From the ground, up

Abandoned structures often are overpowered by overgrown weeds and shrubs and eventually disappear from view. Virtually out of sight, even when it was active, a Maryland sewage treatment plant that was constructed mostly underground was well on its way to oblivion when it closed decades ago. However, officials, keeping with a decades-old plan, instead decided to transform the old plant into a new visitor’s center for a historical park.

Located near the banks of the South River in Edgewater, Md., Historic London Town and Gardens, a 23-acre park that was once a tobacco port, nearly hides the remains of the sewage plant. In the 1970s, following the restructuring of Anne Arundel County’s utilities, wastewater was no longer treated at the plant, and it became inactive, disappearing beneath the site above. By the 1980s, officials noticed the limitations of the park’s existing visitor’s center, a former dormitory constructed in the 1920s, that failed to guide visitors to one of the park’s critical features — the gardens. So officials developed a master plan to construct a new facility.

While developing the plan, officials soon remembered the hidden structure. “There was a desire to locate a visitor’s contact facility at a location where people coming into the site from the parking lot would go through a facility, get orientation to both the historical resources and the gardens and then go to whichever attraction they wanted to, or both,” says Jack Keene, chief of planning and construction for Anne Arundel County. “The location was just right in terms of intercepting visitors as they were coming into the property.”

Despite the age of the facility and the time it had remained inactive, the structure was in prime condition. The facility was thoroughly cleaned before its abandonment, leaving behind 20-foot-deep wastewater treatment tanks, catwalks, solid walls and a small office space. For two years, the parks and recreation department teamed with Timonium, Md.-based James F. Knott Construction to convert the building, removing walls and mechanical equipment for the facility’s exhibit space.

Designed by Baltimore-based Cho Benn Holback & Associates, the new facility takes visitors on a journey through the history of the former town and throughout the facility itself. Because the only visible parts of the old plant were an office entrance and a chimney-like structure, officials created two buildings above ground with distinct purposes. The first building is an archeology lab for examination of the artifacts found on the site, and the second includes a reception desk, restrooms, gift shop and orientation rooms.

Officials wanted to be sure the historical buildings were not overwhelmed by the park’s latest innovative structures. “We [didn’t] want to create a contemporary building that’s going to compete visually with the historical buildings,” Keene says. “They’re clearly contemporary buildings, but the size and shape and mass of the buildings is comparable to some of the reconstructed 17th century buildings that we’re dealing with on the site.”

To enter the museum, visitors descend a flight of stairs to the vast underground space that once held the plant’s water tanks and now will be filled with exhibits, one of which will tell the story of the former port town. To exit, visitors ascend another flight of stairs leading outside to the gardens and the park’s other historical sites.

Keene says the building will be open to the public in July with permanent exhibits to be in place next year that will “recapture the appearance of an earlier era.”