Docked in the northwest corner of the harbor, the magnificent USS Constellation is a sloop-of-war, a National Historic Landmark, and the last sail-only warship designed and built by the United States Navy.
She was built in 1854, using a small amount of material salvaged from the 1797 frigate USS Constellation, which had been disassembled the year before. Before the Civil War, the Constellation was used to intercept slaving vessels. Although the U.S. had outlawed the importation of slaves in 1808, many illegal ships still tried to transport human beings to America’s shores. At the onset of the Civil War, the Constellation was involved in the U.S. Navy's first capture on May 21, 1861, when she captured a ship known as the “Triton,” an illegal slave ship.
The USS Constellation remained in service for many years after the Civil War. She provided aid relief during the Irish famine, sailed in World War II as a flag ship, and for two decades was used as a training ship for the United States Navy. She was the last sailboat in the U.S. Naval Fleet.
In 1968, the ship was relocated to the Inner Harbor as part of the city’s urban renewal plan. Since then, the ship has undergone several multi-million dollar renovations, and today, the USS Constellation is open to tour. Visitors can walk all four decks, talk to crew members, and even participate in a cannon drill.
Seven Foot Knoll lighthouse takes its name from its original location—the rocky shoals where the mouth of the Patapsco River meets the Chesapeake Bay. The sandy, soft bottom of these shoals necessitated the construction of a screwpile-style lighthouse (as opposed to a straightpile model) where a hexagon-shaped building perches on pilings that are screwed into the bottom of the waterway. Built in 1856, Seven Foot Knoll is one of the oldest Chesapeake lighthouses still in existence and the oldest screwpile lighthouse in Maryland.
Managed by the U.S. Lighthouse Service, and later the U.S. Coast Guard, Seven Foot Knoll lighthouse served as a general aid for the navigation of ships. Keepers, therefore, had the crucial job of making sure the lighthouse was constantly functioning. Every night at sundown, keepers were responsible for lighting the beacon lamp and keeping it lit until sunrise the next morning, which required vigilance, as well as regular maintenance. Each morning, keepers cleaned the beacon lens and lamp thoroughly, so that they were ready for use in the evening. When there was fog, the fog bell had to be sounded continuously. This required winding the station's bell machine every 45 minutes until the fog lifted.
Although the Lighthouse Service did not officially permit keepers to bring their families to live in the lighthouse, at least two families did live there during the 1870s. Eva Marie “Knolie” Bowling, who was born in the lighthouse in 1875, recalled life in the lighthouse in an interview for a 1936 article in the Baltimore News. The lighthouse itself contained five rooms with space for both a library (the children were homeschooled by their mother) and a piano, she recalled. The small space underneath the lighthouse contained a hog pen and a chicken yard. During severe weather, the animals were transferred to the house for their safety. Storms also provided additional food, she added, when the family took advantage of the wildfowl who got caught in heavy winds and were dashed into the side of the lighthouse.
Conditions at Seven Foot Knoll were tough. Life in a lighthouse was isolating, and during winter months, it was challenging to heat the structure due to weather conditions and limited coal rations. In early 1900s, staff changed six times over a three-year period. In the 1970s, a report revealed that the lighthouse keeper’s position went vacant for over a year because of the remote location.
In the 1930s, the US Coast Guard considered automating Seven Foot Knoll. The shipping and maritime world protested, citing the heroic work of a lighthouse keeper who had rescued five people from drowning after a barge sank. Ultimately, however, the lighthouse was automated in 1949.
In 1997, the lighthouse was moved to Pier 5 on the Baltimore Harbor as one of the Baltimore Maritime Museum’s exhibits. Today Seven Foot Knoll lighthouse is operated by Historic Ships in Baltimore who oversee several ships in the harbor including the USS Constellation and USS Torsk.
The 82,000 square-foot Reginald F. Lewis Museum opened in 2005 and immediately made history as the first major building in downtown Baltimore designed by African American architects—a joint effort between Philip Freelon of a North Carolina firm, the Freelon Group, and Gary Bowden of a Baltimore firm, RTKL Associates. Both architects are fellows of the American Institute of Architects, rare achievements considering that in 2016 African Americans make up just 2% of registered architects in the United States. The museum represents the character, pride, struggle, and accomplishments of Maryland African Americans, and was the second largest African American museum in the United States at the time of construction. The museums took the name of Baltimore businessman Reginald Lewis, the first African American CEO of a Fortune 500 company, TLC Beatrice International. Lewis grew up in West Baltimore and, before his death in 1993, he expressed interest in building a museum to African American culture. The Reginald F. Lewis Foundation, which Lewis established in 1987, provided a $5 million grant for the construction of the museum in Baltimore. The museum board turned down an offer to reuse the Blaustein City Exhibition Center on President Street after focus groups showed that people were not interested in taking over the site of an old museum. "African Americans are tired of left-over seconds," museum board vice chairman Aris Allen Jr. told the Baltimore Sun in 2005. Architects Freelon and Bowden sought to design a distinct building that evokes the spirit of African American culture. The black, red and yellow facade takes its colors from the Maryland flag. A bold red wall slices through the facade, representing the journey of African Americans and the duality of accomplishment and struggle. The building won several awards from local and state American Institute of Architects chapter. The museum is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institute and along with permanent exhibits, includes space for special exhibits, an oral history and recording studio, a 200 seat auditorium, and a classroom and resource center.
9 North Front Street is the former residence of Thorowgood Smith, a successful merchant and Baltimore’s second mayor. Built around 1790, the Federal style residence served as Smith’s home between 1802 and 1804.
The federal style of architecture was popular during Baltimore’s most vigorous period of growth, from the 1790s to the 1850s, when Baltimore vaulted into second place among American cities. The new residents were mostly housed in 1, 2, and 3½-story dormered brick row houses, less ornate than their Georgian predecessors. They are to be found all around the bustling harbor, from Fells Point through Little Italy and Jonestown to Federal Hill.
During the 19th and 20th centuries, the building served as a hotel, an auto-parts shop, and a restaurant. After Baltimore City purchased the property in 1971 for the urban renewal-era redevelopment of Shot Tower Park, the Women’s Civic League sponsored the property’s restoration.
with research support from Baltimore City Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation
Founded in 1847, the Canton Methodist Episcopal Church was the first church established in Canton. The Canton Company donated land for the congregation’s first and second church buildings, because the company strongly encouraged the establishment of religious institutions in their company town.
This church was important in the lives of the company’s employees, and the civic and social health of the community. The Gothic Revival style building is the congregation’s second church building, designed by renowned Baltimore architect Charles L. Carson and built by prominent Baltimore builder Benjamin F. Bennett in 1883/1884. The church was named the Canton Methodist Episcopal Church, and by the late twentieth century, it was known as the Canton United Methodist Church.
This 2 ½ story Gothic Revival building recently suffered from a fire but still retains arched stained glass windows, a slate roof, decorative brickwork, dormer windows, and buttresses.
The origins of the Baltimore & Potomac Tunnel begin in 1858, when Charles County planters pushed for the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad to connect their farms to markets in Baltimore. Progress remained slow until 1867, when the Pennsylvania Railroad Company bought the business.
In July 1872, the completion of the Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel (below Winchester and Wilson Streets) enabled the B&P Railroad to start service between Baltimore and Washington, DC.
In 1983, the MARC train joined the list of commuter trains that have used those same tracks, ensuring the continued popularity of the station for travelers today. In 2014, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) and Amtrak are currently conducting an engineering and environmental study reviewing a range of options to modify or replace the existing tunnel.
One of a few (possibly the only!) fully intact late-nineteenth-century urban mansions designed almost exclusively by acclaimed by New York architect, Standford White of McKim, Mead & White, the Ross Winans House at 1217 Saint Paul Street is the epitome of cosmopolitan living in Baltimore.
Commissioned by Baltimore millionaire Ross R. Winans, heir to a fortune made by his father in Saint Petersburg, Russia, the forty-six-room, brick and brownstone French Renaissance Revival style mansion was built in 1882. The house features fine oak paneling, parquet, leaded glass, Tiffany designed tile and other fine materials throughout.
The Winans Mansion has remained a dominant architectural symbol of the neighborhood and has been used as a preparatory school for girls, a funeral parlor, and a doctors’ offices. 91ĘÓƵ identified the building as a threatened landmark in 2000, after it sat unoccupied for many years. Not long after, Agora Inc. took control of the building and, in 2005, completed a multi-million dollar historic renovation that gained distinction by winning a 91ĘÓƵ preservation honor award that year. Agora continues to own the building and uses it as offices.
The Home of the Friendless at 1313 Druid Hill Ave opened as a refuge for orphaned boys in 1870. An earlier institution, the Home of Friendless Vagrant Girls was established in 1854 on Pearl Steet. By 1860, it had moved to a new building on Druid Hill Ave. Five years later an adjoining lot was purchased for the construction of a boy’s home—today’s 1313 Druid Hill Ave.
The orphanage only accepted white children. Between 1870 and 1931, 200 children, half of whom were foreign born, lived here each year. By 1931, the rise of welfare programs, social services, and new approaches to childcare decreased the need for orphanages. The National Register of Historic Places states, “The size of the building, the segregation of boys and girls, the racial make-up of the institution and its urban setting are representative of orphanages prior to concepts of civil rights, gender equality and foster care. By the early twentieth century, reformers called for child care facilities in cottage settings far from urban centers.” The institution left the Marble Hill neighborhood for northwest Baltimore and eventually merged with the Woodbourne Center, which still operates today.
The federal Works Progress Administration then occupied the building until Baltimore City bought it in 1938 to create the Druid Hill Health Center. Notably, this was Baltimore’s first public health center for African Americans. Various health services were offered until 1961. The city’s Department of Housing then owned the building until 1992. It has been vacant since then.
The Marble Hill Community Association has been demanding that the city stabilize this deteriorating building for several years. In 2021, the building sustained damage from torrential rains. Falling debris became a hazard to pedestrians and traffic. In response, the city said it will stabilize the building.
*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 December 1919, the Rainbow Theatre first opened on Pennsylvania Avenue entertaining an African American audience with vaudeville performances and films. The theatre continued in operation until 1925 and then spent a decade as a garage.
The building was then remodelled to the plans of architect David Harrison, and, on December 25, 1936, reopened as the Lenox Theatre. The theatre continued in operation up until 1964 when the property became home to Christ Temple Church.
On July 11, 2015 the Eastern Female High School on Aisquith Street caught fire—just the latest challenge for this 1869 school-house turned apartment building that has stood empty since it closed in 2001. Designed by architect R. Snowden Andrews, the Italianate-style, red-brick and white-trim structure is the city’s oldest surviving purpose-built public school building. It stands as a memorial to the post-Civil War expansion of secondary education opportunities in Baltimore. The Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation list the building as a Baltimore City Landmark in 1976 and a 2002 Baltimore Sun editorial declared one of Baltimore’s “architectural gems”. The building was renovated and converted into apartments in the 1970s and Baltimore City transferred the building to Sojourner-Douglass College in 2004. Unfortunately, Sojourner-Douglass College was unable to develop the building and after the 2015 fire Eastern Female High School continues to stand boarded up and vacant.
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R. House was built on the southwest corner of the intersection of Remington Avenue and West 29th Street in 1924 as the Eastwick Motor Company garage. Up until the 1920s, most of Baltimore’s car dealerships were located in the "automobile triangle" bounded by Mount Royal, North Avenue, and Howard Street. The 2-story rectangular brick building, constructed to expand Eastwick, reflected the growing importance of Remington to automobile sales and service in the 1920s. Directories referred to the building as the "Dodge Maintenance Building" in the late 1920s, but the design makes clear that it was always intended to work as a showroom as well.
In 1926, Harter B. Hull, a successful automobile magnate in Memphis with Baltimore ties and a rising star in the dealership world, purchased the Eastwick Motor Company. After his untimely death in 1930, Gilbert A. Jarman, an officer and director of the Hull operation, assumed ownership control. Jarman Motors, Inc. expanded over the years and occupied the property up until 1968. Anderson Motor Company bought the property in 1994.
The Seawall Development Corporation purchased the property in 2014 and began a $12 million conversion of this former 50,000-square-foot automotive building to turn it into the R. House: a “food hall” featuring ten chefs.
Crittenton Home was originally the home of David Carroll, owner of the Mount Vernon Mill Company. The building got its name after being absorbed by the Florence Crittenton Mission in 1925.
Crittenton Home was originally the home of David Carroll, owner of the Mount Vernon Mill Company. The building got its name after being absorbed by the Florence Crittenton Mission in 1925.
The Mission was started in 1882 by wealthy New Yorker and Protestant evangelist Charles Crittenton who made his fortune in pharmaceuticals. After losing his four year old daughter Florence to Scarlet Fever, Crittenton dedicated himself to philanthropy, using his wealth to open sanctuaries for unwed mothers. He traveled across the country proselytizing and offering five-hundred dollars to each town willing to open a Home. In 1898, President McKinley signed a special act of Congress which granted a national charter to the Florence Crittenton Mission, making it the first charitable organization to receive a national charter from the United States. At its peak, the Mission had over seventy-five Homes internationally.
The mansion that became the Crittenton Home was likely constructed in 1845 during the development of Stone Hill, a company housing development for workers of the Mount Vernon mills. Positioned high on a hill, the mansion provided an impressive view over Stone Hill and the mills.Carroll could comfortably oversee his industrial domain from the comfort of his grand home, while employees catching glimpses of the house from their homes and workplace below could not shake the feeling that the boss was always watching.
Carroll died in 1881. Afterward other executives of the Mount Vernon Mill Company likely inhabited the mansion. (His son, Albert Carroll, had Evergreen on the Hill, a Greek Revival Mansion now used by the SPCA). After a devastating 1923 labor strike, the mill company moved its operations south in search of cheaper labor and in 1925, the mansion was sold to the Florence Crittenton Mission. The purchase was a response to overcrowding at Baltimore's first Crittenton Home located in Little Italy.
By the 1950s and '60s many Florence Crittenton Homes had become places where embarrassed middle class families hid their pregnant daughters. Under these arrangements, children were taken from their mothers and given up for adoption. With the introduction of birth control pills, the legalization of abortion, and the lessening of stigma against unwed pregnancy, Homes across the country began closing. The Hampden Florence Crittenton Home stayed in use until 2010.
The mansion is currently being renovated and converted to apartments. The mid-century dormitories that served the Florence Crittenton House have been demolished to make way for townhouses.
The former U.S. Marine Hospital on Wyman Park Drive near the Johns Hopkins University Homewood campus was built in 1934—but the Marine Hospital Service itself dated back over a century earlier. In 1798, President John Adams signed "An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen" that supported the creation of Marine Hospitals in major American ports from Boston to Baltimore. Following the Civil War, a scandal broke out over the mismanagement of the Marine Hospital Fund (supported by a tax on the wages of all U.S. sailors). In 1870, the U.S. Congress responded to the controversy by converting the loose network of hospitals into a more centrally-managed bureau within the Department of Treasury. Early on the Baltimore Marine Hospital was located in Curtis Bay on the same site later developed at the Bethlehem Fairfield Shipyard. The Maryland Hospital of U.S. Marine Hospital Service also maintained dedicated wards at St. Joseph’s Hospital at Caroline and Hoffman Streets before the construction of a new hospital complex on Remington Avenue around 1885. A 1901 directory of Baltimore charities invited sailors in need of medical care to apply for admission at the surgeon’s office located at the Baltimore Custom House, explaining:
Only those who have served as sailors on an American registered vessel for at least 60 days prior to application are strictly eligible, but any bona fide sailor taken sick or injured in the line of duty will receive attention.In 1934, the old building was replaced by a modern 290-bed facility making Baltimore's hospital the second largest marine hospital in the country. In the 1950s, the hospital began serving a more general population, including both people enlisted in the military and local residents, as the United States Public Health Services Hospital. In October 1981, the federal government closed all of the U.S. Public Health Service hospitals across the country. Baltimore's old Marine Hospital was taken over by a group known as the Wyman Park Health System and continued to treat many of the patients who had been going there for decades. In 1987, the group merged with Johns Hopkins University. One result of the merger was the creation of a new primary care organization, the Johns Hopkins Community Physicians, that has continued to provide outpatient medical services from the lower levels of the building today. In 2008, the university considered plans for demolishing and replacing the building. Fortunately, in January 2019, the university announced plans to preserve and renovate the building for continued use by students and faculty.
The former St. Vincent’s Infant Asylum/Carver Hall Apartments buildings was a complex of structures built between 1860 and the 1910s to provide housing and medical services to dependent children and women, along with housing for the nuns who operated the facility. After years of declining use, the Infant Asylum left the facility around 1934 for a new location on Reisterstown Road.
Around 1941, the building was converted to use as Carver Hall Apartments offering a range of rental units to a largely African American group of tenants from the up through 2013. Since the 1970s, the management of the property has posed significant challenges for residents in the building with a major fire in 1978, a lawsuit in 1993 and issues with drug traffic and violence at the building in the 1900s.
In January 2015, the building caught on fire destroying the roof and gutting much of the interior. It now stands vacant. Unfortunately, in February 2018, the building was illegally demolished without a permit.
“Boss” John S. (Frank) Kelly, the leader of the West Baltimore Democratic Club, controlled all things political in West Baltimore in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He moved into the house in the 1860s and lived here for the rest of his life. Kelly ran the political machine of West Baltimore that elected several mayors, senators, judges, and state representatives. He was also the inspiration of Dashiell Hammett’s character Shad O’Rory in the novel (and later movie) The Glass Key.
The Boss Kelly House at 1106 West Saratoga Street is part of a row of houses that were built between 1830 and 1845. Architecturally, the building is a prime example of the cumulative development of row house design in Baltimore, and is featured in the 1981 book, Those Old Placid Rows, by Natalie Shivers. The house and the others in the row are unusual, possibly unique in Baltimore, for their single second-story tripartite windows and gabled roofs. This row has been attributed to the work of architect Robert Cary Long, Jr., whose father designed a similar row in the unit block of Mulberry Street in Mt. Vernon.
*In 2021, Baltimore City razed this row of homes, including the Boss Kelly house.
In 1912, The Baltimore Sun heralded the forthcoming construction of the Broadway commercial and recreation pier. Citing the success of similar piers in New York and Boston, the Sun declared that piers for recreation “furnish a place for mothers and children to get a breath of fresh air [and] for young people to enjoy themselves in innocent, wholesome amusement. In summer a recreation pier is a godsend to the poor housed in ill-ventilated, closely-packed rooms. The Broadway pier will fill a genuine need.”
The pier opened in 1914 as a multipurpose building for both industry and leisure. It became a focal point of the Fells Point community. The Bay Belle steamer ran from the pier to the Eastern Shore for summer outings. There were Christmas Eve dances that filled the hall with 400 persons, roller skating, and organized games for young people. Lessons in English were often held at the pier to serve the local immigrant community who hailed from Poland, Ukraine, and Bohemia.
In 1931, the USS Constitution was towed up the Chesapeake from the Charlestown Navy Yard in Massachusetts and berthed at the Rec Pier. Less than an hour after she had docked, a small crowd of 100 people gathered to see her.
The pier was extended by 90 feet in 1948 to make a home for the Harbor Police. It underwent another renovation in 1991. Over ten thousand engraved bricks, purchased by Baltimoreans for $50 each in a Buy-A-Brick campaign grace the surrounding walkways.
The pier became a national star in its own right, when it was chosen to be the site of Baltimore police headquarters in the television show, Homicide: Life on the Street (1993-1999). After the show ended, the building sat vacant until 2017 with the opening of the Sagamore Pendry, a luxury hotel owned by Under Armour CEO, Kevin Plank.
Built around 1905 in the vernacular Beaux Arts style, the Polish Home Hall originally functioned as a town hall and home to the volunteer fire company of Curtis Bay. In 1919, when Baltimore City annexed the area from Anne Arundel County, the Wise brothers took over the building to sew sailcloth for the shipping industries emerging in the area. In 1925, the United Polish Societies of Curtis Bay purchased the building and returned it to use as a community space. Polish American children attended school and learned both English and Polish in the space, which was a few block from St. Anthanasius Catholic Church. The hall was also used for social functions, such as dances. Local residents, Casmir and Catherine Benicewicz, served as caretakers of the Polish Home Hall until the 1980s when it became too much for the pair to handle. They passed responsibility on to another Polish organization but the building soon began to suffer from neglect. The Polish Home Hall was no longer used for community events and became dilapidated.
In the early 2000s, the Baybrook Coalition, a non-profit community development corporation, sought to revive the hall as a community space. Carol Eshelman, director of the Coalition from 2002 until 2010, researched the deed of the dilapidated building and tracked down Catherine Benicewicz. A beautiful friendship and impressive rehabilitation endeavor began with Benicewicz deeding the building to the Coalition. The rehab was funded by a bond issue spearheaded by House Representative Brian McHale and State Senator George W. Della Jr. and supplemented by funds from the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation in addition to donations from local citizens and businesses. Donald Kann served as the architect for the renovation. “The Hammers,” local craftsmen volunteers, completed much of the work on the building. The Polish Home Hall was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007 when it reopened.
The former Royer's Hill Methodist Episcopal Church at 400 West 24th Street is a small stone building with a gable roof used in 2010 as a garage. Despite several modern additions and changes, the building retains original window openings, original roof framing, and pressed tin ceiling panels. Constructed under the supervision of Rev. Edward L. Watson around 1891 as the 24th Street Methodist Episcopal Church, the building remained in use as a church until it was converted to use as a motor freight station sometime prior to 1951.
The Scottish Rite of Freemasons began construction of the temple building on North Charles Street in 1930, and the building was opened in 1932. The building was designed by noted architect (and Scottish Rite Mason) Clyde N. Friz and renowned architect John Russell Pope. Friz’s other works in Baltimore include Enoch Pratt Free Library and Standard Oil Building. A nationally renowned architect, Pope designed the Jefferson Memorial, National Archives, National Gallery of Art, and the Masonic Temple of the Scottish Rite in Washington, as well as the Baltimore Museum of Art here in Baltimore. The Scottish Rite Temple on Charles Street is both Italian Renaissance and Beaux Arts Classical in style, with a columned portico based on the Pantheon in Rome. Eight 34-foot columns with Corinthian capitals provide the entrance facing Charles Street, and the entry consists of two massive bronze doors. The Scottish Rite Masonic order continues to occupy the building. After considering selling the building for demolition, the Masons are reconsidering options. The building was added to the city’s list of historic landmarks in 2009 with the support of 91ĘÓƵ and any future plans for the buildings must meet the city’s strong preservation guidelines.
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In 1872 Baltimore’s 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 “The City of the Dead for Colored People.” 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 “A Matter of Color.”
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 Baltimore’s 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 “Resurrecting Mount Auburn Cemetery” 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, the trustees of Morgan College decided to sell the institution to the State of Maryland. The proceeds from that transaction were earmarked for the construction of a center for religious activities, the Morgan Christian Center (now Morgan State University Memorial Chapel), a parsonage, and an endowment. This effort preserved the religious roots of Morgan College (founded in 1867 as the Centenary Biblical Institute) as they transitioned from 72 years as a private college to their future as a state institution. The building was designed by Towson-born African American architect Albert Irvin Cassell, FAIA who designed a number of buildings on the Morgan State campus and other historically black colleges and universities. Beginning in 1944, the director of the Morgan Christian Center was Rev. Dr. Howard L. Cornish—a 1927 graduate of Morgan State College and math professor. Up until his retirement in 1976, Cornish lived in the parsonage and his home was known as a center of Civil Rights activities involving Morgan students, clergy and activists from throughout the Baltimore community. In 2008, the Morgan Christian Center trustees deeded the property to Morgan State University and the Center was renamed the Morgan State University Memorial Chapel, to reflect the diverse religious landscape on campus. That same year, the University named Dr. Bernard Keels director of the Chapel. Keels organized a group of volunteers, the Friends of the Chapel, who have supported an ongoing effort to restore the building and return it back into a essential part of the campus community. With additional support from Morgan State University students and faculty, the Memorial Chapel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.
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The story of the Emerson Mansion began in 1895 when Captain Isaac Emerson commissioned the building as a home for his family. Captain Emerson lived at this location up to 1911 when he and his wife divorced. Emerson remarried just two months later and started work on the Emersonian, a large apartment building built with the intent to block his ex-wife’s view of Druid Lake. The Baltimore Sun later reported on the legend in August 11, 1985 noting that Emerson, "moved into one of the uppermost apartments so he would always be looking down on her." The structure has served a wide range of uses in the century since Captain Emerson moved out. Maryland's Juvenile Services Division had offices in the building, as did The Mercantile Club, a private social club for businessmen. Since 1994, the property has been owned by James Crockett.
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Built to house the Baltimore branch offices of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company following the Great Fire of 1904, this structure was an early commission of the architectural firm of Parker & Thomas (later Parker, Thomas & Rice), the preeminent architects of Baltimore’s Beaux Arts commercial & financial structures of the first quarter of the twentieth century.
Throughout the nineteenth century, the Pennsylvania Railroad vied with the locally owned Baltimore & Ohio Railroad for control of rights-of-way and development rights for lines in and out of the city. While the B&O was the older of the two competing railroads (founded in 1830), the Pennsylvania Railroad had surpassed the B&O in size, scope, and profitability by the 1870s.
Such was the nature of railroad competition in Baltimore that the two lines even maintained separate passenger terminals, with Mount Royal Station serving the B&O (and its dominance of lines running south) and the Pennsylvania maintaining a site between Charles and St. Paul Streets.
In 1900, under the leadership of Alexander Cassatt, brother of expatriate Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt, the Pennsylvania Railroad merged with the B&O, and the two companies shared a Board of Trustees. Partly in response to efforts in Washington to enact legislation prohibiting railroad monopolies, the Pennsylvania and B&O maintained separate corporate identities during this period, although the “union” of the two companies was celebrated by Cassatt’s pet project, Washington, DC’s monumental Beaux-Arts style Union Station (1902).
When the 1904 Fire destroyed the Second-Empire style B&O headquarters on the northwest corner of Baltimore and Calvert Streets, the corporate officers elected to rebuild a grand, 13-story Beaux-arts tower on a new site, two blocks to the west. The Pennsylvania, by contrast, retained its site and elected the relatively small, restrained building seen today. The interrelationship of the two companies and the coordination of their post-Fire building schemes is attested to by the fact that both the Pennsylvania Railroad building and the B&O tower on Charles Street were designed by the same architectural firm, Parker & Thomas. The modesty of the Pennsylvania’s building (in spite of the company’s essential domination of the B&O) is part and parcel of the effort to maintain distinct identities for the two merged companies.
By 1906—the time of the Baltimore post-Fire rebuilding of both the Pennsylvania and B&O buildings— Cassatt was dead, the Republicans had passed antitrust legislation and the two companies administratively pried themselves apart once again. Thus, what may have begun in 1905 as a somewhat disingenuous attempt to maintain the united railroad companies’ discrete corporate identities through the erection of two separate and stylistically and hierarchically distinct structures, became an accurate representation of corporate separation by the time the buildings were complete in 1906.
The first headmaster of the Calvert School, Virgil Hillyer, built Castalia between 1928 and 1929, naming it after the spring at the foot of Mount Parnassas in Italy that is said to have been the inspiration for the muses. The prominent Baltimore architect Francis Hall Fowler was the architect of this Italian villa-inspired house. In 2006, the Calvert School acquired the building and proposed to demolish it for an outdoor amphitheater.
The Tuscany Canterbury Neighborhood Association led the effort to save the building, with 91ĘÓƵ filing a successful nomination for the building to be added to the city’s historic landmark list in 2008. The building is now on the landmark list and the Calvert School has begun plans to preserve it for a school-related use.
Alfred G. Vanderbilt once said of Pimlico that it is “more than a dirt track bounded by four streets. It is an accepted American institution, devoted to the best interests of a great sport, graced by time, respected for its honorable past.”
Opened in 1870, Pimlico Racetrack is also Baltimore through and through. Engineered by General John Ellicott for the Maryland Jockey Club, the track was built after Governor Oden Bowie out-bid the rival Saratoga, New York racing club to host a special race by pledging to build a model track in Baltimore.
The track has been going strong ever since, even surviving an anti-gambling movement in 1910 when Congress carved out Maryland and Kentucky from a national prohibition on horse racing.
Although a devastating fire destroyed the old clubhouse in 1966, the seven furlong track, stables for a thousand horses, and even the new grandstands at Pimlico today still hold loads of Baltimore history and stories.
Designed by well-known local architect Benjamin B. Owens, the "Flour Warehouse" is a unique industrial landmark on the east side of Baltimore's downtown. When contractor S.H. and J.F. Adams erected the building for the Terminal Warehouse Company in 1894, the Northern Central Railroad maintained a line down Guilford Avenue connecting Baltimore's factories and warehouses to far-flung farms and markets across the state and country.
The company expanded in 1912 with an addition built by the Noel Construction Company and, through the 1970s, remained one of the oldest warehouses in continuous use by the same corporation. For several years, the building housed the Baltimore City Archives and the Baltimore City Department of Planning. After a new owner planned to demolish warehouse in 2007, local residents successfully fought to preserve the building for future reuse.
The former Maryland National Bank building at the southwest corner of Maryland and North Avenues is a faded but still striking example of the modern architecture that accompanied the city’s growth in the 1950s and 1960s. The Fidelity Baltimore National Bank (a predecessor of Maryland National) opened their first branch location on North Avenue since the late 1930s. In the mid-1950s, the firm built a drive-in on the eastern side of Maryland Avenue—a structure still in use today as the home of K & M Motors. The local architectural firm of Smith & Veale (Albert K. Broughton serving as the project architect) designed the modern building and the general contractor was the Lacchi Construction Company. Broughton remained a practicing architect in Maryland up through 2002, shortly before his death in 2005. Reflecting the continued importance of automobiles to retail banking, a large parking lot was located on the southern side of the building and the branch was designed so patrons could enter the bank from either North Avenue or the parking lot. As the building went up in March 1961, the Baltimore Sun touted the bank as the city’s first commercial building with a precast concrete frame. The Nitterhouse Concrete Product Company in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania cast a series of t-shaped elements that were then transported to Baltimore by truck. The Maryland National Bank sold the property in 1990 and, sometime after 1995, the Korean-American Grocers & Licensed Beverage Association of Maryland (KAGRO) moved into the building as their office. In 2015, the Contemporary occupied the building for an exhibition by artist Victoria Fu. The exhibition, Bubble Over Green, is described as multilayered audio-visual experience consisting of moving images projected onto architectural surfaces, aligning the physical site with the space and textures of digital post-production.
Dedicated in March 1965, the North Point branch of the Baltimore County Public Library is a sharp example of modernism in the southeastern suburbs. The building was designed by the local firm of Smith and Veale, a partnership of architects Thomas Smith and Graham Veale, who placed the structure on a raised terrace to help it stand out from the neighboring school and shopping center. The building's dedication on March 14, 1965 was attended by Baltimore County executive Spiro T. Agnew, county librarian Charles W. Robinson, and pastors from the Dundalk Methodist Church and St. Rita's Catholic Church.
This library was the fourteenth built in Baltimore County and the second largest after the Catonsville branch. The library's exhaustive collection of maritime literature, which included many out-of-print volumes on ship models, sailing, piracy, whaling and maritime history, was a legacy of then librarian and enthusiastic sailor Robert E. Greenfield. Today, the library collections include historic photographs of Dundalk, Sparrow's Point, Turner Station and other area communities.
with research support from Baltimore City Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation
The site of this Franklintown Road church has been home to a church since 1835, when Colonel John Berry helped establish Summerfield Methodist Episcopal Church. Today, the Rehoboth Church of God in Christ Jesus Apostolic occupies a Gothic Revival landmark that replaced the original country church in 1920. The building was designed by Wyatt & Nolting and G.N. MacKenzie and has been the home of the Apostolic congregation since 1954.
A devout Methodist, Colonel John Berry purchased the site of this church in the early 1800s. Tired of traveling three miles from Calverton Heights to the closest Methodist Episcopal Church, Berry decided to establish a new chapel close to his Baltimore County home. A stone chapel was dedicated in the fall of 1836, the church expanded in 1878, and in the 1880s, a Sunday School building was constructed. By 1920, the congregation had outgrown the stone chapel. Even with several later additions since 1835, the building seated only 275 people—a fraction of the over 450 Methodist families in the parish. The congregation decided to demolish the original chapel and construct a new church.
The present Gothic Revival structure was designed by G.N. MacKenzie and Wyatt & Nolting, a prominent local architectural firm. An article published in The Christian Advocate following the completion of the church stated that "A fine plant has been erected with adequate Sunday school rooms, an auditorium that will seat 900, a gymnasium, and other desired features." The cornerstone was laid on July 19, 1920, and the church was dedicated on April 25, 1921. By 1920, the congregation had outgrown the stone chapel. While the chapel had several additions since its construction in 1835, it only seated 275, and there were over 450 Methodist families in the parish. The decision was made to demolish the original chapel and construct a new church. The present church was designed by George Norbury MacKenzie and Wyatt & Nolting, a prominent Baltimore architectural firm. G.N. Mackenzie, III worked for James Bosley Noel Wyatt and William G. Nolting. Both Wyatt and Nolting were Fellows of the AIA.
On December 16, 1954, the Central-Summerfield Methodist Church sold their building to the Rehoboth Church of God in Christ Jesus (Apostolic). The latter congregation was founded twenty years earlier as a house church with five members, meeting in the Presstman Street home of Mother Mayfield. Mother Mayfield and Elder Randolph A. Carr soon began holding tent-meetings twice a summer on Gilmor Street.
Bishop Carr purchased the group's first church on N. Mount Street. The small congregation then left the Church of God in Christ for the doctrine of the Apostolic Doctrine in Jesus Name, and was renamed Rehoboth Church of God in Christ Jesus Apostolic. In 1945, the congregation branched off from the larger Apostolic organization, forming its own denomination. The same year, the congregation moved to another church on N. Fulton and Riggs Streets. In 1954, the congregation purchased the former Summerfield Church at 700 Poplar Grove Street, where they are still located today.
The stylish Catholic Center building at the southwest corner of Mulberry and Cathedral Streets has been an important administrative office for the Baltimore Archdiocese for fifty years. The eight-story structure was designed by architect John F. Eyring with details, including granite and limestone clad walls and bronzed window trim, selected to complement the Central branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library on the opposite side of Mulberry Street.
The site, formerly occupied by the old Calvert Hall College High School, attracted numerous onlookers during construction not for the modern architecture of the building but the unusual tower crane employed by general contractor Kirby & McGuire. Invented in Germany in 1949, self-erecting tower cranes were still remained an unusual sight in Baltimore when the Copenhagen-built crane went to work in the early 1960s.
The three-million-dollar, eight-story structure was completed in early 1965 and, on November 7, dedicated by Bishop T. Austin Murphy. The cornerstone of the building held copies of the Catholic Review from the day of the building's completion. The new office hosted Catholic priests, church hierarchy, lay men and women who had previously worked at offices and churches scattered across the city.
Since it opened, the building has been used for exhibitions, meetings, and many other religious and community events up through the present. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Movement Against Destruction, a coalition of Black and white community groups fighting against the construction of the East-West Expressway, met weekly on Monday evenings at the Catholic Center to share information and plan protests. While the city eventually built a portion of the proposed highway (now officially known as I-170 and unofficially as the "Highway to Nowhere"), the coalition successfully stopped the demolition of hundreds of homes in the west Baltimore neighborhood of Rosemont and in southeast Baltimore.