At 19 Maryland Avenue, the Hammond–Harwood House greets you with a façade of quiet, mathematical grace. This elegant house museum was built in 1774 and is one of the premier colonial houses remaining in America from the British colonial period, 1607–1776. It is also one of the only surviving works of colonial academic architecture to be principally designed from a plate in Andrea Palladio’s I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura (1570).
The house was designed by William Buckland in 1773–1774 for wealthy farmer Matthias Hammond and was modeled on the Villa Pisani in Montagnana, Italy as depicted in Book II, Chapter XIV of Palladio’s work. Construction began about April 1774, and most of the house was probably completed before Buckland’s death in November or December of that year. Matthias Hammond probably never occupied his elegant house; he abruptly left Annapolis for his family's country estate in 1776 and died in 1786 after renting the house for many years.
The house was later designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960 and is now managed by a non-profit organization as a museum. Matthias Hammond probably never lived inside these Palladian walls, yet the balance Buckland drew from Villa Pisani still holds on Maryland Avenue.