Byte size anecdotes dug up at Oakley Farm
- How many building lots have been carved out of Oakley Farm? If you count the 2 apartment buildings and the Oakley condos as each single lots, there are approximately 416 lots. The street with the most lots (84) is West End Avenue. The street with the fewest lots is Oakley Terrace (3). This is followed closely by Church Street (4) and Glasgow Street (5). (New! 10/9/23)
- In 1881 the Building and Loan Association of Cambridge was organized to purchase and develop the eastern edge of Oakley Farm then owned by George Varnum. The Association was led by 2 of Cambridge’s most prominent citizens, future Maryland Governor Henry Lloyd and Cambridge’s most famous architect and builder J. Benjamin Brown. Within 2 years the Association had permanently changed the West End landscape. Not only did the Association create Choptank Avenue, but it also bought a strip of Oakley land from William Hopkins abutting its property in order to create West End Avenue. It then subdivided and sold many building lots on these streets. Finally, it was instrumental in 1883 in getting the Cambridge city limits extended to include all Choptank Avenue and West End Avenue properties. (New! 9/26/23)
- Street widths in Oakley are inconsistent because streets and sidewalks were laid out by different developers during different eras. And the areas being developed had not been annexed by the City of Cambridge yet. During the 1870’s the West End was sold to 4 different owners, each getting a long lot running SW to NE. Subsequent owners over the course of the following 30 years subdivided these lots and laid out the necessary streets to provide access. The rule seemed to be that the deeper the lots, the wider the street.
- United Charities Hospital that opened in 1898 on the SE side of the 400 block of High Street was Cambridge’s first hospital. But after 4 years that hospital purchased a lot in the West End from Oakley Farm developer WD Hopkins in order to build a new hospital. The lot was bounded by School on the North, Travers on the South, and the 200 blocks of both Willis and Oakley streets. But a West End hospital was not to be because within a year they received a donation of a waterfront parcel from East Cambridge developer William Fletcher.
- House arrest? After we bought our house on West End Avenue, we were told that the house next door was once used as a jail. I did not really believe it until I read in an 1883 edition of the Democrat and News that the City’s jail was in such bad condition it had to be torn down. And while a new jail is being built, the 4 jail prisoners will be “kept at Deputy Sheriff Adams’s house in northwest Cambridge”.
- Samuel Byrn’s first sale of Oakley Farm property occurred in 1874. He sold a 4-acre lot to Sophia Moody. It was along the Choptank River at the northern end of his farm (currently the area covered by 1 Belvedere + 1109 Hambrooks), so he had to include a right of way across his farm to what was then Sandy Hill Road. The right of way was 16 feet wide along the property line between his farm and Glenburn farm. That puts it in the current roadbed of Glenburn Avenue.
- In 1879 William Hopkins purchased a little less than 50 ac of the Oakley Farm real estate after Samuel Byrn had died. The other 50+ acres of Oakley had already been sold by Byrn over the preceding 5 years. It would be up to the father and son team of William and WD Hopkins to oversee the transition of Oakley from farmland to residential neighborhoods. The other half of Oakley would be primarily developed by 3 other syndicates.
- William Hopkins had been selling building lots since 1880. Some were within the city limits, i.e., on West End Avenue and on Locust Street SE of West End. Others were on Oakley, Willis, and part of Locust. This latter area was beyond the City Limits and was called “The Belt”. However, when some began calling for the annexation of The Belt into Cambridge, Hopkins responded with letters to local newspapers threatening to shut down the roads he had built throughout Oakley if he and his neighbors were subjected to the Cambridge taxes that came with annexation. In spite of his warnings, in 1892 all former Oakley Farm property including The Belt were peacefully annexed into Cambridge.
- Choptank Ave. & Glenburn Ave. are only half Oakley streets. Their uniqueness is that one side of the street is Oakley Farm, but the other side of the street was developed by other investors. After the Building & Loan Association of Cambridge built Choptank Avenue along its property line on former Oakley Farmland around 1881, property owners on the other side of the line began selling their properties and it created a unique streetscape because the lots are much deeper on the side toward Mill Street. On Glenburn Avenue also the houses built on the North side (Belvedere side) were developed on Oakley Farmland, but across the street was Glenburn Farm and Tubman lands.
- Once upon a time there was an Oakley farmhouse. We know that the Hopkins family moved into it after they bought the farm. We also know that it had to be moved or torn down in 1895 in order to build the new W.D. Hopkins house (325 West End) because it was in the way. So, we know approximately where it was. I believe also that we can pinpoint the driveway to the house from Sandy Hill Road (now Glasgow). There is a reference in deeds to an Oakley Alley that ran from Sandy Hill Road to the area of the farmhouse. The driveway is also visible on the 1877 Atlas of Dorchester County. The driveway was approximately where 816 and 817 Locust Street now stand.
- Who was Oakley’s last farmer? In 1877 Samuel Byrn sold 12 acres of land to Andrew Taylor. Taylor worked the farm and enlarged it to 18 acres before selling in 1886 to Howard Stokes. A year later future State Senator and owner of the Cambridge Marine Railway Joseph Johnson who lived on High Street bought the farm from Stokes. Johnson did maintain the farm until he finally sold it seventeen years later to a group of investors led by John G. Mills. They laid out building lots along a street that led from Locust Street to the Choptank River. They named the street Belvedere.
- The 2 oldest houses on Oakley Farm? At the intersection of Choptank Avenue and Locust Street you can see Oakley’s second oldest house. It is clearly visible on the north corner, 801 Locust Street. In 1878 John Davis bought a lot from George Varnum and built a 2-story home on this corner. Across Locust Street from the Davis house is a quarter acre lot that was sold to Ann Henry by Samuel Byrn in 1876. And in 1876 or 1877 her husband, J. C. Henry, built what is most likely the oldest house on Oakley Farm (701 Glasgow Street). Before 1900 this small lot was actually subdivided, so another small house facing Locust Street could be built behind the Henry house. The outline of the house looks similar to the outline of the original house shown on the 1877 Atlas of Dorchester County.
- What happened to the oaks? When William Hopkins bought Oakley in 1879, the Oakley farmhouse area was surrounded by large oak trees. This collection of oaks was about all that was left from a larger original population that prompted the name Oakley for the farm. By 1882 it was reported that all the trees had been cut down and that the land was instead in cultivation. Hopkins was the builder of the Marine Railway on Cambridge Creek, so he certainly knew the value of oak.