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Granite Hill River-View Homes For Sale

Granite Hill
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+ 1209 Oella Ave. SOLD
+ 1213 Oella Ave.
+ 1202 Oella Ave.
+ 1217 Oella Ave.
Granite Hill represents a rare opportunity where history, scenic beauty, and a strategic location combine in one site.

Here stands a line of early 1800s stone houses picturesquely situated along a wooded hillside just below the most spectacular white water rapids on the Patapsco River. It is a place apart, a step back in history, yet within 20 minutes of the Baltimore Inner Harbor, and within an hour of Washington, Annapolis, the Chesapeake Bay, and the Catoctin mountains.

Granite Hill will become home for 16 families: five in rehabilitated homes, eight in luxury new homes, and three in small historic houses that will be linked to new, larger homes.

The Oella Company is focusing on the stone houses, which are being restored in accordance with the U.S. Secretary of Interior's Standards for Historic Rehabilitation. Two duplexes have been rehabbed. One of the remaining four, 1202 Oella Avenue, will have a substantial addition. Two stone duplexes have been converted into single-family homes and are available for purchase, as are other lots and homes.

One solitary stone edifice will be stabilized and joined by a hyphen to a new house. The same concept applies to 1205 and 1207 Oella Avenue, where 20th Century additions have been removed from the nearly 200-year-old log cabins. Orlando Ridout V, the Chief of the Maryland Historical Trust Office of Research, Survey, and Registration, noted that #1205 and #1207 are "rare survivals of a once common house type." They will be linked to larger additions.

The historic and architectural integrity of the stone houses and the two log cabins will be preserved. Though the new houses will not mimic the past, they will grow out of what exists now, respecting the massing, roof forms, and materials of the existing structures. New and old will celebrate and harmonize with the simple beauty of the charming enclave.

Historical Note

Granite Hill is a vital part of the Ellicott Mills National Register Historic District and joins two other districts: Ellicott City to the west and Oella to the northeast. The site is also within the recognized heritage area of the Patapsco Heritage Greenway.

Add Granite Hill as a beneficiary of the entrepreneurial spirit that carried brothers Andrew, Joseph, and Jonathan Ellicott out of Bucks County, Pennsylvania to Maryland. Here along the fall line of the Patapsco River, they launched an innovative flour mill and began the town of Ellicott Mills. A short walk upstream, they founded in 1806 an iron rolling and slitting mill that made nails. Immediately to the east of the works they built a row of houses to provide shelter for the workers. These homes, small but charming in their simplicity and proportions, represent the architecture of the era and are beautifully sited along a hillside ledge overlooking the Patapsco River.

Later the cotton mill of the Granite Manufacturing Company replaced the Ellicott enterprise. It suffered the twin blows of fire and flood. The flood of 1868 ended the industrial use of the site, but the stone and log houses, which were on higher ground, were spared. Finally, early in the 1980s the mostly vacant homes got access to public water and sewer, but it was not until recent years that rehabilitation began.