Corker Hill
National Historic Register of Historic Places
Comparisons
Thaddeus Mahon’s Corker Hill farmstead appears to have been singular in Greene Township. The development of Corker Hill as a gentleman’s farm/summer retreat is perhaps most comparable with other summer estates built in the region during the first decades of the 20th century. The summer estate of Moorehead C. Kennedy known as “Ragged Edge” is located in Greene Township near Fayetteville.[1] Kennedy served as the president of the Cumberland Valley Railroad, his status reflected in the large, late Queen Anne styled retreat constructed in 1901. Like most “cottages” of this era, Ragged Edge sports a wide wrap-around porch/veranda and the interior of the house is laid in a center hall, double parlor plan quite similar to the classic Federal style. Although Moorehead did not maintain a farm on his retreat he did adapt nearby buildings to his leisure-time use. The Orr Mill foundation and sluiceway was lined with concrete and used as a swimming pool, while the nearby miller’s house was reportedly used as the Ragged Edge carriage house.[2]
A flamboyant exterior design, wide veranda, and distinctive Federal-inspired interior layout can be found also on the c.1906 summer estate known as “Tipahato,” at nearby Pen-Mar, Maryland, summer home of Katherine Taylor, a wealthy Baltimorian. Tipahato was constructed prominently on a hillside overlooking the railroad resort villages of Pen-Mar and Highfield. On land carved from a working farm, the Taylor retreat was maintained through the year as a tenant farm and included a tenant house, small bank barn, stone and frame gambrel-roofed dairy barn, a subterranean stone-arched root cellar, and stone ice house. [3]