National Register Listing

200-208 Decatur Street

a.k.a. Row Houses

200, 202, 204, 206, 208 Decatur St., Cumberland, MD

This group of mid nineteenth century row houses is important for its architecture. It represents an urban form of domestic architecture that is not commonly found in Cumberland, Maryland. The row house, a major tool for defining urban scale and space, was overshadowed in popularity in this Western Maryland town by the detached and semidetached house, even after late nineteenth century industrialism created the pressure for more housing and denser land occupation.

The Decatur Street group is one of the oldest rows remaining in the city. It was built in the 1840's or early 1850's. Decatur Street is a part of Smith's Addition to Cumberland and was laid out about the mid 1840's. The row house group is shown on the 1853 Map of Cumberland.

Decatur Street was a fashionable residential neighborhood well into the twentieth century. It was named in honor of Commodore Stephen Decatur, hero of the American expeditions against the Barbary pirates. The street never attained the "upper class" status that was associated with the Washington Street area although various professional families resided along it. This group of row houses is indicative of the atmosphere that once characterized the street. Neither pretentious or massive, the building has a refined and intimate quality showing the scale of human use. Its classically lined facade creates a rhythm that is carried along the street in the facades of other mid nineteenth century classical buildings. In recent years the area has begun to decline and urban blight threatens to destroy this important part of Cumberland's heritage.

Local significance of the building:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1975.