Historic Calvert house about to be torn down

Dorsey house was considered architectural masterpiece

Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2008

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff Photo by Darwin Weigel The Dorsey House on Calvert Memorial Hospital land in Prince Frederick is slated to be torn down to make room for hospital expansion projects. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story

The slightly Gothic-looking farmhouse was built in 1906 by William A. Dorsey Sr., an architect and builder trained in Baltimore. Members of the Dorsey family occupied the house from its completion until the death of Dorsey’s son Arthur in 2000.

Prince Frederick veterinarian Dr. William A. Dorsey III, 70, the builder’s grandson, said saving the house wasn’t possible because the hospital needed the space and the house was too deteriorated to be moved. But that doesn’t dull the pain of losing such an important part of his family’s history.

‘‘It is very hard. Very hard,” Dorsey said. It hurt ‘‘more than most people ever know. It did.”

At the request of the Calvert County Historical Society, Dr. Dorsey recently wrote down his childhood memories of visiting the house.

‘‘I have many memories as a child of spending hours in the house when all of my aunts and uncles would come to visit and reminisce; hours spent on the front porch in a rocking chair or swing watching cars returning to Washington after a Sunday in the county, and incredible meals prepared by my grandmother on the wood cook stove,” he wrote.

William Dorsey Sr., the builder, was more interested in building than agriculture, but his wife, Edith, and their eight children grew tobacco on the 47-acre parcel.

‘‘While designing and building houses was my grandfather’s source of joy and livelihood, he also grew tobacco on the property, which was mainly taken care of by his wife and children while he was away building. There were, at one point, two tobacco barns and I have memories of my grandmother spending many cold wintry days in the barns stripping tobacco,” Dr. Dorsey wrote.

But little remains of the old house, and soon it will be gone completely. The tobacco barn Dr. Dorsey remembers is overgrown with vines, and all of the house’s several outbuildings are deteriorated or completely gone.

Worse, burglars broke into the house and made off with almost everything, including ornate woodwork and the home’s front door, before the hospital bought the house and land in 2004.

Even so, Dr. Dorsey has managed to preserve a little bit of the house’s heritage. In November, with the hospital’s permission, he returned to his grandfather’s house and recovered the wooden posts in front of the home’s front door, his wife Dotty said.

E-mail Erica Mitrano at emitrano@somdnews.com.