About CFHM   |   MedChi   |   Support Us

Liriodendron: Dr. Howard Kelly’s Summer Home

I had the opportunity to tour Liriodendron, the summer home of Dr. Howard Kelly, one of the Big Four at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Kelly and his wife, whom he had met while studying in Germany, were parents of nine children. Like many of the other early Hopkins physicians, many of whom were Canadian (Osler, Cullen, Barker, etc.) Kelly and his family summered on a lake in Ontario.

But as more and more children arrived, bring in a rustic camp in rural Ontario was more than Mrs. Kelly wanted to manage. Mrs. Kelly and six of the children are shown below.

The Kellys bought a property in Harford County, just outside of the county seat of Bel Air in about 1898.

The Georgian Revival mansion was designed by the Baltimore architecture firm of Wyatt & Nolting, who also designed many other Baltimore area buildings, including the massive Fifth Regiment Armory, the Pikesville Armory, the Clarence Mitchell Courthouse, the Roland Park Shopping Center, and St. Michael and All Angels Church.

The scale and splendor of Liriodendron is more suited to Newport, RI, than to sleepy Bel Air, MD. The house is set on a raised stone foundation and is constructed of stuccoed brick, with two-and-a-half stories. It is T-shaped, with the service wing serving as the stem of the T.

The house is spanned by a wisteria-covered veranda with semi-elliptical porches at either end.

The house sits facing west on the highest point of the property, the better to catch the prevailing breezes.  For serious architectural details of the house, please read the Medusa report, here. 

Dr. Kelly also had a house on Eutaw Place in Baltimore City’s Bolton Hill neighborhood, which also functioned as a gynecological clinic for Dr. Kelly’s private practice.

It is marked with a blue plaque to show its historic significance. 

Liriodendron is occasionally open to the public, but otherwise is used as an event space and art gallery.