occupants, form a picture tradition loves to dwell upon to this day.” (Riley 1887)

“…on the ground before mentioned is a spring of flowing water, highly valued, being an original feature of the place, having a right of way through an arch in the boundary wall.” (Evening Capital 1905)

The historical documents serve to verify the existence of several outbuildings and features identified in the Mayer and Peale paintings, specifically the summerhouse and bathhouse. In addition, the documents also describe a number of other features not found in the paintings such as the artificial stream and the springhouse. However, the documents, like the paintings, failed to provide enough information to accurately reconstruct the historic landscape. While the paintings and documentation do suggest which buildings and features may have existed in Paca’s garden, the overall topography of the area remained a mystery. As a result, in 1966 Historic Annapolis Inc. began the first of a series of archaeological excavations at the William Paca Garden. Over the next nine years, archaeology, aided by the historical documentation, served as Historic Annapolis’ primary means of identifying the original landscape of the William Paca Garden.

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