Five symmetrical bays of brick face you here, the oldest surviving Georgian-period mansion in Baltimore, quietly outlasting the city that grew up around it. Mount Clare was built in stages beginning around 1760 by Charles Carroll, Barrister — not the Charles Carroll who signed the Declaration of Independence, but a different member of the same prominent Maryland Catholic family, a lawyer and Maryland colonial legislator. The house sits on what was once a 2,000-acre tobacco plantation worked by enslaved people; the grounds have been reduced to Carroll Park over the centuries but the main house survives largely intact.
The mansion is a textbook example of the Georgian style: five-bay symmetrical facade, central hall, balanced windows, and formal gardens. George Washington visited Mount Clare in 1787 and dined with the family. After Charles Carroll, Barrister died childless in 1783, the property passed through several hands and experienced decades of decline before the National Society of Colonial Dames of America in Maryland took on its restoration in 1917.
Inside, the house has been restored with period furniture and decorative arts that represent the life of an upper-class colonial Maryland family. The B&O Railroad Museum is adjacent; the first mile of the Baltimore-Ohio Railroad was actually laid across the Mount Clare grounds in 1828.