"Pretty much every summer, there's some issues." Amanda Venable, a museum manager at Rose Hill Manor Park, was describing the old carriage museum when she told the Frederick News-Post that. The issues were moisture and mold, and they were landing on wood, leather and upholstery that in some cases had been in the collection for decades.
The new Robert H. Renneberger Carriage Museum, which Frederick County opened with a ribbon cutting on Wednesday, September 16, holds the same 26-plus carriages, sleighs and wagons that have been at Rose Hill since 1976. The new building gives Rose Hill enough room and stable enough conditions to tell a fuller story about the people who drove, cared for and fled from this farm.
Fifty years in a building that let the weather in
The original carriage museum opened to the public in 1976, eight years after the Board of County Commissioners bought the whole Rose Hill Manor property to make it Frederick County's first park. The estate had once belonged to Gov. Thomas Johnson, Maryland's first elected governor.
Venable told the News-Post that the old building sat on a brick slab and had barn doors that never fully sealed. Moisture got in, and because so many of the vehicles combine wood, leather and fabric, mold kept coming back. In 2012 park officials closed the carriage museum for several months to treat a mold outbreak.
For half a century, a large part of Rose Hill's work on these carriages was simply keeping them from deteriorating.
What the new 6,000 square feet changes
The new building is about twice the size of the old one, and the larger space and better construction show up in the visit itself.
| Original museum, opened 1976 | Renneberger Carriage Museum, opened 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Size | About half of the new building | 6,000 square feet |
| Climate | Brick slab, barn doors that didn't fully seal | Climate-controlled, with multi-layer doors to keep moisture out |
| Visitor space | Limited room around the vehicles | Room to walk around each carriage |
| Extras | No classroom or restrooms | Classroom and restrooms |
Jeremy Kortright, director of Frederick County Parks and Recreation, told the News-Post that the extra floor space would let visitors walk around the carriages and see them from every angle. Anyone who remembers the old layout knows that's a real change. A carriage is built to be seen from the side and from behind as much as from the front, and a sleigh's runners or a wagon's undercarriage don't show up when the vehicle is parked against a wall.
The project stayed close to its plan. At the groundbreaking, Kortright put construction costs just above $2 million, slightly below projections, and said part of the money came from a $500,000 state bond bill approved for fiscal year 2023. Crews expected to finish by August 2026, in time for the 50th anniversary of the original museum. The county's September announcement says the project was paid for through the State Capital Budget and the Frederick County Capital Budget, and that the opening coincides with both the collection's 50th anniversary and the nation's 250th.
Room for a coachman's story
The extra space is also meant for interpretation. "This new space gives us an opportunity to tell a more complete story about transportation and the role it played in the lives of the people who lived at Rose Hill," Kari Saavedra, recreation manager for Frederick County Parks & Recreation, said in the county's opening announcement.
At the groundbreaking, County Executive Jessica Fitzwater was more specific. According to the News-Post's account, she said the museum would move beyond Thomas Johnson to stories like that of Leonard, whom she described as a coachman who helped a group of enslaved men escape from Rose Hill.
The documentary record behind that story comes mostly from historian Emilie Amt's report, Slavery at Rose Hill Manor. Amt describes Leonard as a young man who sometimes worked as a coachman but usually served in the house. In the 1820s, John Grahame sold him to a neighbor, William Schley. In Amt's account, the escape was led by Jim Chase, an enslaved man at Rose Hill who was nearly 50 in the mid-1820s. Chase could read and had preached for some time at Bethel A.M.E. Church on East Third Street, about a mile south of Rose Hill. That congregation still exists today as Quinn Chapel A.M.E. Church.
Chase planned the escape with four younger men at Rose Hill, the waiter Daniel and the farmhands John, Charles and Edward, and with Leonard at the Schley farm. They left on the night of Saturday, June 30, 1827. The five men from Rose Hill took two horses from the Grahame stables, a black gelding and a bay mare. Amt quotes Schley's own words about what happened at his house:
Leonard "had access to every part of the house" and "was seen on Saturday night with a large bundle."
The bundle was a large supply of clothing, most of it the Schleys', which Amt suggests Leonard gathered to share so the group would look less like typical runaways. By July 7 the six men had reportedly been seen near Gettysburg and Hanover, and Grahame and Schley were offering $350 in total for their capture. Three runaway advertisements in the July 7, 1827, Frederick Town Herald covered all six men. Amt writes that there is no record of their capture and no record of their lives in freedom.
So a 1827 escape that started with two horses taken from a farm stable now has a home at the park, in a building devoted to horse-drawn travel. The old barn, crowded and fighting mold, was not built to hold that kind of history alongside the vehicles. Rose Hill's 250th-anniversary exhibit, "In Search of Freedom," which Visit Frederick lists as opening April 2, explores the Revolution's legacy through stories of people connected to the property and asks visitors what freedom meant and how events changed who had it.
A short first season
Here's the practical catch for anyone hoping to see the new building this year. Visit Frederick's Rose Hill listing shows the park on a seasonal schedule. From April through September it's open Thursday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. In October and November that drops to Saturdays and Sundays, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is listed at $5 for adults and $4 for seniors and children. The listing ends in November, so the new carriage museum's first season comes down to a handful of weekends. Call Frederick County Parks & Recreation before you drive over, both to confirm hours and to ask whether the carriage museum is part of regular admission.
After November, the next scheduled opening is a holiday evening. Museums by Candlelight, the Frederick Historic Sites Consortium's free, self-guided tradition, returns on December 12, 2026, at more than 20 historic sites across the county. For Rose Hill, Visit Frederick's event page lists:
- Hours of 12 p.m. to 7 p.m., so you can arrive after dark
- 1776-themed crafts and hearth-cooking demonstrations
- Light refreshments
- The "In Search of Freedom" exhibit, the Seed to Harvest Barn and the Carriage Museum, all open to walk through
Other participating sites in the city include the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, Heritage Frederick's Museum of Frederick County History, the Delaplaine Arts Center and the AARCH Society African American Heritage Center. Rose Hill sits at 1611 N. Market St., straight up Market from downtown, so a December evening can begin at a downtown museum and end among the carriages once the sun has set.
It's good to see Rose Hill's carriages finally get a building that suits them. If you're thinking about a home within easy reach of places like this on North Market Street, The Allwein Team would love to talk it through with you. Book your free consultation.
