Eastport Walking Tour
Site 8 - Murphy's Row
Location: First Street at Jeremy's Way
One of these narrow little row houses
holds the secret to how Eastport got its
name. This type of building
is unique and
more likely to be found in Baltimore than
in Eastport.
The houses bear witness to Eastport's early years. They are Eastport's only remaining example of the 19th century row-house style.
“Murphy’s Row” is the site of ten row houses built in 1888 by Charles James Murphy for workers employed at his company, the Annapolis Glass Works.
Sometimes called “Brick Row” by local Eastporters, these brick structures are an example of the 19th century row-house style, a distinctive architectural form that’s rare in Annapolis, though it’s still evident in other historic districts, including Baltimore and Philadelphia.
This is where Eastport got its name. The seventh house down the line was used as the first post office in the community. Of course, the post office needed a name.
Charles Murphy suggested the name “Eastport.” And it’s not because Horn Point happens to be east of Annapolis. In a letter he wrote to the editor of the Evening Capital in April 1903, he said, “I thought that Eastport would be a good name… as it is the name of my native city in the State of Maine.”
When the glass factory closed, Murphy’s Row fell into disrepair. The row houses were rented out for nearly a century to local folks who were “down on their luck.” The 12-foot-wide houses all had outhouses until well past the arrival of public sewers in the mid 1930s.
As interest in Eastport grew, a local developer, Jerry Parks, bought the entire row in the early 1980s. His renovations left the houses much the same on the street side, but each one now has a large addition in the rear containing a master bedroom, a bath and a large kitchen. He renamed the street Jeremy’s Way.
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