LIRIODENDRON

Architectural historian Christopher Weeks contends in An Architectural History of Harford County, Maryland that Liriodendron “symbolizes what might be called Harford’s ‘Country Place Era,’ the years between the Civil War and World War I,” when dozens of affluent Baltimore families built grand summer houses. Now adjacent to a residential subdivision of Bel Air, when constructed in 1898 for physician Howard Kelly and his large family, Liriodendron offered a green respite from their Baltimore house on Eutaw Place. Kelly was considered one of the greatest surgeons of his day, instrumental in the early success of The Johns Hopkins Hospital, and author of hundreds of books and articles. He moved to Baltimore from Philadelphia in 1889 to chair the obstetrics-gynecology department. A zealous reformer and self-improver who promoted temperance and pure food and drug laws, Kelly was also an avid naturalist, naming his estate Liriodendron for the Latin name of the tulip poplars throughout the property.

The Kellys hired the prolific Baltimore firm of Wyatt and Nolting to design their summer house after acquiring the nearly two-hundred-acre tract in 1897. Liriodendron is a sprawling Georgian-inspired villa, seven bays wide and two bays deep, with a terrace along its length, a highly decorated pedimented pavilion at its center with monumental engaged Ionic columns, and a robust door surround. Cream glazed terra-cotta is used for the cornices and moldings and for the terrace’s balustrades and urns. Spacious semicircular porches supported by stylized composite columns on each end of the main block provide additional exterior space for entertaining and respite.

The interior of the main block is divided nearly equally into three roughly square spaces—dining room, central hall, and parlor with connecting doors or wide archways allowing for excellent cross ventilation. A two-story rear ell contained well-appointed kitchens and service spaces. The Kelly family sold the house to Harford County in the 1970s, and it is operated by a nonprofit as a cultural and recreational center.