Pearre Collection

Balmuckety was the last house constructed on the Lyon property, which was a land grant from 1753. An earlier house known as "Wester Ogle" exists approximately .2 mi to the northwest, and is the residence of Mr. and Mrs. William F. Lyon. An additional structure of allied style to Wester Ogle is "Trentham" of the Cradock family, on Cradock's Lane, Owings Mills. A third house, known as "Forest View" and belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy G. Rogers, was known as the superior of the three, and was replaced by an academy building in the 1950s. The name "Balmuckety" belonging to one of the farms is an assemblage of Lyon property in Scotland. This name, along with Wester Ogle, Easter Ogle, Glen Ogle and Cossins Woods were all appropriated for the Pikesville properties. The original phone number - "Pikesville 213." At least one additional Pearre construction exists on Skipper's Row, Gibson Island, and an additional residence is located in Union Bridge, Maryland, of which Jackson Gott drawings are included in the collection.

The Pearre family retains exceptional slide documentation on the garden, and additional movie extracts of 1920-30s vintage. Its uniqueness to the Baltimore area is that it is an installation of an integrated landscape plan by a landscape architect of national renown. The garden is a direct reflection of Colonial Revival interestes which reached a high point in the 1920s, and is reflected in several aspects of social interest including gardens, homes, travel, and the motion picture industry from 1922-1929. Thomas Sears was a 1908 graduate of Harvard, which offered landscape design as a new course of study at that time. Extensive photo documentation of Sear's work is located in the Smithsonian collection of American landscape design, and a primary, surviving garden is located at Reynolda Village, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.