Why a Brick Stable?

This one hundred seventy-five-year-old brick stable is unusual in this region, where most Maryland stables and barns built in the 1800s were wooden, one-story structures. Brick buildings cost more to build but lasted longer, and the DeButts family may have felt prosperous enough to build with the future in mind. Because brick stables were common in England and Ireland at the time, such a building may also have seemed natural to them. The stable includes distinctive brickwork details, including diamond-shaped holes high in the gables that helped ventilate the building, part of patterns seen on old barns across northern Maryland and parts of Pennsylvania. Some features, including the wide door on the south wall and the concrete floor, were added long after construction, while traces of former windows and doors still remain.

Forest Heights, Maryland · United States