Homesteads of the Eastern Shore 
“THE point” CAMBRIDGE, MARYLAND 
kitchen was a good sized house two stories 
high. Snow Hill has many such houses; and 
even since the abolition of slavery, this curious 
form of domestic architecture survives even in 
new houses. On the island 
of Chincoteague it has been 
applied to the oystermen’s 
cottages. These humble 
abodes consist of two little 
houses, each a story and 
a half high, connected by 
a single-story structure, 
which has a door on each 
side, and in summer is used 
as a dining-room. 
On the whole, the do¬ 
mestic architecture of the 
Peninsula was adapted from 
seventeenth century E'mg- 
lish models. Great rect¬ 
angular brick structures, 
often gaunt and almost for¬ 
bidding in outward aspect, 
but dignified within by rea¬ 
son of their large rooms and 
their decorative stairways, 
are scattered all over the lower Peninsula. The 
early settlers were fond of what they called 
“ water situations,” and many of these great 
old houses look across the bright tidal waters of 
streams flowing into the Chesapeake. Some of 
them, indeed, have their own wharves at which 
the steamboats to Baltimore now touch. A 
century ago some of the men who owned these 
mansions built their own ships, and sent the 
produce of their farms to market from these 
very wharves, or “ landings,” as the Eastern 
Shoreman is wont to call 
them. 
1'he minor houses or cot¬ 
tages of the Eastern Shore 
also show the English in¬ 
fluence. 1'he deep-roofed 
cottages with low dormer 
windows and pleasant 
porches, are but a repetition 
of the thatched cottages 
which the early settlers left 
behind in England. These 
cottages greet the eye in all 
parts of the Peninsula, but 
are commoner in the Mary¬ 
land counties of Somerset 
and Worcester and in the 
two Virginia counties. Dr. 
Gale’s great, bare, brick 
house near Westover is 
typical of the Eastern Shore 
house built on English 
models. This uncompromising rectilineal- 
structure is a little relieved by the arched 
windows and doors and a slight projection 
which marks the hall. Within, the house is 
ample and the wood-work is characteristically 
beautiful. The house of Isaac Barnes at 
King’s Creek, is embellished with a strangely 
SKETCH-PLAN, BELMONT HALL 
74 
