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Why a Brick Stable?
A 175-year-old brick stable is rare in this region. Most stables and barns built in Maryland in the 1800s were made of wood and had one story, not two. Brick buildings were more expensive to build, but lasted longer. When this stable went up, perhaps the DeButts family felt wealthy enough to build for the future. Brick stables were common in England and Ireland at the time, so a building like this might have seemed natural to them.
This stable also has a few special details in the brickwork. If you look high up on the ends of the barn, called the gables, you'll see holes in the bricks in the shape of a diamond. The holes help ventilate the building and appear in different patterns on old barns across northern Maryland and parts of Pennsylvania.
Some of the stable's features were added long after it was built, such as the wide door on the south wall and the concrete floor. But the stable also has a few ghosts – traces of windows and doors that no longer exist. |