Broadlands Farm

This site represents the architectural core of what was once a bustling early twentieth-century “gentleman’s” farm complex. The farmstead, as it appears today, was laid out in a courtyard plan by Hoagland Gates around 1929. Architecturally, Broadlands illustrates the importance of dairying and tenant farming in early-twentieth-century Cecil County. Despite the recent loss of many of the surrounding farm fields, the machine shed with double corn crib and the three tenant houses represent a transition from tobacco to grains, and the subsequent increase in and continued importance of farm tenancy from the mid-nineteenth through the twentieth century in the county. The dairy barn with attached barnyard and silo, including the extant dairy equipment on the first story of the barn, exemplifies the increased importance of the dairy industry to Cecil County agriculture in the early twentieth century. Together, the buildings show a symbiotic relationship between dairying and grain production, in that the farm was designed to continue both practices.