Occupying a busy corner at Charles and North, the magnificent Parkway Theater entertained audiences in Central Baltimore for decades with everything from vaudeville and silent movies to nightly live radio productions. Although abandoned for over a decade, the Parkway Theater is poised for renewal as developers vie for the chance to remake the handsome Italian Renaissance building for new crowds of Baltimore theater-goers.
Built in 1915, the Parkway was closely modeled on London's West End Theatre, later known as the Rialto, located near Leicester Square with shared features like the interior's rich ornamental plasterwork in a Louis XIV style. The architect, Oliver Birkhead Wight, was born in Baltimore County and designed a number of theaters around the city: the New Theater (now demolished) on Lexington Street, the Howard Theater around the corner on Howard Street, and the McHenry Theater on Light Street in Federal Hill.
Originally envisioned by owner Henry Webb's Northern Amusement Company as a 1100-seat vaudeville house, the theater added a movie projector even before they opened, screening "Zaza" starring leading Broadway actress Pauline Frederick for opening night on October 23, 1915. An early account of the theater remarked, "The lights radiating from the roof of the building as well as from the brilliantly lighted entrance, make an appreciable addition to the illuminations of North avenue which is fast becoming a nightly recreational center for the residents of the northern part of the city."
Loew's Theatres Incorporated bought the business in 1926, one of the scores of theaters across the Midwest and East Coast purchased by entrepreneur Marcus Loew as he grew his Cincinnati-based chain across the country. The new owners extensively remodeled the theater and replaced the original Moller Organ (Op. 1962, II/32) with a Wurlitzer theater organ. Loew's staged a grand re-opening along with the downtown Century Theater that they acquired and re-opened at the same time as the Parkway.
During the late 1940s and early 1950s, a group produced a nightly live radio program at the Parkway entitled "Nocturne" featuring poetry readings interspersed with musical selections on the organ. Morris Mechanic, a local theater operator who opened the Center Theater down the street in 1939, purchased the Parkway and closed the doors in 1952. Many thought that this might be the end of the Parkway, by then one of the oldest theaters in Baltimore City, and Morris Mechanic suggested that the building might be turned into offices.
Fortunately, the theater changed hands a few more times, spending a season or two as a live theater, before finally reopening with a new name â "5 West" â in 1956. With an eclectic mix of old movies, foreign films, and live performances, 5 West continued through the mid-1970s when it closed for good. Despite a handful of attempts to reuse the building in the 1980s and 1990s, the Parkway was closed from 1998 through 2017. In 2017, the Parkway reopened as The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Parkwayâa complex of three theaters and the headquarters for the Maryland Film Festival.
Rogers Buchanan Cemetery is hardly famous. Few visitors to the park even know where the cemetery is. Fewer still know the surprising stories of the men and women interred behind the wrought iron fence. But for those who know the history, the cemetery is at the heart of the history of Druid Hill Park as the final home to the family that built Auchentrolie as a country estate and sold it to the city in 1860 establishing in park. The earliest burial in the small plot belongs to the man who first created AuchentrolieâGeorge Buchanan. George Buchanan immigrated from Scotland in 1723 and became one of the cityâs founding Commissioners in 1729. Through his marriage to Eleanor Rogers, George acquired 250 acres of the whimsically named âHab Nab at a Ventureâ that his father-in-law Nicholas Rogers II purchased in 1716. Still not content, George Buchanan expanded to property to 625 acres and named it âAuchentrolieâ After his death in 1750, he was buried in the small family plot and left the estate to his son Lloyd Buchanan. Lloyd, his children, and his grandchildren all lived on the estate and were buried in the cemetery, among them a Revolutionary War veteran who served at Valley Forge with George Washington, a Confederate spy and saboteur, and a cantankerous slave-owner who created the âDruid Hill Peach.â When Druid Hill Park was sold to Baltimore for a park in 1860, Lloyd Rogers made only one stipulationâthat any living members of his family could be buried at their cemetery in Druid Hill and that the city would maintain the cemetery in perpetuity.
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In 1872 Baltimoreâs historic Sharp Street Memorial United Methodist Church purchased land in Southwest Baltimore to establish a place for Black families to bury their dead. Today it is called Mount Auburn Cemetery. Covering approximately 32 acres, it was originally named âThe City of the Dead for Colored People.â It is the oldest Black cemetery in Baltimore. It is on the National Register of Historic Places and is designated a historic landmark by Baltimore City. Mount Auburn has the interred remains of over 55,000 people, including community leaders, formerly enslaved people, and Black Civil War veterans. It is owned and operated by the Sharp Street Memorial United Methodist Church.
Its many famous occupants are too numerous to list here, but a few stand out. For example, there lie the remains of the boxer Joe Gans (1874-1910), the first African-American to win a world boxing championship and a lightweight boxing title. He is considered by many to be the greatest lightweight boxer of the 20th century. He was also the inspiration for an early short story by Ernest Hemingway called âA Matter of Color.â
John Henry Murphy (1840-1922) is also buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery. He was born into slavery in Baltimore and became free at the age of 24. After fighting in the Union Army in the Civil War, Murphy became active in education for African-American children. In 1892 he founded the Afro-American newspaper, which became the largest Black newspaper on the East Coast by the time of his death in 1922. In 2022, the Baltimore Afro-American is still published weekly. It is the longest running family-owned African-American newspaper in the United States.
Also interred at Mount Auburn is Lillie May Carroll Jackson (1889-1975), who is known as the mother of the Civil Rights Movement. In the 1930s she ran multiple grassroots campaigns to end racial segregation, boycott racist businesses, register Black voters, equalize pay between Black and white teachers, and to pass Baltimoreâs Fair Employment Practices law. She headed the Baltimore NAACP Chapter from 1935 to 1970.
Over the 150 years of its existence, the cemetery has often fallen into disrepair and has been the scene of gruesome situations. In 1918, 175 Black victims of the Spanish Flu epidemic lay unburied on its grounds for weeks as the usual laborers refused to bury them. The Mayor had to call in soldiers from Camp Meade to bury the bodies using army trucks and trenching machines. In 1930, the Afro-American reported that grave diggers working on the site accidentally unearthed skulls, bones, and caskets of the dead. Although it remained a popular burial ground, it has in recent decades again become dilapidated.
The cost of maintaining the graveyard is $25,000 a year. In 2012, Mount Auburn was cleaned up and rededicated by the State of Maryland with funding from the Abell Foundation, and with much of the work done by 40 state prison inmates. In recent years the âResurrecting Mount Auburn Cemeteryâ project has documented the names of 55,000 buried there and continues to work on identifying gravesites.
The research and writing of this article was funded by two grants: one from the Maryland Heritage Areas Authority and one from the Baltimore National Heritage Area.
In 1939 sociologist, activist, author, and cofounder of the NAACP, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois, had a house built at 2302 Montebello Terrace in the neighborhood of Morgan Park. Barred from many neighborhoods by Jim Crow laws and redlining, Black people could build and own their homes in Morgan Park, a few blocks away from Morgan State University (which was called Morgan College until 1975). Other notable residents of the neighborhood included the musical giants Eubie Blake and Cab Calloway, and the founder of the Afro-American newspapers, Carl Murphy. According to Murphyâs daughter, he and Du Bois would discuss civil rights on walks around the neighborhood. Du Boisâ house was designated as a Baltimore Landmark by the City Council in 2008.
W.E.B. Du Bois was arguably the most important Black scholar, author, and activist of the first half of the 20th century. He was born in 1868, just three years after the end of the Civil War, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, the son of a working class Haitian father and a Black American mother. The first Black graduate of his high school, Du Bois received his first undergraduate degree from Fisk University. He completed his studies at Harvard University, where he became the first Black student to earn a PhD. He then taught at several universities including Wilberforce University and the University of Pennsylvania. In 1899 he published a groundbreaking study of African Americans in Philadelphia, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study. During his tenure at Atlanta University, his young son died after Du Bois spent the night looking for one of the three Black doctors, as no white doctor in the city would treat the sick child.
In 1903 he published The Souls of Black Folk, a pioneering work in sociology and African-American literature. The same year, Du Bois wrote his influential essay, "The Talented Tenth," in which he argued for the development of a small group of educated Black people, as well as agitation and protest, as the path to racial equality. In 1905 he helped organize the Niagara Movement, a civil rights group that demanded political and social equality for Black Americans, and was a forerunner of the NAACP. The group split in 1908, partially due to disagreements about accepting women members, which Du Bois supported. In 1909 he retired from teaching to co-found the NAACP, and edit its magazine, The Crisis. Du Bois was active in the NAACP until 1948 when he left over ideological differences.
Du Bois lived in the two-story white shingle home with a detached garage from 1939 until the death of his first wife, Nina, in 1950. They moved to Baltimore to be closer to their daughter, Yolande, a city school teacher. While living in Baltimore, Du Bois wrote Dusk of Dawn (1940), Color and Democracy (1945), and The World and Africa (1947). During this period Dr. Du Bois also maintained a home in New York City.
Du Bois continued his political activism through the Pan-African, anti-colonial, and peace movements. Although not a member of the Communist Party at the time, he had socialist ideals, and worked with organizations and individuals connected to it. This resulted in punitive measures by the U.S. Departments of Justice and State, which revoked his passport from 1952 until 1958. Increasingly disillusioned with the United States, he moved to Ghana to work on the . He officially joined the Communist Party in 1961. Du Bois died in 1963, at the age of 95, in Ghana. His daughter, Yolande Du Bois Williams taught in Baltimore City Public Schools, including Paul Laurence Dunbar and Booker T. Washington High Schools, for forty years. When she died in 1961, her funeral was held at Morgan Christian Center at Morgan College, just blocks away from her parentsâ former home on Montebello Terrace.
The research and writing of this article was funded by two grants: one from the Maryland Heritage Areas Authority and one from the Baltimore National Heritage Area.Ìę
Tiny Bedford Square in Guilford, at the intersection of St. Paul and North Charles streets, hosts a life size bronze bust of SimĂłn Bolivar. Also referred to as the âGeorge Washington of South America,â the Venezuelan-born Bolivar was the military and political leader of the revolutions against Spanish colonial rule across the continent in the early 19th century. The bust sits on a limestone pedestal, with the words âSimĂłn Bolivar, 1783-1830, Liberator of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Boliviaâ carved on the front. On the back it reads, âPresented to the Citizens of Baltimore by the Government of Venezuela, April 19, 1961.â
Guilford is a neighborhood known for its large houses and tree lined, curving streets, not for its political monuments. Built by the Roland Park Company, the houses are stone and brick in Neoclassical and Colonial Revival styles. The noted American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. designed its streets and parks. It opened in 1913, and, like the nearby neighborhoods of Roland Park and Homeland, included a racial covenant preventing African Americans from owning homes within its borders, which was overturned in 1948.
The Bolivar bust was created by the Austrian-American sculptor Felix de Weldon. He is best known for his work on the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Virginia, which shows soldiers raising the American flag at Iwo Jima in 1945. Throughout the 20th century Venezuela gave statues and busts of Bolivar to a number of American cities, including New York, Washington D.C., New Orleans, Bolivar (West Virginia), and Bolivar (Missouri).
In April 1959 President Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke at the reception of a bronze equestrian statue of Bolivar in Washington D.C., making reference to the recent democratic election of President RĂłmulo Betancourt after over a decade of military dictatorship. He declared, âThe Venezuelan people have steadfastly maintained their faith in the ultimate realization of Bolivarâs democratic ideals. It is therefore fitting that this ceremony should follow closely upon the inauguration of President Betancourt, chosen by his countrymen in an election so conducted as to typify the true meaning of democracy.â
The symbolic value of these gifts held extra resonance during the Cold War. The United States was concerned with suppressing communist movements in Latin America, especially after the 1959 Cuban revolution established the first communist state in the region. Oil companies were anxious for influence and continued access to oil rich Latin American nations like Venezuela. By 1961 relations between the United States and Latin America were at a low point and discontent, inequality, and violence was growing. In response, the newly inaugurated President John F. Kennedy proposed the âAlliance for Progress,â a ten-year, multibillion-dollar aid program for the region.
A few months after the proposal, and just two days after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, a small ceremony took place in Bedford Square to unveil this bust. Baltimore Mayor J. Harold Grady accepted the gift from the Venezuelan ambassador on a windy and rainy April 19th, Venezuelan Independence Day. Dr. Frank Marino, president of the Park Board (the predecessor to The Department of Parks and Recreation) seemed to reference the tensions with Cuba at the time, saying âIt is very appropriate that the Ambassadorâs remarks should come at this time in our history.â Chosen because it had space for the statue, for a few minutes in 1961 little Bedford Park in Baltimore reflected the drama of the greatest geopolitical forces of the time.
with research support from The research and writing of this article was funded by two grants: one from the Maryland Heritage Areas Authority and one from the Baltimore National Heritage Area.
Amidst the grand old houses, some vacant and in disrepair, and important civil rights historic sites in Historic Marble Hill in West Baltimore sits the Henry Highland Garnet Neighborhood Park. It is a leafy green space, with flowers, trees, giant urns, winding paths, and park benches. Plaques to a variety of local leaders are spread throughout. The park, in the Baltimore National Heritage Area, is named for militant abolitionist and minister, Henry Highland Garnet. Garnet was born into slavery on Marylandâs Eastern Shore in 1815. He and his family escaped via the Underground Railroad to New York City when he was 9 years old. Although they escaped to a northern state, slave catchers threatened his family. Garnet spent time working on ships and attended several schools established by abolitionists. He became a Presbyterian minister. In 1840 he helped found the . He was known for his captivating and radical speeches encouraging armed uprisings among the enslaved. During the Civil War he helped recruit Black soldiers for the Union Army, and narrowly escaped a white mob during the . On February 12, 1865 he was the first African American to address the United States House of Representatives, encouraging them to adopt the 13th Amendment with a sermon entitled â.â After the end of the war, he continued to work against slavery in Cuba and Brazil. Although he had first been critical of Liberia, a colony in Africa for Black Americans, toward the end of his life he supported Black emigration.Ìę In December 1881 President James Garfield appointedÌę him Ambassador to Liberia, and he died there a few months later on February 13, 1882. The large historical marker at one of the entrances to the park quotes Garnetâs ââ also known as the âCall to Rebellion,â which he gave to the National Negro Convention in 1843:
Brethren, arise, arise! Strike for your lives and liberties. Now is the day and the hour. Let every slave throughout the land do this, and the days of slavery are numbered. You cannot be more oppressed than you have beenâyou cannot suffer greater cruelties than you have already. Rather die free men than live to be slaves. Remember that you are four million!In the audience was fellow former Marylander, Frederick Douglass. The address was considered too radical to distribute,but other abolitionists, including John Brown, funded its publication. In 1969, the Henry Highland Garnet Council, which was made up of 36 block organizations,Ìę established the park on the site of a former school.Ìę Robert Harding, a MICA professor, designed the park and Lena Boone, president of the Council, coordinated the work. The Neighborhood Improvement Program (a federally funded program of the Department of Labor) provided the labor for the creation of the park. The Baltimore City Department of Public Works furnished the walkways and plumbing for the fountain and the Department of Recreation and Parks provided $15,000 for materials. The construction company, Potts and Callahan (still operating today) donated fill dirt for the landscaping. Over the decades the park fell into disrepair. In 2016 the park was renovated by the Marble Hill Community Association. Since 2018 it has been maintained by Friends of Henry Highland Garnet Park. In 2021 volunteers planted a rose walk and installed a bronze plaque (sponsored by the Baltimore National Heritage Area and Union Baptist Church) to honor Juanita Jackson Mitchell and Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr. The Mitchells were important civil rights activists who lived and worked in the neighborhood, and who had entertained Jackie Robinson, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Lady Bird Johnson in their rose garden. A community composting program currently provides fertilizer for the gardens, continuing the tradition of neighborhood care for, and pride in, the park.
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The handsome Victorian on Elkridgeâs Main Street now known as the Brumbaugh House was built around 1870 and began serving as a doctor's office in the nineteenth century. The homeâs most famous resident, Dr. Benjamin Bruce Brumbaugh, started his own sixty-year-long career working and living at the house in 1919. Dr. Brumbaugh served thousands of Elkridge residents over the decades and the house continues to tell his story today. Since 1985, the Elkridge Heritage Society has operated the house as a small museum to share the long history of medical care in their community. Born on Marylandâs Eastern Shore, Brumbaugh graduated from the University of Maryland Medical School with degrees in both pharmacy and medicine. When the United States entered World War I, Brumbaugh enlisted as a doctor for the U.S. Army. He was stationed at Fort Meade in Anne Arundel County where three infantry divisions trained before deployment to Europe. Brumbaugh tended to many of the 400,000 servicemen who passed through Fort Meade during the war. After his discharge the military at the warâs end in 1918, a former advisor from the University of Maryland shared the news that Elkridge needed a temporary doctor. The townâs regular practitioner Dr. Ericson had suffered a stroke and was unable to work. When his predecessor passed away two months later, Dr. Brumbaugh took over the practice permanently. For nearly fifty years, Brumbaugh worked alongside his wife, Miriam Smith, who was herself a doctorâs daughter up until her death in 1958. Over much of that time, Dr. Brumbaugh charged just $2 for an office visit or â$3 for a house call. Over the years, Dr. Brumbaugh (or Dr. B as many of his patients called him) became something of a local celebrity with an office full of patients from the early morning to late evening. He did not raised his fees until 1969âbut then it only went up by a dollar. In a 1970 Sun interview, Brumbaugh explained:
âIâd rather treat them for free of charge than have them think Iâm overcharging. I was never out for the almighty dollar. I work just to keep alive, not for what I can get out of it.âThat same year, the community recognized his fifty years of service to the Elkridge community. Nearly four hundred neighbors and long-time patients pooled $3,900 in donations to buy the doctor a brand-new Mercury sedan. Howard County even changed the name of a road off Main Street to Brumbaugh Street in his honor. Dr. Brumbaugh served three generations of Elkridge residents and continued working until he was ninety years old. By one residentâs estimation, he brought âthousandsâ of Elkridge babies into the world. Dr. Brumbaugh never kept count but reportedly delivered ten children for one family alone. There are many area residents who still proudly call themselves âBrumbaugh Babies.â The year after Dr. Brumbaughâs death in 1985, the Elkridge Heritage Society and local Rotary Club bought the home to preserve the doctorâs office and waiting room. A group of volunteer residents helped turn the second floor into an apartment to help pay the mortgage on the new local history museum. Fortunately, their efforts have preserved Doctor Bâs story for residents and visitors to continue to appreciate today.
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In April 1942, less than six months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, a group of Elkridge residents established a new volunteer fire department. The new fire department was one of many initiatives in U.S. cities and towns encouraged by the Office of Civilian Defense at the outset of World War II. Elkridge residents worried that their townâs location between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, as well as the townâs proximity to several wartime industrial sites, made them a possible target for an aerial bombardment. The founding of the department was a grassroots effort from the beginning. A group of local women led the initial fundraising campaign. The B&O Railroad Company donated the fire bell. Using second-hand parts and donated equipment, volunteers took a dilapidated 1934 Brockway Ford (dilapidated from years sitting idle in a cow pasture) and transformed it into a fully operational fire truck for just $500. Operating out of a one-bay garage in a former Ford Automobile dealership, the first few road tests for the new truck did not go smoothly. A tire blew out on the first trip and the engine dropped a rod on its second trip. Nonetheless, the volunteers managed to get the truck fully operational just seven months after the formation of the department. The volunteers named the truck âDaisy.â The Federal Civilian Defense Organization officially recognized the department as part of national preparedness and declared Daisy the âbest homemade fire truck in America.â The volunteersâ efforts were even dramatized and broadcast live on a national NBC radio show. It was a challenge to fully staff the department during World War II because so many local men were fighting overseas. To compensate, the department struck a deal with the local high school. The school agreed to allow the older boys who maintained at least a C grade average to skip class in order to help fight fires. While only men and boys were allowed to fight fires, women volunteered as dispatchers during the departmentâs first few years. Women volunteered on the ambulance from the beginning and, in the early 1970s, the department changed policies to allow women to enlist as firefighters as well. The original building underwent several renovations over the last seventy-five years. The fire hall on Old Washington Road was renovated and expanded in 1948. Today, the Elkridge V.F.D. operates out of a new, larger location, built to accommodate the growing needs of the community. Built in 2014, the new facility on Rowanberry Drive encompasses more than thirty-five thousand square feet, houses twenty-three firefightersâboth paid and volunteerâand cost more than sixteen million dollars. The departmentâs original building is currently being repurposed as a community center.
The Maryland School for the Blind (MSB) was established in 1853. Formal education for blind people in the U.S. and western Europe was still a relatively recent invention. In 1765, Henry Dannett established the first school with this mission in Liverpool, England. The first school in the United States to follow this model was the New England Asylum for the Blind, now known as the Perkins School For the Blind, established in March 1829. In Maryland, the new school was established thanks to the efforts of David E. Loughery, a graduate of the Pennsylvania Institution for the Instruction of the Blind, and Washington County native Benjamin F. Newcomer, a wealthy industrialist and philanthropist. Together, they were able to generate enough interest in creating a school for the blind that the Maryland General Assembly incorporated the school in 1853. David Loughery was appointed the schoolâs first superintendent. Frederick Douglas Morrison, a national leader in his profession, began his forty-year tenure as superintendent in 1864. He had a lasting impact on the school for several reasons. He was instrumental in the founding of the American Association of Instructors of the Blind; he moved the campus to North Avenue in 1868; and officially changed the name to The Maryland School for the Blind. He also founded The Maryland School for the Colored Blind and Deaf in 1872 and served as the superintendent of both schools. The practice of segregated education for black blind and deaf students continued up until 1956. John Frances Bledsoe became superintendent in 1906 and two years later relocated the school in 1908 to the present campus in northeast Baltimore. During his thirty-seven years at the helm of the school, Dr. Bledsoe oversaw its expansion and professionalization. It was during this period when the school began its residential program with the construction of four cottages and Newcomer Hall. The latter was named for Benjamin F. Newcomer who was one of the founders of the school and who served on the board of directors for over forty years.
Today, Roosevelt Park is a quiet, green space with mature trees, playing fields, gardens, a recreation center, and a community skate park. The park dates back to the late nineteenth century when it was known as West Park. In 1920, a year after it was incorporated into the Baltimore City Recreation and Parks system, the site was rededicated as Roosevelt Park.
A large part of the park was for many years completely under water and served as an important reservoir for North Baltimore. When the Jones Falls Expressway was built during the 1960s and 1970s, the extra dirt was used to fill in the reservoir. Initially the city planned to turn the filled in reservoir into a department of Aviation heliport, but public outcry forced them to retract the project.
In 1997, it was rumored that Mayor Kurt Schmoke planned to sell the eighteen acre Roosevelt Park to developers to build luxury condominiums and turn the recreation centerâan important community meeting space for residents since 1911âinto a PAL (Police Athletic League). The mayor himself would not comment on the plan, but many Hampden residents were nevertheless worried about the future of the park and its aging recreation center.
In response, Hampden resident Allen Hicks founded a community action group called the Friends of Roosevelt Park (FRP). During a media event in 2001, more than 500 Hampden residents held hands in a giant circle around the park, protesting the cityâs intentions. Additionally, the FRP gathered 1,000 signatures for a petition and reached out to the 42nd Maryland District representatives for assistance in the campaign. Additionally, the Knott Foundation provided the initial funding for a monthly newsletter.
Over the next several years the Friends of Roosevelt Park held many public meetings to determine what the people liked and did not like about Roosevelt Park. They also met with city officials, budget experts, outside consultants and the Baltimore Development Corporations (through its participation in the Baltimore Main Street program). These meetings led to the creation of a master plan for Roosevelt Park in 2003, including expanded public gardens, new playing fields, a skate park, a $700,000 renovation of the Roosevelt Park recreation center, a $2 million swimming pool complex, $100,000 for a new childrenâs playground, and a $500,000 bond issue on the election ballot.
Dedicated in 1901, the Richard Wagner Bust was donated to the city by the United Singers of Baltimore who received the monument as the first prize trophy for the annual SĂ€ngerfeste choral competition.
The Wagner Bust is as German as any statute could be. Cast in bronze, mounted on a granite base, and situated on the lawn of the Rogers-Buchanan Mansion, the bust of German composer Richard Wagner was created by a German-born sculptor R.P. Golde based on a portrait by German painter Franz van Lenbach. Though the bust may seem out of place for visitors to Druid Hill Park today, the placement made perfect sense when the sculpture was created.
R.P. Golde was commissioned to create the bust as the first prize for SĂ€ngerfeste, an annual choral competition held that year in Brooklyn, New York, with five thousand performers attending. The United Singers of Baltimore won with their performance of D. Melametâs âScheidenâ (âPartingâ). The Singers, who believed that their victory and prize would add to Baltimoreâs glory and beauty, donated the Wagner Bust to Druid Hill Park. The bustâs dedication ceremony was a grand affair. Thirty thousand spectators gathered in attendance on October 6, 1901, to watch L.H. Wieman, an agent representing the Baltimore branch of a national, Minneapolis-based flour company, present the bust to the City of Baltimore on behalf of the United Singers. The crowd watched as the Wagner Bust, draped in German and American flags and the singing societiesâ banners, was unveiled. The ceremony and the bustâs placement on the mansion lawn served as an expression of Baltimoreâs pride in its singers and the German immigrants pride in their heritage and their talent.
Baltimore was home to over forty thousand German immigrants at the start of the twentieth century. Monuments to German artists, philosophers, politicians, musicians, poets, and composers decorate the landscape of many major American cities. Memorials of composers were particularly popular in the era of immigrant monument-building, partly due to the importance of singing clubs in German-American communities.
The Wagner Bust points to the popularity of singing clubs in Baltimore, as does another sculpture by R.P. Golde, that of the composer Conradin Keutzer, located in Patterson Park and also won by the United Singers of Baltimore at the 1915 SĂ€ngerfeste.
The Grove of Remembrance Pavilion has stood nestled amongst the trees on Beechwood Drive near the Maryland Zoo for nearly a century. Designed by architect E.L. Palmer, the rustic pavilionâs placement within the Grove of Remembrance is fitting. The grove was planted on October 8, 1919 to honor those who had died in World War I and the pavilion is a monument to First Lieutenant Merrill Rosenfeld, a prominent Baltimore attorney, killed while serving in the military during World War I. Lieutenant Rosenfeld was born in Baltimore in 1883 as the eldest son of Israel Rosenfeld and Rebecca Rosenfeld, nĂ©e Stern, second generation German Jewish immigrants. Israel Rosenfeld owned a successful clothing retail business and achieved the rank of colonel serving as an aid-de-camp to Governor John Walter Smith. Merrill Rosenfeld was much like his father. He graduated from the Johns Hopkins University in 1904 and joined the Maryland Bar in 1906. He fought during the Mexican Revolution of 1910, earning the rank of top sergeant, and joined the 115th Infantry Regiment, 29th Infantry Division during World War I. Having attained the rank of first lieutenant, he was leading his men during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive when he died October 16, 1918. The U.S. government recognized his sacrifice by awarding him with a Distinguished Service Cross for âextraordinary heroismâ and praised him for his âdisplayâŠ[of] the greatest bravery and heroismâ before his death. He received further honors in 1919 when the Court of Appeals commissioned architects J.B. Noel Wyatt and William Nolting to build a bronze memorial honoring him and five other Baltimore attorneys who had died in the war and in 1921, when the Maryland Bar Association commissioned a similar memorial. When Israel Rosenfeld died on October 10, 1925, he left $10,000 for the pavilionâs construction in Druid Hill Park. Baltimore was a city with a history of tolerance towards the Jews, particularly those of German heritage, in the early 1900s. The Rosenfelds had thrived in this environment, and Israel wanted to ensure that Baltimoreans would remember his late sonâs military achievements and sacrifice for years to come.
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Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Karl Shapiro was a true Baltimorean. As a young man in the 1920s and 1930s, Shapiro fed his literary ambitions with the city's rich cultural history; for instance, writing love poems at Fort McHenry where Francis Scott Key was inspired to pen the Star-Spangled Banner. In 1939, Shapiro enrolled in the Enoch Pratt Library School at the library's central branch, an experience that would greatly influence his life and his writing.
Shapiro later expressed his gratitude to Enoch Pratt Free Library, by capturing it in the lines:
"Voltaire would weep for joy, Plato would stare.
What is it, easier than a church to enter,
Politer than a department store, this center,
That like Grand Central leads to everywhere?"
Open to all Baltimoreans since its 1894 founding, the city's first non-segregated cultural institution does indeed "lead to everywhere," thanks to the library's numerous resources and founder Enoch Pratt's firm belief in inclusiveness. The architecture of the 1933 Central Branch building exemplifies Pratt's philosophy. Designed to mirror a department store, library patrons, not just librarians, could access the books, and large exhibit windows advertised library news to passersby. Following Pratt's requirements, the building's entrance remained without stairs for the convenience of women pushing strollers. This revolutionary design went on to inspire library architecture nationwide.
Shapiro enjoyed studying to be a librarian; however, World War II intervened. "I couldn't take the final exam because I was drafted," Shapiro explained. "Because of my background of two years of college...they put me in the company headquarters office and gave me a typewriter." As the company clerk, Shapiro was never far from writing materials and had "endless amounts of empty time"â-everything a poet needs. He wrote prodigiously, sending his poems stateside to his Baltimorean fiancĂ©e, Evalyn Katz, who then published them.
Although 9,000 miles from home, the Pratt Library was never far from Shapiro's mind. He frequently wrote to his former colleagues, signing his letters with "Very best wishes to you and the Library." Meanwhile, the library also contributed to the war effort, housing various headquarters and providing basement air-raid shelters.
When the war ended in 1945, the library returned to business as usual, but Shapiro did not. Having left America only a student, he returned home an established poet. Shapiro published four books and received several prizes including the Pulitzer Prize during the war. Assuming a radically different life than the one he had left, Shapiro taught at several universities, and describes his role as "not really a professor, but a sort of mad guest." He also worked as the Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress, a position known today as the Poet Laureate; edited poetry magazines; and of course, wrote poetry. All the while, Shapiro embodied the philosophy of Enoch Pratt, relentlessly fighting against prejudice and injustices both in his poetry and with his actions, until his death in 2000.
Heralded as "the greatest writer of our time" by philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, John Dos Passos spent time in and out of Baltimore from his birth in 1896 and lived here from 1950 until his death in 1970. An acclaimed biographer and novelist, Dos Passos is best remembered for his experimental writing style, often emulating the techniques of the camera and the newsreel, particularly in his trilogy of novels, U.S.A.
While Sartre called him "the greatest," Baltimoreans just called him "John." Dos Passos worked in the George Peabody Library as well as the Enoch Pratt Free Library and Johns Hopkins University Library almost daily during his time in Baltimore. Although Dos Passos once described his ideal working conditions as only, "a room without any particular interruptions," the George Peabody Library is majesticâparticularly the reading room, which has been called "the setting of a bibliophile's dream," and "the most beautiful room in Baltimore."
The library was a gift from entrepreneur George Peabody to the people of Baltimore for their kindness and hospitality, and remains free and open to the public as part of the Sheridan Libraries Special Collections at Johns Hopkins University. In the reading room, one can find the library's collection of more than 300,000 volumes housed in five tiers of ornamental cast-iron balconies that stretch from the marble floor to skylights 61 feet above. There too, one could find John Dos Passos.
Bald and bespectacled, Dos Passos hunched over his desk researching American culture and writing his own works. Often confused for a librarian, he helped library visitors locate books in the card catalog, understand antiquated text, and complete research papers.
Although Dos Passos never wrote a book set in Baltimore, the city provided the author with more than just rooms in which to work. Baltimore helped pique Dos Passos' literary interest. The author recalled as a boy, "I would hide in the shadows so that I wouldn't be sent off to bed. I'd listen till my ears would burst" to stories of old storytellers and watermen, stories in which Baltimore "was the center." Shortly before his death, he described Baltimore as a city that "imbues the inhabitants with a certain dignity" where "neighborhoods had a special flavor."
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A novelist, playwright, poet, and essayist, Gertrude Stein is remembered as a literary innovator who fearlessly experimented with language in the early twentieth century. Today, Gertrude Stein is still renowned as a magnet for those who would profoundly change art and literature. In 1892, at age 18, newly-orphaned Gertrude and her brother Leo moved to Baltimore. Her experiences in Baltimore paved the way for her later successes, as she wrote in her biting 1925 piece "Business in Baltimore": "Once upon a time, Baltimore was necessary." The siblings lived briefly with their Aunt Fanny Bachrach in Baltimore before moving to Massachusetts for college. In 1897, the duo truly settled in Baltimore, living at 215 East Biddle Street, marked by the traditional Baltimorean marble front steps. The unique environment of Mount Vernon introduced Stein to a variety of people and perspectives that would influence both her literature and her life. The Steins' five-bedroom rowhome was luxurious, dictating a certain lifestyle. Like their neighbors, the Steins kept servants. Through her familiarity with the neighborhood servants, who generally were African American women, along with her experience caring for African American patients during clinical rotations, Gertrude developed an understanding of "black language rhythms" and a knack for reaistic characterization of African Americans, both of which later appeared in her writing. Like their servants, Biddle Street residents also influenced Stein. The gossip that filled the parlors of Biddle Street and the affairs that occurred in the bedrooms above reappeared in several of Stein's works. For instance, Wallis Simpson of 212 East Biddle Street, future Duchess of Windsor, inspired Ida, while Stein's own relationship with May Bookstaver and the ensuing love triangle created by Bookstaver's lover, Mabel Haynes, provided the plot for the novel Q.E.D.Ìęas well as the story "Melanctha." Life in Baltimore influenced more than just Stein's literature. Her experiences, particularly while studying medicine at Johns Hopkins University, prompted her lifelong habit of challenging societal standards. She learned to smoke cigars, confronted sexist professors (thereby earning the nickname "old battle ax"), took up boxing, rejected feminine stereotypes and instead "went flopping around...big and floppy and sandaled and not caring a damn," as one male classmate remembered. Stein left Baltimore in 1903 after leaving Hopkins following her third year of medical school. However, despite her 39-year absence, Stein claimed Baltimore as her "place of domicile" in her will, as, in her words, she was "born longer [in Baltimore] because after all everybody has to come from somewhere."
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In 1934, Carl Sandburg wrote to Sally Bruce Kinsolving, "The years go by and I don't forget ever the long evening of song with you... at your house and faces and stories and moments out of that visit to Baltimore. I'm hoping to drop in again soon."
On the night of Sandburg's February 1924 visit, like many other nights, the Kinsolving home, Old St. Paul's Rectory, became a sanctuary for poets and poetry lovers alike. As co-founder of the Maryland Poetry Society, Mrs. Kinsolving frequently welcomed a variety of acclaimed poets into her home, allowing members of the society to meet their literary idols. Carl Sandburg, a three-time Pulitzer-prize winner, poet, biographer, historian, journalist, novelist and musicologist, was just one of Mrs. Kinsolving's illustrious guests. Although he visited Baltimore only once or twice, Sandburg and Mrs. Kinsolving maintained a lifelong relationship through correspondence, encouraging each other in their work and exchanging poems and folk songs.
Old St. Paul's Church built the Georgian-style rectory, where Sandburg and the Kinsolvings spent the evening, as a home for the rector in 1791. Once standing at the northern edge of the city with a spectacular view of the harbor, the Old St. Paul's Church and Rectory is a testament to the growth of Baltimoreânow located within the heart of central Baltimore, surrounded by contemporary development and its view of the harbor obscured long ago.
Described by H.L. Mencken as "indubitably American in every pulse-beat," Sandburg was born in Illinois in 1878. He quit school at age thirteen, and then worked a variety of odd jobs ranging from a farmhand to a traveling salesman to a milkman to a barber. He traversed the United States as a hobo and served as a soldier in the Spanish-American War in 1898. Through these experiences, Sandburg truly saw the United States, later capturing it both in his own writing and by anthologizing the folk songs he encountered. Sandburg's love of America did not blind him to its problems and he fought passionately against a variety of social injustices.
Sandburg was never a Baltimorean, but was inextricably tied to Chicago, working at the Chicago Daily News and praising the developing industrial city in his workânotably in Chicago Poems. However, his friends in Baltimore were never far from his mind, and their letters never far from his mail box, proving what he'd once written to Mrs. Kinsolving, that "the prairies and Chesapeake Bay are neighbors now."
The Highfield House is an outstanding example of International Style architecture totaling 265,800 square feet in fifteen stories. The Highfield House apartment building was designed by Architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and was constructed by the Chicago-based development company, Metropolitan Structures, Inc. between 1962 and 1964. Highfield House is one of only two buildings in Baltimore designed by Mies.
The building is a free-standing high rise slab set on a platform and the main facade faces east. Although the structure has a commanding presence, the siting and design also create a suburban-feeling environment for the residents and the surrounding residential neighborhoods of Guilford and Tuscany-Canterbury. Architect Mies van der Rohe applied a unique structural solution by allowing the brick skin of the building to become an infill between the visible columns and floor beams. The building adopts a very simple outline design: a rectangular eleven bay by three bay block. The east (front) façade and west elevation are the long (eleven bays) side of this rectangle, while the north and south elevations are its short sides (three bays).
Mies was known for the principles of high-rise "skin and bone" design that were applied to the Highfield House, but he also made minor departures from previous designs to integrate the structure better with its surroundings. Mies utilized the existing site conditions, including the topography, to create sheltered courtyard-style recreation spaces for the residents and for the parking garage to be concealed from Charles Street.
In 1979, the building was converted to condominiumsâshifting ownership responsibilities from developers to private owners. Building management offered tenants the first opportunity to purchase their unit before putting them on the market. They sold over 70 percent of the 165 units to tenants in the first ten weeksâmaking it the one of the most successful condo conversions in Baltimore at the time.
In 2007, the National Park Service listed the Highfield House to the National Register of Historic Places. Only 43 years old at the time, Highfield House defied the convention of only listing buildings older than 50 years recognizing the significance of the building to the history of modernism in Baltimore.
This church is the oldest in the Upper Fells Point Historic District, completed in 1848. Originally dedicated as a âmarinerâs church,â it has been home to several community institutions over the past 170+ years.
South Broadway Baptist Church is the present-day name belonging to the oldest congregation established by Lumbee Indians in Baltimore City. The congregationâs first meetings are recorded as having taken place in 1952, but services were held in different Lumbee homes and rented storefronts until 1967, when the congregation purchased its first building at 1117 W. Cross Street, and adopted the name West Cross Street Baptist Church. As the church grew, so did the Indian communityâs interest in it. West Cross Street Baptist got permission from the Fells Point Methodist Board of Missions to use the church at 211 S. Broadway for their annual homecomings, due to its capacious size and location on âthe reservation.â In 1977, Mayor William Donald Schaefer attended a homecoming celebration and the congregation shared with him their desire to purchase the building at 211 S. Broadway. The City of Baltimore helped to arrange a loan for the down payment and funds to rehabilitate the historic structure. Members of the church organized fundraising efforts to pay back the loan. On June 11, 1978, they lined up at a vacant lot at the corner of N. Ann and E. Baltimore streets for a âvictory marchâ to their new space. A majority Lumbee congregation attends South Broadway Baptist Church to this day.
South Broadway Baptist wasnât the first Indian institution to occupy 211 S. Broadway. In 1970, the Southeast Community Action Agency (caa) leased 211 S. Broadway on behalf of the American Indian Study Center. The Center used the back entrance of what was still âthe Methodist churchâ at that time. It occupied an office adjoining the sanctuary, an office on the second floor, and held culture class in the fellowship hall, until it acquired its current facility at 113 S. Broadway, in 1972. In partnership with the Baltimore City Board of Education, the Center made a successful application for federal Indian Education funding and Baltimoreâs Indian Education Program began in 1973. Its first office was the room on the second floor of 211 S. Broadway that the American Indian Study Center had previously occupied. The office later relocated to a Baltimore City Public School.
In 1975, Earl Brooks (Lumbee) purchased a storefront building at 207 S. Broadway and opened Hokahey Indian Trading Post with his friend, Solomon Maynor (Coharie). The store primarily sold silver and turquoise Indian jewelry purchased in New Mexico. Brooks sold the property in 1977 and it is part of El Salvador Restaurant today.
The original portion of this building was constructed in Greek revival style, in 1843, for a sea captain and his family. The captain and his wife placed it into trust for their daughter, who willed it to the Baltimore Humane Impartial Society to be used as an old folksâ home, but the Society sold the property to an individual instead. It remained a private residence until it was donated to The Little Flower Corporation, in 1920. The neighborhood was predominantly Polish during this time and the house was remodeled and accommodations were furnished for the care of Polish children. The first floor had lounging rooms and a dining room, the second floor was a day nursery and library, and the top floor was converted into dormitories for girls.
The American Indian Study Center acquired the property from The Little Flower in 1972. In its original location, at 211 S. Broadway, the Center offered a library on Indian cultures and social counseling services. It hosted monthly meetings open to anyone interested in âIndian culture.â âCulture classâ included workshops on traditional arts, crafts, histories, ways of knowing, and being. With the move to 113 S. Broadway, the Center also opened a restaurant and offered housing for a time. The American Indian Study Center, which changed its name to the Baltimore American Indian Center in 1980, has offered an array of social and cultural programs in the decades since.
In 1999, Maryland State Bond Bill was passed to assist the Center in a capital project to construct the âmultipurpose room,â a gymnasium-like addition to the original structure, completed in 2008. In 2004, longtime friend to the Center, Stanley Markowitz, was awarded an Open Society Institute Baltimore fellowship to work with community members to begin envisioning what would become the Baltimore American Indian Center Heritage Museum. Additional federal funding was acquired to rehabilitate the first floor of the original part of the building, to house the new museum. Frieda Minner (Lumbee) was instrumental in the development of the museum and a gift shop, facilitating much of what was truly a community effort. Men of the Centerâs Native American Senior Citizens program did the finishing work on the first floor. The Museum officially opened in 2011. In 2018, the Baltimore American Indian Center celebrated 50 years of existence and it is still open today.
The Baltimore American Indian Center purchased the building at 118 S. Broadway in 1983, with assistance from the Religious Society of Friends. The front part of the first floor was a museum and gift shop, and the back room was used for dance class. Rooms on the upper floors served as workshop space and lodging for cultural consultants. The Center sold the property in 2002.
The oldest congregation in Baltimore City founded by Lumbee Indians (presently known as South Broadway Baptist Church) rented this storefront for approximately one year, just prior to moving to 1117 W. Cross Street.
Claudie and Mabel Hunt (Lumbee) purchased the Sinclair service station at 100 S. Broadway, ca. 1967. It had a three-bay garage and six gas pumps. After about a year, the station was converted to BP. The Hunts sold the station when they moved back to North Carolina, ca. 1973. It is the site of a popular 7/11 today.
The commercial property at this location actually spans 1623 â 1633 E. Lombard where there were once 6 individual houses. The current structure was built in the late 1960s and served as a blood bank, ca. 1979 â 1988. The Baltimore American Indian Center acquired the property in 1990. The Centerâs Vera Shank Daycare occupied one half of the building and had a playground in the backyard. Once a major source of income for the Indian Center, the daycare was intended to provide employment for Indian mothers and a safe environment for Indian children to learn and grow together. It was named for Vera Shank, a Quaker woman and former colleague of Indian Center co-founder, Elizabeth Locklear (Lumbee). The Native American Senior Citizens program occupied the other half of the building. âThe Seniorsâ were a big support to the Indian Center. They held their own fundraisers, usually involving the sale of traditional foods, which they would also prepare weekly, on the premises, to eat and fellowship for hours on end. They hosted annual holiday parties and sponsored holiday meals for families of the community in need. They took trips to various destinations across the U.S. and worked together on traditional arts and crafts. The Center sold the property in 2017.
The Baltimore American Indian Center opened the Inter-Tribal Restaurant at 17 S. Broadway, during the tenure of Director Barry Richardson (Haliwa Saponi), ca. 1989. Board members of the Indian Center wanted to try another restaurant venture as part of their economic development activities. They felt that the Center had a fair amount of experience selling food due to its work with the concession stands at Orioles baseball games. One could âeat inâ or âcarry outâ at the restaurant, which sold foods like sandwiches, shrimp, chicken, and french fries, and also cigarettes and beer. The Center closed the restaurant after only a couple of years because it was not profitable.
The Moonlight Restaurant was Greek-owned. It was one of the first restaurants in which many Lumbee Indians arriving from the Jim Crow South could sit down and eat. Much of the planning for what would become South Broadway Baptist Church and the Baltimore American Indian Center took place in The Moonlight. However, the establishment was also known for fights and general discord, sometimes also attributed to the presence of Indians. The building was sold to Baltimore City in 1972. It is a house today.
East Baltimore Church of God began in 1955, under the leadership of a Lumbee woman, Rev. Lounita Hammonds. It was originally known as the âUpper Roomâ Church because services were held above Gordon Cleaners, located at the corner of Baltimore and Wolfe streets. Sometime after establishing the church, Rev. Hammonds felt called âhome,â to North Carolina, to begin another work. In her absence, the church closed, and its members relocated to other area churches. Soon after, âa group of Native Americans had a desire to have a church with which they could identify; thus the current East Baltimore Church of God came into existence.â
It was Rev. Haywood Johnson (Lumbee) who assembled what would grow into the current congregation. In 1961, Rev. Johnson and a small group of parishioners purchased a storefront building that had originally been a restaurant, spanning 1714 â 1716 E. Baltimore Street. The church history cites growth in the congregation as the reason for a move to its next location, 2043 E. Baltimore Street, in 1972. Rev. Johnson and the trustees of the church sold 1714 â 16 to the City and it was razed during Urban Renewal.
In 2003, East Baltimore Church of God moved to its current location, 800 S. Oldham Street. The church is active unto this day and many American Indian people continue to attend. It is pastored by Rev. Robert E. Dodson Jr., who trained under Rev. Redell Hammonds (Lumbee), the son of Rev. Lounita and Hartman Hammonds (Lumbee).
1727 E. Baltimore Street housed a series of ethnic food establishments from the turn of the century through the early 1960s, reflecting greater migration patterns in the neighborhood. In 1917, it was the Shub Bros. Bakery; in 1947, it was the Warsaw Bakery, and around 1959, Hartman Hammonds (Lumbee) rented the storefront and opened Hartmanâs BBQ Shop. Mr. Hammonds sold Lumbee-style BBQ with traditional sides like coleslaw, as well as hotdogs and hamburgers. The shop was frequented by construction workers who lived in East Baltimore. Mr. Hammonds made lunches at night and the workers would come pick them up in the morning, then they would come back on Fridays to pay for their lunches for the week. 1725 and 1727 E. Baltimore were eventually merged and converted into a church.
Sidâs Ranch House Tavern occupied a building that had been converted into a movie theater during the first part of the twentieth century. It had been the Teddy Bear Parlor ca. 1908 â 1919, and the Mickey until 1920 or â21. Sidney Silverman, a retired boxer turned bartender, opened his tavern in the late 1950s. It became a popular neighborhood hangout for people of different races, and it had a reputation for racial trouble. According to one Lumbee patron, Mr. Silverman âhad a habit of every time the Indians would get in fights there, he would bar âem from the bar for a while. Wouldnât let no Indians come in his bar⊠Heâd do it for a while and then heâd open up. I guess he missed our business, and heâd open up and let âem back.â Mr. Silverman likely sold the property at 1741 E. Baltimore Street to the City during Urban Renewal and it was razed.
Jesse B. Revels Jr. (Lumbee) and his wife, Lucy May Revels, bought the property at 1819 E. Baltimore Street in 1962 and opened a grocery store. They and their children ran the store until 1968, when they moved to Baltimore County. They sold the property to Baltimore City in 1973 during Urban Renewal.