Schifferstadt Architectural Museum

The Brunner family arrived in what is now Frederick County in 1736 and began farming a 303-acre tract they named Schifferstadt after their hometown in the German Palatinate region. The family lived in a log house until 1758, when Joseph Brunner's son Elias and Elias's wife Albertina completed the stone house that survives today. The completion date is anchored by an iron five-plate stove cast for the house in 1758, one of three originally installed and the only one still in its original location anywhere in the United States.

The building is regarded as the finest existing example of German colonial domestic architecture in the United States. It features two-foot-thick stone walls, a vaulted cellar, a clean energy-efficient radiant heating system tied to the original chimney plan, and a tightly winding staircase to the upper floor. The interior preserves an unusual amount of original eighteenth-century fabric, including hand-hewn beams, original window placements, and the surviving five-plate stove.

The house remained in the Brunner family for several generations and then passed through subsequent private owners before being threatened with demolition in the early 1970s as the surrounding land was developed. In 1974 the Frederick County Landmarks Commission (now the Frederick County Landmarks Foundation) purchased the house, which by that point conveyed with only about 1.5 acres of its original tract.

The Foundation now operates the building as the Schifferstadt Architectural Museum, offering guided tours that interpret eighteenth-century German colonial life, building craft, and the Brunner family's role in Frederick's founding-era German immigrant community. A Heritage Garden — a colonial four-square kitchen garden maintained by master gardeners — was honored with a Frederick City Historic Preservation Award in 2015.