Anne Maureen Pomykala, who restored the Greenspring Valley’s Gramercy Mansion as a bed-and-breakfast and wedding venue, died of heart disease complications March 17 at Sinai Hospital. The Stevenson resident was 86.
Mrs. Pomykala also operated the 1840s Plaza Carrollton Inn on Albemarle Street and the Grey Rock Mansion in Pikesville.
Born in Riverdale in Prince George’s County, she was the daughter of Fred Lippert, a home builder and his wife, Agnes Meagher Lippert.
She met her future husband, Ronald Adam Pomykala, a dentist, at St. Jerome’s Church in Hyattsville. They raised their six children in Bethesda.
Mrs. Pomykala had earlier attended Georgetown University and was a graduate of Texas College of Arts & Industries while her husband served in the Navy. She became a Girl Scout leader of a large troop and ran camping, canoeing, spelunking, and rock climbing expeditions.
“My mother was an entrepreneur with optimism and enthusiasm for a project, and always had ideas on how to get things done,” said her son, Dan Pomykala.
In 1985, she and her husband bought the Koinonia Foundation property in Stevenson at a public auction. The 45-acre tract was dominated by a 1902 mansion built by Alexander J. Cassatt, Pennsylvania Railroad president and brother of the Impressionist painter, Mary Cassatt. The home was a wedding gift to Mr. Cassatt’s daughter, Eliza and her husband, W. Plunkett Stewart.
Articles described Gramercy as being lifted from an Edith Wharton novel and baronial in scale. After World War II, a group of religious leaders acquired the property as a place of rest and contemplation. They also established a commercial, organic herb garden.
Mrs. Pomykala tackled the mansion’s leaking roofs and then offered it as the 1986 Baltimore Symphony Decorators’ Show House. Under her green thumb, the herb and flower gardens became a backdrop for the mansion’s role as a wedding venue and bed-and-breakfast named Gramercy.
She was spending so much on the mansion’s restoration, she had little left for the gardens. She found she could take cuttings and successfully add boxwood and other woody plants.
“She loved forget-me-nots, hydrangeas and bluebells,” said her daughter, Cristin E. Kline. “She led weekly tours called Tuesdays with Anne.”
When the old Baltimore City Life Museum closed, she acquired the 1840s Carrolton Inn and its Fava Fruit cast-iron building near the Shot Tower. She also purchased the Grey Rock Mansion in Pikesville.
“Anne was an amazing, generous person. She was a visionary. She saw potential,” said a friend, Peggy Stansbury. “She had a passion for what Baltimore City could be. She took responsibility and had the courage to save the buildings the city government could not handle. She created nonprofits and successfully ran them as event spaces.”
She also operated Koinonia Organic Farm, founded as an early Maryland organic enterprise. A Washington Post article described her efforts as “Bed, Breakfast and Basil” for the herbs she sold to Whole Foods and other grocers.
“My mother loved gardening, from rooting boxwood cuttings from her father’s house and planting azaleas, to the rich landscapes she created with carefully arranged perennials and annuals at Gramercy,” said her son, Dan Pomykala.
