Annapolis has long understood the importance of place. Its City Dock is not simply a waterfront but an enduring composition of history and geography — a streetscape that meets the water with a balance so rare in American cities that it feels almost accidental. And yet, despite the fragile equilibrium of this historic space, the city’s own Historic Preservation Commission has seen fit to approve the Maritime Welcome Center, a project that does not preserve so much as impose.
This decision is all the more baffling given that Historic Annapolis – the very organization dedicated to the city’s architectural legacy — urged the commission to reconsider. Their concerns were brushed aside. The project, with its excessive bulk and indifferent design, was greenlit despite significant objections. Preservation, it seems, has been redefined to accommodate the weight of bureaucratic expedience rather than the careful stewardship of history.
Development is not the enemy of history. Cities grow, evolve, adapt. But successful urban change depends on sensitivity to context. Consider 110 Compromise Street, a modern structure that complements rather than competes, one that understands its place within Annapolis’s architectural fabric. The Maritime Welcome Center, by contrast, ignores these lessons. It disrupts rather than integrates. There is, however, reason to hope. If preservationists failed, perhaps the law will not. A legal challenge now stands as a last line of defense against this misstep. I have faith in this effort — not as blind optimism, but because the case against this project is strong. The challenge is rooted in the very principles the city once claimed to uphold, and in the careful hands of a skilled lawyer, it may yet succeed where official channels have faltered.
History teaches us that great cities protect their historic centers not by accident but by choice. Annapolis must now decide what kind of city it wants to be. If it values its identity, if it understands the irreplaceable nature of its built environment, then this project must not proceed.
– Derek Meyers, Oxford, England
Meyers is the former chairman of the Annapolis Zoning Board of Appeals.
