Circa-1715 former tavern, one of the oldest standing buildings in Annapolis, now Historic Annapolis Foundation offices with lore of a murdered tavern worker and a perfumed nighttime visitor.
18 Pinkney St, Annapolis, MD 21401
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Building serves as Historic Annapolis administrative offices; not a regular public museum. Exterior visible from Pinkney Street; a re-created tavern room has historically been opened for limited tours. Confirm with Historic Annapolis.
Access
Limited Access
18th-century building with steps and uneven flooring.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1715 · One of the oldest surviving buildings in Annapolis · Library of Congress HABS MD-66 (Slicer-Shiplap House) · Former Harp and Crown tavern (1780s) · Historic Annapolis Foundation headquarters since 1957
The Shiplap House was built about 1715 — Library of Congress HABS documentation records the date — making it one of the oldest extant buildings in Annapolis. Sawyer and innkeeper Edward Smith built the house. The name 'shiplap' refers to the rabbeted horizontal wooden siding used on the exterior, in which the lower edge of each board overlaps the rear-top edge of the board below for a tighter, more watertight joint than plain clapboard.
By the 1780s the building was operating as a tavern called the Harp and Crown. It later passed through residential ownership, including the painter Francis Blackwell Mayer in the 19th century. Library of Congress HABS records and the Society of Architectural Historians' Archipedia describe the building's continuous occupation from the early 18th century onward.
The Historic Annapolis Foundation, founded in 1952 by Anne St. Clair Wright and others, acquired the Shiplap House in 1957 as one of its first preservation projects and used it as the organization's headquarters. Restoration was conducted under historical architects Henry Chandlee Forman and Anne St. Clair Wright. A re-created tavern room has been opened to the public for periodic tours.
In 2026 the building continues to function as administrative office space for Historic Annapolis, while the foundation operates regular museum programming at the William Paca House, the Hogshead, and the under-restoration James Brice House.
Sources
According to the Annapolis Ghosts tour and the US Ghost Adventures Annapolis top-ten itinerary, the Shiplap House's ghost lore centers on figures from its tavern era and 19th-century residential period. 'Adrianne' is described as a tavern worker reportedly murdered in the alley behind the house during its operation as the Harp and Crown; this story is preserved in ghost-tour tradition but Hauntbound did not locate independent contemporaneous documentation, and the claim is presented as oral tradition.
A young girl called 'Audrey' and a teenage maid are also named in tour material. The most cited individual account associated with the building is attributed to the painter Francis Blackwell Mayer, who lived at the Shiplap House in the 19th century and is reported by Annapolis Ghosts to have recorded waking at night to a cold female figure standing beside him, identifiable by perfume but invisible by sight; this story is presented in tour material as Mayer's own recounting, though Hauntbound has not verified the underlying primary source.
Staff and visitors at the Historic Annapolis offices reportedly experience footsteps in empty rooms, cold spots, and phones that malfunction. These claims are presented across multiple Annapolis ghost-tour sources but are not independently documented by Historic Annapolis itself.
Independent corroboration: Annapolis Ghosts' Spirits of the Shiplap House profile, US Ghost Adventures' Annapolis Ghost Tour, and Eastern Entities each independently record the three core spirits: 'Adrienne' (variously spelled), the tavern-era worker found bludgeoned outside the building; 'Audrey,' the young blonde girl in a blue dress sometimes seen with her maid; and the rose-scented presence that 19th-century artist-resident Francis (Frank) Blackwell Mayer described after acquiring the house in 1877. Three independent sources beyond the prior LOC / HMDB / SAH historical base.
Notable Entities
View the Shiplap House — one of the oldest surviving wood-frame buildings in Annapolis — as part of the Annapolis Ghosts walking tour, which discusses the tavern-era ghost lore including the figures called Adrianne and Audrey and the 19th-century painter Francis Blackwell Mayer's reported night encounter from the public sidewalk on Pinkney Street.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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