Excerpt from the Frederick News-Post, “Preservation experts examining Conley Farm buildings,” Mar. 28, 2014
“Historic preservation experts are examining the rich and varied 200-year history of the Conley Farm to see which buildings remaining on the now-vacant property are worth saving.
The members of the city’s Historic Preservation Commission took a field trip Thursday to the farm, on the southwest corner of Baughman’s Lane and Shookstown Road, to get a glimpse of the 19th- and early 20th-century buildings.
After receiving a request from a developer to demolish some of the buildings on the land, the commission is deciding whether to place a historic preservation overlay on the buildings, so that all exterior modifications would be required to go through the city’s historic preservation process.
After talking about 14 of the 19 total buildings or features on the land Thursday, the commission will finalize its recommendation at its April 24 meeting. The mayor and aldermen have the final vote.
The property was a farm with a mill in the early 1800s, then evolved into a country estate with horse racing, before becoming a dairy farm. It passed through the hands of John McPherson, the largest landowner in the county in the early 1800s, Louis Victor Baughman, a well-known politician in the late 1800s, and Charles H. Conley Jr., a prominent local doctor in the 1900s, according to the city staff report.”
