Brothers Elghie Pitcock (1885-1972) and John H. Pitcock (1878-1960) acquired this property from Millard E. Tydings in the 1930s when new homes were first being built in this section of town, then called Plum Lane in Bloomsbury Park. The double-lot property was once combined with the adjacent three double lots to form one city-block-size property connecting through to the property at 553-555 Giles Street. According to the late R. Madison Mitchell, the famous decoy maker, this huge parcel of land contained extremely large and prolific blooming azaleas. People would drive from miles around to view the azaleas every spring, he said.

The Pitcock family owned the Pitcock Brothers Hardware Store (now Bahoukas Antique Mall and Beer Museum) on North Union Avenue from about 1926 to 1988. In addition, Elghie Pitcock and his wife, Lela, along with four other families, started the First Christian Church of Havre de Grace, where Lela served as organist and pianist for 20 years.

In 1947, those lots were divided and the two lots of 550 Lafayette Street became home to Elghie and Lela Pitcock’s daughter, also named Lela. She married Ralph A. Mentzer, Sr. in 1943 and this was their home. After they died, the property was sold in 2001 by their two sons to Peter and Melissa Lapointe. The Lapointes completely renovated the original home in 2003.

In 2010, John and Jolene Smith purchased the property, which provided them with a custom built kitchen, an open main floor, four spacious bedrooms, four bathrooms, and a fully finished basement for their large family. They focused their energies on turning the land, once rich with azaleas, into a small vineyard. The vineyard was constructed using a Vertical Shoot Positioning trellis configuration to maximize sun exposure. Planting holes were drilled several feet deep for each of the 70 vines to provide extra drainage capacity, and were reinforced with 24,000 pounds of crushed Susquehanna River rock from the nearby Vulcan quarry.

In 2015, the Smiths opened their home to the 2015 Candlelight Tour and celebrated the vineyard’s first mature, full-production harvest with their private winery label known as Chateau Le Havre (“Castle by the Harbour”). Since 2010, the winery had produced 19 varieties of wine with grapes sourced from California, Chile and Italy as well as fruit from orchards in Maryland, Oregon, South Carolina and Georgia.

This large property was bought by James P. Boone of the Chesapeake Consulting Group and Carolyn E. Boone, his wife, in 2018.

County Records
Built 2003. 2828 sq ft, finished basement, 4 baths, 14,000 sq ft lot, attached garage.