The land on which this was built was sold by Lewis K. Herbst and his wife Mina in 1857 to The Methodist Episcopal Church. The Herbsts owned much of the surrounding land also. This building served as the Methodist Church from 1857 to 1902. At the time it was built, this was the largest building in town. It is shown on the 1899 Sanborn Insurance Map but the 1904 Sanborn Map shows it as a vacant building. However, by 1910 the building had been purchased by Stephen J. Seneca and converted into a rental apartment building, called the Seneca Apartments. One can still see where the church windows were located on the side. When restructured as apartments, a third floor was added and the rear extended. In 1934, Annie Seneca Sharp and Cyrus Clifford Sharp sold the building to Thomas and Helen Borneman—Thomas was a local contractor.

The ground floor was the location of the L&P (for Lawrence and Poplar) Grocery Store in the 1940s and 1950s, run by Ralph Lawrence and his wife Carrie, with Carrie’s brother, John Poplar. The store specialized in supplying food to the nearby Aberdeen Proving Ground and Bainbridge Naval Training Center and also delivered locally. Ermalee Hall McCauley remembers that her parents shopped at the L&P—her Mom ordered by phone and they delivered; and her Dad went there twice a month and paid their bill.

In 1950, Dr. Alvin Sirkis was named chief of the eye clinic at the Aberdeen Proving Ground when he and his wife, Fira, moved to Havre de Grace. Dr. Sirkis had an optometry office in this building in from 1958 to 1960 and died in 1971. Fira Sirkis was a founding member in the late 1950s of the Harford Jewish Center, also known as Temple Adas Shalom, near their home just north of town. And when Fira died in 2002, she had volunteered thousands of hours in helping patients at Harford Memorial Hospital.

After the deaths of Thomas and Helen Borneman, the property stayed in the Borneman family until 2016, when the late Charlotte Borneman Putland sold the rental apartment building to Eriter, LLC, of Pennsylvania.

County Records
Built 1830. 6 Units. 1830. 8,027 square foot building, multiple residence, 9,000 sq ft lot.