McLaughlin House

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Mill towns seldom provided taverns among their cradle-to~grave fringe benefits, and a weaver had to go off the premises for spirituous liquors. In an 1812 deed wherein the Ellicott's partitioned the family holdings around the Frederic Road bridge and the flour mills, Heil Peck's Tavern was reserved as the only place of entertainment.
Then in 1833, Charles Varle in a list of mills along the river, mentioned that McLaughlin's Tavern was opposite Atkinson's Oil Mill, which would place that watering hole somewhere above the Ellicott Slitting Mill, upriver from the bridge. Just south of the stone piers that once supported the trolley car bridge over the Patapsco River and on the east side of Oella Avenue is a stone building, now used as a tavern but shown on a deed of1854 as the Residence of Dr. David Barnum Mclaughlin." At that time, lower Della Avenue was called Race Street. A deed of 1894 shows that a Joseph G. Mclaughlin sold the property to Catherine Werner in 1894. Other deeds show that Mary McDonald acquired this property in 1913 and retained it until 1951 when it was sold to Joseph E. Katzen and Irving and Cecelia Landay. The Landay's became sole owners the following year. The building survived both the floods of 1972 and 1975 and is still in use as the Valley View inn, operated by Dan Stamathis, who was told that the building once served as a hotel.