You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby!

Clifton on the Monocacy farm, circa 1945 – back half of the dairy barn and the second, larger silo are just 3 years old here. Notice that the little white farmhouse is not here. It was moved, by a donkey-powered contraption, from another site on the farm to its current location in 1952.

Iconic buildings, like our barns, evolve over time, and that’s what you’ve been witnessing this past year.

These magnificent Chartreuse & co barns have been in my family and evolving for over 75 years. About 18 months ago we started a process of doing some significant upgrading to the barns. We repaired and painted the exterior of the bank barn, bringing it back to its original detailing and beauty (see the before and after image of the work below).

Bank Barn’s before and after, 2017.

However, with interior work on our Dairy Barn (the main barn) we have run into major delays at site plan, historic preservation, and most recently, the permitting processes.

Architectural renderings of exterior improvements, most significantly the improved back door, plus the exterior stairway.

During this process some safety issues were identified, so we chose to close the Main Barn entirely rather than leave it open during the process.

Our Dairy Barn front circa 1990. This is our Dairy Barn as it was when we bought it from my family. It’s iconic outline is there, but it needed some love to bring it back to life.

We’ve finally navigated the county process and are getting work done: electrical and lighting upgrades, replacing that hideous old garage door (you can see it in the photo above as the front door of the barn) at the back of the barn with a beautiful pair of barn doors (see architectural renderings above), and installing bathrooms – that’s right – ones that have sinks and flushing toilets!

This process has taken so very long that we cannot get all of it completed before our November 1, Holiday Bash opening. We’ll have enough completed on the first floor to get you all back inside. Upstairs and downstairs dealers are squeezing together, and bursting out onto the grounds – all to be able to bring you all the talent and selection you expect. Plus we’re creating vignettes outside all around our barns, allowing you to truly appreciate all the details and beauty of these buildings. As well as be able to shop throughout the property.

We expect to have the Main Barn completely open, upstairs and down, early in 2019, and then moving on to the Bank Barn’s interior. We’ll keep you posted as these exciting transformations take place.

Thanks so much for your patience as we go through this, and I’ve gotta shout out to our amazing designers and dealers who have gone above and beyond to roll with the changes and uncertainties that this process has created.

Here’s our 2019 Holiday schedule, with an extra opening in November added:

Nov 1-4

Nov 10-11

Nov 16-18

Nov 24

Dec 7-9

Chartreuse & co main barn, circa 2018.

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You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby!

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