When Cassandra London bought the chartreuse Queen Anne-style house on the corner of Ruxton and L’Hirondelle Club roads, she planned to invest several hundred thousand dollars to restore the nearly 140-year-old home to its former glory.
What she did not count on was her neighbor, Joseph Coale, adding $160,000 to the tab.
Coale, a local historian and the founder of the Greater Ruxton Area Foundation, nominated the Maroney House, named after a railroad executive, for inclusion on the Baltimore County Landmarks List while the home was still in foreclosure with the previous owner.
London, whose real estate company, The London Group, fixes up historic homes and resells them, bought it not knowing her new neighbor had nominated the house. She planned to maintain the 2 1/2-story frame structure the way it has looked since 1889.
“I purchase homes and bring them back to life. This home is really special,” London said at a final hearing on the landmark designation last week.
But inclusion on the landmarks list requires historic windows, and the Maroney House has 40 of them. At nearly $4,000 each for period-proper sash windows, compared with less than $250 per window she’d budgeted, the price of the landmark designation would cost her at least $160,000.
London and her lawyer objected to the landmark designation at a preliminary hearing in September. But the Baltimore County Landmarks Commission unanimously agreed to put it on the preliminary list, citing its excellent Queen Anne architecture and the pedigree of the former owners.
The home was built for Dennis F. Maroney, a B&O Railroad executive. Other notable owners include Frank D. Sanger, a University of Maryland School of Medicine specialist who pioneered modern tuberculosis treatments; and his wife, Grace, a well-known illustrator.
The Maroney House’s nomination then proceeded to a final landmarks status hearing earlier this month.
According to County Council custom, the representative of the council district where the home is located makes the final recommendation on designating a property as a landmark. The other six councilmen generally affirm that vote — known as councilmanic courtesy.
For Ruxton, that’s Izzy Patoka; he said he is inclined to vote against its inclusion, along with Councilmen Julian Jones and David Marks.
“That somebody can just decide to put your home on a historical landmark list? It is problematic,” said Jones, who works in real estate. “And it will affect her property value far beyond the windows. When you put stipulations on the property, people will take into consideration whether or not to buy it with those restrictions.”
In a history he prepared in the summer of 2024 to prepare the home for listing, Coale wrote: “As an enduring link to our local heritage, this structure provides the Ruxton community with a degree of character, design diversity, color and uniqueness. Part of Ruxton’s identity would be lost if it were to be surrendered to modern development.”
Jones, however, said at the Dec. 2 hearing that if Coale cared so much, he could have bought it himself.
Maroney House will be the first property considered for landmark status under a new law passed in October after the surprise demolition of Choate House, a beloved 215-year-old tavern that developer Jay Attar tore down in Randallstown earlier this year to make way for a new development project.
Choate House was razed because the council had 90 days to hold a hearing on its status and when it didn’t, the property dropped off the preliminary landmark list. The law requires the council to vote on whether a property deserves a place on the final list.
Patoka said he plans to schedule a vote in the wake of last week’s hearing within the next 2 1/2 months.
While council members can consider undue owner hardships, the Baltimore County Landmarks Commission’s role is to evaluate a property’s historic integrity, said chair Phoebe Evans Letocha.
“The ideal situation is that the owner is favorable to landmark status,” she said. “But we review applications based on their historic criteria.”
This one, she said, was a slam dunk — despite deterioration, the home’s architectural integrity was intact, and it met the criteria of historically significant former occupants.
Letocha added that the notification timing was “unfortunate” for London, but if owners could overrule whenever they didn’t want their properties landmarked, “then we will lose a lot of historic properties.”
Tax credits are available to offset the costs, Letocha said, but the more lucrative ones require owners to live in the property.
London’s attorney, Elizabeth Smith, said she questioned the landmarking rationale based on who once lived there because of the railroad industry’s ties to slavery. London is Black.
The B&O Railroad’s first president, Philip E. Thomas, was a Quaker who declared that no enslaved labor would build his operation. He reigned from 1827 to 1836. But in the next decade, the B&O’s chairman, Robert Gilmor Jr., enslaved at least half a dozen men and women in Baltimore. In addition, the railroad had a complex relationship with enslaved labor and goods made by that labor. Sometimes, it aided escape; other times, it abetted the capture of freedom seekers.
The homes on L’Hirondelle Club Road reflect a hodgepodge of architectural styles — from plain ranchers to million-dollar listings. It’s not Dickeyville, a village on the city-county border where Patoka once lived that’s filled with white-trimmed stone houses. And it’s not Sudbrook Park, where he lives now — a district that famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted designed with curved roads, built-in green spaces, and a historic look.
“In Dickeyville, you can only paint your house one of seven shades of white. And you know that going in,” he said. “But [Maroney House] is not in a historic district.”
Coale, a Ruxton resident since 1970, said Maroney House sits at a “very visible entrance to Ruxton” and had endured “serious, irresponsible neglect.” He twice tried to nominate it but did not complete the process until last summer.
Renée Hamidi, executive director of the Valleys Planning Council, often speaks in favor of preservation. But Hamidi, who lives near Maroney House, said the landmark designation puts London “between a rock and a hard place.” She will have to spend money she didn’t budget for on windows, possibly requiring her to forego other renovations.
A similar situation nearby befell the McGrain House in downtown Towson last year.
Deniz and Cris Moen paid $335,000 for the Willow Avenue property intending to preserve it. But they found surprises that would balloon renovation costs to more than $400,000, and decided to tear it down and rebuild their family home.
A neighbor nominated the property to the landmarks list, despite the fact that John McGrain, the longtime county historian who’d owned it, never attempted to landmark it. Some neighbors worried that the landmark status would force the Moens to sell, and it would become a run-down neighborhood rental.
Ultimately, the commission voted not to landmark that house.
Hamidi said that’s what should happen here, too.
“The nominator saw a window of opportunity because the bank owned it,” Hamidi said. “I didn’t realize you can change the landmark status of a house you don’t own.”
This article has been updated to correct that Choate House was in Randallstown.
Comments
Welcome to The Banner's subscriber-only commenting community. Please review our community guidelines.