Schifferstadt Architectural Museum

A 1758 stone farmhouse on the western edge of town, and one of the purest surviving examples of German colonial architecture in the United States.

Joseph Brunner emigrated from Schifferstadt in the Palatinate and named his Maryland land after home; his son built this house from local sandstone with walls more than two feet thick. Almost nothing has been modernised away — the vaulted cellar, the wishbone chimney, the original hand-hewn beams, the five-plate cast-iron jamb stove dated 1756 are all still in place. It survives largely because the family that owned it for two centuries never had the money to improve it, and because the county rallied to buy it in the 1970s when it was slated for a petrol station.

The surrounding garden is planted with period-appropriate edible, medicinal and dye plants and is open even when the house is not.

Practical notes

• Limited hours — generally weekend afternoons only, roughly 14:00–17:00; confirm before driving over
• Guided tours only for the interior, and the guides are genuinely good
• Small admission; free parking on site
• A short drive or a 20-minute walk northwest of Market Street