Baltimore, Maryland, 1810–11

This room, installed in Gallery 724, comes from a townhouse for the Baltimore, Maryland, merchant and shipowner Henry Craig (1767–1832). Although it served as the Craig family's parlor, the Museum has furnished the space as a dining room since the American Wing opened in 1924. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, Americans began dedicating a specific room to dining, which they used in conjunction with a formal parlor for entertaining guests.

The geometric shapes found in the interior woodwork and on the inlaid Baltimore-made furniture are excellent examples of the adoption and adaptation of the English Neoclassical style in the early Federal period.

In the period during which Henry Craig's house on East Pratt Street was being built, Baltimore, was emerging as a major Atlantic port. By 1810 it was the third largest city in the United States, with a population of about 46,500 people, which included approximately 4,600 enslaved individuals and 5,600 free people of color. The city's commercial success was manifested in the extensive development of its residential neighborhoods. With access to agricultural products and timber from the American interior and imports from Europe and Asia, Craig and his counterparts in the mercantile and shipping industries grew wealthy from the steady transatlantic trade.