Historic Laurel Manor House is on the market

By QUINN MULLER

In 1891, Edward Phelps established the first department store in Laurel when he opened his dry goods store in a two-story building on Montgomery Street. The store, which he ran with his business partner Charles Schaffer, was prospering, and Pehlps and his wife, Savilla, had a house built a quarter-mile down the road.

Phelps earned a reputation as an influential businessman and decided to run for mayor in 1895. He won that year — and every year for the next six years — all while he and his wife raised eight children in their five-bedroom home.

The house at 1110 Montgomery Street has since been owned by a number of families and a church before becoming a bed and breakfast.The historic Laurel Manor House is now on the market with the asking price of $874,600.

The home is in the west end of Laurel’s Historic District and is registered with the Maryland Historical Trust. It was listed by Long & Foster Real Estate on March 11 (Denise Redmond is the listing agent). 

The property was last on the market in 2011, when Dave and Lisa Everett bought it with the intent of renovating the house and opening it as a bed and breakfast. After seven years of tireless work, the Everetts opened the Laurel Manor House Bed and Breakfast in 2018. The Everetts blogged that they aimed to honor Phelps by retaining many of the original pocket doors, floors, moulding and fireplaces while furnishing the 137-year-old house with both new and hand-me-down furniture. 

“And just as Edward Phelps spent seven years as mayor improving the city, ushering it into the 20th century, the Everetts spent seven years bringing this old Victorian house up to 21st century standards of comfort and efficiency,” the Everetts wrote on their website. According to Lisa Everett, theirs was the first bed and breakfast licensed in Prince George’s County.

After purchasing the property, the couple, who had been living in Howard County, attended an open house hosted by the Laurel Historical Society. Lisa Everett recalled that the staff was excited that the historic house would have a new life.

“I wanted to learn everything about this house’s history and the city’s history, and so for a while, I really felt like we were just caretakers of this important property,” Lisa Everett said. “After a number of years, it really has felt like our own.”

Before the Everetts, the property belonged to the next-door First Assembly of God church for 40 years, where the church’s staff pastor lived, according to the Maryland Historical Trust. Before that, came the Steinbauers.

Clarence Steinbauer bought the property in 1947 from Fred Kluckhuhn, who came from a family of successful electrical supply merchants, according to the records. Lisa Everett said the Steinbauer children told her stories of their lives in the home. 

The Queen Anne and Stick-style house has five bedrooms, four and a half baths, a wrap-around porch and many more features on almost an acre of land with flower gardens bursting with perennials, and holly and crape myrtle trees, according to the real estate listing.

“The renovations could be a story in itself,” Lisa Everett said.

The couple had all of the electrical sockets repaired even before buying the property. Over the next seven years, they added three gas fireplaces and a new sewer line. They also gutted a portion of the house to install three private bathrooms. 

“We have some really good friends who volunteered to do some really awful projects,” Lisa Everett said.

While friends and professional landscapers helped with some of the more challenging projects on the grounds, Dave Everett added plants and trees during the COVID-19 pandemic. He also built fish ponds on the property.

The couple’s daughters were both at college during much of the renovation.

“Each time she came home, she would see something new,” Lisa Everett said of her youngest daughter, Kate.

The bed and breakfast has welcomed guests from 10 states across the country since the start of this year alone.

Lisa Shaffer, who lives in San Diego, often stays at Laurel Manor House when she’s  visiting her daughter, who lives in Laurel. Shaffer said she fell in love with the innkeepers and just felt very comfortable overall.

“I don’t want to dissuade the Everetts from selling it,” Shaffer said. “But if there’s any way you can convince somebody to keep it [as a B&B] and not just convert it to a house, that would be great for the community.”

For an extra $30,000, coffee mugs, furniture and other items essential to a bed and breakfast would be left, Lisa Everett said.

Lisa Everett said she and Dave are relocating to be closer to family and have their sights set on a lake house in Pennsylvania’s Endless Mountains region, in the northeastern part of the state .

“When we found this house in Laurel, we weren’t house hunting at the time, but I saw a ‘For Sale’ sign and we had in mind, you know, have a bed and breakfast eventually,” Everett said. “It was a big leap, and so now it’s just time for another big leap.”