One of the first rules of preservation is that a house is only as good as its roof. Don Linebaugh, director of the Graduate Program in Historic Preservation at the University of Maryland’s School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, knows this from experience. So when funding came through for the historic Bostwick House in Bladensburg, Md., he got busy hiring Wagner Roofing to replace a couple problematic roofs.

Photo: PAtrick Alley (2) Bostwick House is the oldest surviving structure in the Town of Bladensburg. It is also the home to University of Maryland’s Historic Preservation Program.

The school was founded in 1911 by Louise Maret, a Swiss teacher who set out to offer young girls a French primary education. In the fall of 1952, the school purchased Woodley and its eight acres of land, after which boys were admitted to the school. Peter Sturtevant was named headmaster in 1974 and led the school for two decades. Today, Marjo Talbott is Maret’s headmaster, and the historic mansion houses the administrative offices and the library. In 1985, Sheila Wagner’s first daughter, Wendy, graduated summa cum laude and wrote Wagner Roofing Co.’s first newsletters in 1994.

“The roofs were in bad shape,” said Linebaugh, who is an associate professor at the school’s College Park campus. “They were ‘at the end of their usable life,’ as an appraiser might say. We wanted to make sure we had good roofs on all the buildings before we got started on the interiors, so we could guarantee a dry workspace inside.”

The house, built in 1746, is owned by the Town of Bladensburg, which has an agreement with the university so students and professors can use the space as a preservation training site. The school provides the town with preservation management expertise, Linebaugh serves as the project manager for the site, and a student curator lives at the house, maintaining it in a preservation-friendly manner.

“This is the first partnership that the university has had with any historic building,” said Bladensburg town clerk Pat McAuley. “It’s beneficial to the town, and it’s great for the students. This project [replacing the roofs for the site’s big barn and the kitchen wing to the main house] was one of the first big repair jobs. It’s been a long time coming.” The grant for the work on Bostwick, the oldest surviving structure in the town, came from Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development’s Community Legacy Program. The town currently has $450,000 from state and federal grants; the entire project will cost approx $1 million.

“There’s been very little done since the last owners of the house walked away,” Linebaugh said. “So you can really see the problems, which pre­sents a case where the students can get engaged in a real-life property.” In addition, the student curator, Patrick Alley, is writing his thesis on training those in the building trades to work on historic roofing.

The Bostwick House was built by Christopher Lowndes, a leading merchant who was named the commissioner of the town of Bladensburg in 1745 and appointed one of the justices of Prince George’s County in 1753. The home was left to Lowndes’ son-in-law, Benjamin Stoddert, the first Secretary of the Navy, who also built Halcyon House at 3400 Prospect St. in Georgetown in 1783 (where Wagner replaced the slate and copper roofs in 1995). Southeast of the house are several 19th-century outbuildings, along with a barn, which Wagner re-roofed. The house has been in the hands of only three families during its more than 250-year history. The property was sold to the Town of Bladensburg in the late 1990s. As funding becomes available, the entire roof of the main house will be replaced.