Wedding chapel for sale in Elkton

The 19th-century stone mansion for sale on Elkton's Main Street offers an impressive list of features: numerous bedrooms and baths, as well as six fireplaces. But there's much more: a fully appointed wedding chapel filled with decades of memories ? and even some reservations for next Valentine's Day.

Owners Frank and Barbara Smith hope a buyer will retain the chapel, the last remnant of the bustling marriage business that once defined this town on Maryland's northern border. But they also realize that the site, across the street from the Cecil County courthouse, would be a prime location for lawyers' offices.

"I am so worried we will lose this tradition, but we have to sell," said Barbara Smith, a lifelong Elkton resident, who at 80 is ready to forsake weddings. "We are the only one left, in a historic building with a historic sign out front, and our painting hangs in the Annapolis State House. We hope to find someone interested in keeping the building as a chapel."

Frank Smith, Barbara's husband of 15 years, handles the arrangements now, but he too is ready to retire. He has officiated at more than 6,000 weddings, including one when the ring bearer, a 180-pound Great Dane, stood on its hind legs, placed its front paws on his shoulders and licked his face as he led the couple through their vows.

The Smiths are asking $350,000 for the four-story building and will toss in all wedding accoutrements, even down to the dainty lace curtains with rosebud tie-backs and the overflowing silk flower arrangements.

"We will leave whatever the buyer wants: definitely the pews, altar, seasonal decorations," he said. "They could be open for business the day they settle."

About 15 chapels, including one in the back of a barbershop, once lined Main Street, and a platoon of ministers staffed them. The lack of requirements ? no waiting period, no blood tests and no witnesses ? drew celebrities and ordinary folks alike.

The famous brides and grooms include actors Cornel Wilde and Joan Fontaine, songstress Billie Holiday, John and Martha Mitchell of Watergate notoriety, evangelist and sometime presidential candidate Pat Robertson, and baseball legend Willie Mays. There's even an unconfirmed report of Babe Ruth's nuptials.

And the town's distinction spread through movies such as the Oscar-winning "Philadelphia Story," in which James Stewart beseeched Katherine Hepburn to run away with him to Elkton.

But business has waned considerably over the years.

Last week, Elaine Dunn and Michael Christopher wed in the same small chapel her mother and grandmother chose for their weddings. All three brides walked down a sweeping staircase from a spacious second-story dressing room and into the parlor that is Elkton's last wedding chapel.

As grandmother Ada Allison, who wed on Dec. 9, 1960, and mother Susan Pennock waited for the bride, they reminisced.

"Martha Raye got married here in the morning, and I followed right after her," said Allison, 96, referring to the comedian popular in the 1950s. "I don't know how long she kept her husband, but I was married 29 years."

For Pennock, a widow after 37 years of marriage, the day was bittersweet and her first time back to the chapel on Elkton's Main Street since her own wedding in 1971.

"It hasn't changed much," she said.

Sometime early last century, the then-owners of 142 East Main converted a room into a chapel with pews and an oak altar that remain today. Even when Maryland enacted a two-day waiting period between license and ceremony, elopers still chose Elkton, and it remained, in the pre-Vegas era, the marriage mecca of the East Coast.

Barbara Smith purchased the building in 1975, and Frank joined her in the business when they, too, eloped ? to Santa Barbara, Calif.

"We survived and so did Colonial Jewelers and Edward's Tuxedos," Frank Smith said. "That's about it. Now we have law offices, tattoo parlors and bail bondsmen. If we close, that's the end of the wedding business."

Not exactly the end, but definitely the demise of a more churchlike option. Just across the street, the less expensive courthouse nuptials will go on. Janice Potts, deputy clerk of the courts for nearly 30 years, registered 100 marriages in November, personally performing about 75 of them. There were 83 weddings at the courthouse on Valentine's Day, twice the number at the chapel.

"I guess we will pick up their business," Potts said. "The Smiths are good friends of mine. It is sad when any business closes."

Source: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-md-chapel-for-sale-20111228,0,5612979.story?track=rss

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