Four years ago, the Chase-Lloyd House in Annapolis stopped doing one of the things it was most known for: housing women. The building needed substantial repairs and was no longer safe to live in, representatives for the nonprofit said at the time.

Heather East, executive director, said the porch that hangs on the south side of the structure was “pulling away” from the building. The porch also serves as a fire escape for people on the higher floors.

Currently, the porch is stabilized to prevent further damage and the fire escape can be used. However, East said the organization “[does not] want to embark on a full preservation of the home until [they] know what the use of the home is going to be,” which is currently unclear.

Since relocating the five women who previously lived there, the group’s board of directors has shifted its focus to providing rental assistance to women and their families throughout Anne Arundel County and advocating for affordable housing.

The building, on Maryland Avenue, is named after its first two owners, Samuel Chase, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and plantation owner and enslaver Edward Lloyd.

The house came into its own under Hester Chase Rideout and her two sisters who were orphaned at a young age and were descendants of Samuel Chase. Chase Rideout inherited the eight-room Georgian mansion from her aunt, Hester Anne Chase, also a descendant of the Founding Father.

Chase Rideout, who died in 1888, laid out in her will that the house would be for women to live in and be run by a board.

The house fulfilled that purpose for decades until 2020, when residents were asked to leave because the house was deemed too dangerous to live in.

Peggy Pickall, at the time president of the board, said the building needed repairs to its fire escape and wiring to be inhabitable.

Alderman Elly Tierney, a Democrat whose district includes the house, said she is concerned about the future of Chase-Lloyd, saying she wanted to know what structural impediments are preventing the house from being used as a living space.

“There is a total lack of transparency,” said Tierney, who wrote a letter to the Capital about the topic.

“What they’re doing now should be directed on how do we find money to fix this house.”

East says that they hope they will eventually allow people to live in the home again, but restrictions in Chase’s will and the building being a national landmark make that difficult.

Currently, the organization is focused on preserving some of the house’s historical architecture, including the arched Venetian window that sits at the crown of the house.

Chase’s will contains several stipulations that make finding funding for those efforts more difficult.

While the organization was able to secure a small grant from Preservation Maryland for a paint analysis, East said they had to turn down a grant for $100,000 from the Maryland Historical Trust because accepting it would require an easement to be placed on the property, something that Chase’s will prohibits.

“I am not concerned about the survival and even the eventual restoration of the building of the house. It’s a national landmark of unquestionable significance,” Carol Kelly, a former employee of the Chase-Lloyd House, said.

“We need to go back to looking at the big picture of the place, the House and the home… get that kind of symbiosis as closely to what it was as we can.”