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For the first time in its 230-year history, Rose Hill Manor Park and Children's Museum has developed a master plan that would preserve and improve it.

Frederick County Department of Parks and Recreation owns the 43-acre park and museum located on North Market Street and adjacent to Gov. Thomas Johnson High School in Frederick.

One year ago, a committee including staff from the museum's historical council, county parks and recreation, Frederick city, TJ High and adjacent property owners began the process of crafting a master plan.

Among the preliminary master plan's proposed additions are a new visitor's center and carriage museum, native plant landscaping to screen the property from the high school, and realigning the museum's entrance road with East Street.

Several new proposed buildings— meant to add to the park's historical interpretation of agriculture in Frederick County—include a smoke house, saw mill, demonstration crop fields and slave quarters. Biking and hiking trails would also crisscross the northern acres of the park.

At the manor house on Nov. 12, the public was invited to view and comment on these proposed changes, view landscape drawings and talk to staff from county parks and recreation and Human and Rohde Inc., a Towson-based landscape architect firm that designed the master plan drawings.

Paul Dial, division director for county parks and recreation, said the county is not looking to develop the property commercially.

Rather, the master plan is intended to guide park staff in defining appropriate uses for the property and must adhere to the museum's mission of presenting the life of Thomas Johnson and the history of agriculture and transportation in Frederick County.

Most importantly, the plan must protect the manor house and respect its historical integrity, Dial added.

"It is critical to have a plan in place so that … the community, with the support of county commissioners, knows what improvements will or will not take place here," he said.

The manor house — built between 1789 and 1792— was the home of Thomas Johnson's daughter, Ann Jennings. Johnson, Maryland's first governor, purchased the land in 1778 and gave Rose Hill as a gift to his daughter on her wedding day 10 years later. Johnson later lived at Rose Hill and died there in 1819.

In 1968, the Frederick Board of County Commissioners purchased the property and established Rose Hill as the county's first park. Rose Hill Manor has been a children's museum since 1972.

Jennifer Roth, former manager of Rose Hill Manor Park, noted that some of the proposed changes and additions to the parks are maintenance specific. For example, the present carriage house museum building, which dates to the 1970s, needs a new roof and doesn't fit the current needs of the museum. Therefore, it is more cost effective to replace the building and reuse its slate flooring as the basis for a new picnic pavilion, Roth said.

"It ended up being a real culmination of people's ideas and thoughts," she said of the master plan. Roth left her position at the museum on Friday to take a new job in Gettysburg.

The master plan also calls for an outdoor children's playscape, which is a progressive idea taking hold in children's museums across the country, Roth noted.

Playscapes use as few man-made materials as possible and rely on the natural environment to stimulate children's play and imagination.

The next step in the master plan process is submitting it to the Parks and Recreation commission, which is scheduled to discuss the plan at 7 p.m., Jan. 8 at Winchester Hall in Frederick.