About National Park Seminary
National Park Seminary looks less like a planned campus than a collection of buildings borrowed from unrelated countries and accidentally left in the same Maryland woods. A crenelated castle sits near a Japanese-style pagoda. Elsewhere are a Dutch-style windmill, a Swiss chalet, revival-style buildings, gardens, sculptures, and other architectural experiments.
The property began in the late nineteenth century as a resort hotel and became a women’s boarding school in 1894. School leaders treated art, architecture, landscape, and culture as part of the educational environment. Student organizations were associated with distinctive clubhouses, and the grounds accumulated buildings designed in deliberately different historical and international styles.
The United States government acquired the property during World War II, and parts of the campus later served military medical uses. Decades of changing functions and deferred maintenance left many structures deteriorating. Preservation advocates fought to save the surviving campus, and redevelopment eventually converted much of it into a residential community while preserving the historic buildings and public access to the grounds.
The result is one of Maryland’s most visually confusing neighborhoods. A person can walk past an apartment or condominium and then encounter a miniature fortress that looks imported from a fairy tale. Some buildings are private residences, so visitors must respect signs and property boundaries. Save Our Seminary offers scheduled tours that are the best way to understand why so many incompatible-looking buildings ended up together.