Patrick Creagh House, Annapolis

Patrick Creagh House is a historic brick home built between 1735 and 1747 during the colonial period, when trade and shipping were expanding along the Chesapeake Bay. Patrick Creagh, a local craftsman, built the house as a modest residence connected with everyday working life. Unlike the larger homes owned by wealthy merchants or officials, it reflects the world of workers, tradesmen, and small business activity in the eighteenth century.

The house was enlarged in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. In the early nineteenth century it was purchased by John Smith, a free African American resident whose wife operated Aunt Lucy’s Bakeshop at the corner of Main and Greene Streets. Some interior walls still show marks believed to come from Civil War gunfire, and the backyard was later used in home remodeling advertisements.

Today, Patrick Creagh House helps visitors understand what a simpler colonial home looked like. Rather than being remembered for grand architecture, it represents everyday urban life before the American Revolution and the type of housing once used by the artisan and tradesman class. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 29, 1973.