Historic District

The Havre de Grace Historic District is the Havre de Grace National Register Historic District (NRHD) in Harford County, Maryland. The entire downtown area was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1987. Also within the NRHD and listed individually on the National Register are the Southern Terminal of the Susquehanna and Tidewater Canal (that we call the Lock House Museum) added in 1987, and the Concord Point Lighthouse added in 1976. 

Havre de Grace is an urban district of approximately a thousand buildings that incorporates most of the present town. It includes the central business district and most of the residential neighborhoods radiating out of it. The buildings date primarily from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, with about 90 percent contributing to the significance of the district.

The district has the feeling of an early 20th century town tied together through lampposts, building materials, paving, scale, and landscaping. The houses are primarily of frame or brick construction and the public and commercial buildings of brick or stone. Most of the major architectural styles that characterized building on the east coast from the 18th to the early 20th century are represented in the district. Few structures from the 18th century have survived but there are a significant number of houses and commercial buildings from the early and mid-19th century—and some were built on the foundations of older houses. Havre de Grace experienced a boom in the late-19th century, with numerous Victorian structures remaining. 

Many of the buildings in Havre de Grace are of historic, architectural, or cultural importance individually. And some buildings that no longer exist, but for which information is presented here, have been added on this website because they and their owners contributed to the surviving fabric of this 19th-century tidewater town.

The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the nation's historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America's historic and archaeological resources. https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nationalregister/database-research.htm

The 130 Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties (MIHP) structures referenced below formed the basis for nomination and subsequent establishment of the Havre de Grace NRHD (the MIHP reference is HA-1617) and can be viewed here https://mht.maryland.gov/secure/medusa/PDF/Harford/HA-1617.pdf. The National Register of Historic Places program is part of the National Park Service of the U.S. Department of the Interior.