The Hays House, Bel Air

The Hays House is one of the oldest standing structures in Bel Air, Maryland. It was probably built in seventeen eighty-eight and enlarged in eighteen eleven by Thomas Hays, an attorney and landowner who was a central figure in early Harford County life. The building was actually relocated to its present site in nineteen sixty, moved intact to preserve it from demolition.

Inside, the original woodwork and interior features have survived more than two centuries, giving the house a rare authenticity. Bel Air grew up as a courthouse town serving the agricultural communities of the upper Chesapeake region, and the Hays House stands as one of its most tangible connections to that early period. Its survival, first through the centuries and then through the mid-century urban pressures that destroyed so many similar buildings, is a small but real achievement in local preservation.