The Roger Brooke Taney Monument is not explicitly a Confederate monument. However, Taney is most famous for his decision in the Dred Scott case, which advanced slavery in America and is tied to the Confederate cause. Taney served as the chief justice of the Supreme Court for nearly 30 years beginning in 1836. During that time Taney oversaw the ruling of the Dred Scott decision that stated that African Americans could not be considered as citizens, and by extension could still be considered as property even if they were in a free state.
This sculpture is an 1887 copy of an 1872 original that was made by William Henry Rinehart. Rinehart was one of the first well-renown sculptors in Baltimore, and the Rinehart School of Sculpture was established after his death.
The original sculpture was commissioned by William T. Walters for the Maryland State House in Annapolis, where it is still located. Fifteen years later, Walters had this copy made and gave it to the City of Baltimore. Baltimore's Taney Monument resides in Mount Vernon Place because of Taney’s close relationship to Francis Scott Key, who frequently visited and eventually died there.
In 2016, the Special Commission to Review Baltimore's Public Confederate Monuments recommended removing the Taney Monument along with the Lee-Jackson Statue at Wyman Park Dell. After the murder of a counter-protestor during a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12, 2017, Baltimore City responded to renewed calls to take down Confederate monuments by removing the Taney Monument, the Lee-Jackson Monument, the Confederate Soldiers & Sailors Monument, and the Confederate Women's Monument and placing all four statues in storage. By January 2018, the city had not yet announced any plans for the permanent disposition of the statues.
This sculpture is depicts Glory, an allegorical figure that looks in this sculpture like an angel, holding up a dying Confederate soldier in one arm while raising the laurel crown of Victory in the other. The dying soldier holds a battle flag. Underneath, the inscription states “Gloria Victis,” meaning “Glory to the Vanquished.” The Maryland Chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy funded the construction of this monument. It was sculpted by F. Wellington Ruckstuhl (also spelled Ruckstull), a French-born sculptor based in New York. It is located in a wide median on Mount Royal Avenue near Mosher Street in Bolton Hill. The inscriptions on the monument are the following:
Inscription on front of base: GLORIA VICTIS/ TO THE/ SOLDIERS AND SAILORS/ OF MARYLAND/ IN THE SERVICE OF THE/ CONFEDERATE STATES/ OF AMERICA/ 1861-1865.The Latin phrase on the base is "Deo Vindice, " meaning "Under God, Our Vindicator." The Italian phrase on the base, "Fatti Maschii, Parole Femine" is Maryland's state motto, "Strong deeds and gentle words," although the direct translation is "Manly deeds, womanly words." This monument bears a striking resemblance to two of Ruckstuhl's other sculptures - one Union, one Confederate. The Union Soldiers and Sailors Monument (1896) in Major Mark Park in Queens, New York, features the solitary Glory holding the laurel crown. The Confederate Monument (1903) in Salisbury, North Carolina is almost an exact replica of Baltimore's Confederate Soldier's and Sailors Monument, except that the dying soldier is holding a gun instead of a flag.On base, right side: DEO VINDICE
On base, left side: FATTI MASCHII/ PAROLE FEMINE
On base, back side: GLORY/ STANDS BESIDE/ OUR GRIEF/ ERECTED BY/ THE MARYLAND DAUGHTERS/ OF THE/ CONFEDERACY/ FEBRUARY 1903
The Zell Motor Car Company Showroom on East Mount Royal Avenue was built in 1909 and expanded in 1915. The design, by local architect Edward H. Glidden, remains a unique reminder of Baltimore’s early automotive history and the changing face of Mount Royal Avenue.
The story of the Zell Motor Car Company starts in 1902 when Arthur Stanley Zell established the business—the first automobile distributor in Maryland started by one of the first people in Maryland to own a car. Before joining the automotive industry, Zell drove in early automobile races winning a number of records on the East Coast. As a member of the Baltimore Automobile Dealers’ Association, Zell helped to organize the first automobile show in Baltimore in 1906. He also served as a founding member of the Maryland Automobile Trade Association and, at his farm at Riverwood, he raised Guernsey cattle, Jersey Duroc hogs, and show dogs. Plans for the firm’s modern showroom on Mount Royal Avenue first appeared in December 1908 when trade publication "The Automobile" reported that the Zell Motor Car Company had solicited plans for a three-story garage about 50 feet deep by 100 feet wide. The design boasted a large open fireplace (a new feature for showrooms borrowed from examples in Paris), a large electric elevator to carry cars between floors, and a special room for chauffeurs with a “telephone connection” to let owners “be in touch with their drivers at all times.” The structure, erected by the Baltimore Ferro Concrete Company, cost around $40,000 to build. The Baltimore Sun observed on December 22:
The rapid success of the Zell Motorcar Company in the sale of the Peerless and Chalmers-Detroit motorcars since its incorporation last August has compelled it to seek larger and permanent quarters, its present temporary location at 1010 Morton street being totally insufficient.The building’s architect, 35-year-old Edward H. Glidden (1873-1924), brought the same tasteful design sensibility he applied to a growing number of apartment houses in the city’s growing northern suburbs: Earl Court (1903), the Winona (1903), the Rochambeau (1905; demolished 2006), the Washington (1905-6), the Marlborough (1906), and the Wentworth (1908). Not limited to apartments, the architect’s designs also included the National Marine Bank (1904) and the Seventh Baptist Church (1905) on North Avenue. Gildden’s later commissions, often with his partner Clyde Nelson Friz, included the Latrobe (1911; Glidden & Friz), the Esplanade (1911-12; Glidden & Friz), Calvert Court (1915), and Tudor Hall/Essex Arms (1910, with Friz; 1922), Furness House (1917), and the Forest Theater (1918-19). The French precedent for the grand fireplace at the Zell Motor Car Company showroom are likely based on Glidden’s studies in Paris around 1908 to 1912. Zell hired Glidden again in early 1914 to expand and improve the showroom on Mount Royal Avenue, according to a February 9, 1914 mention in Industrial World noting that Gildden had “drawn up plans covering the same general design and character of building as their present one.” The business thrived as the local dealer for the Packard—an independent automaker based in Detroit that specialized in high-priced luxury automobiles. The Zell Motor Car Company also operated a service facility nearby (set back from North Avenue on Whitelock Street at Woodbrook Avenue) from around 1901 up until Packard stopped manufacturing automobiles in the late 1950s. The service facility is better known for the last few decades as the location of Greenwood Towing. Dealerships and service stations on Mount Royal Avenue, Charles Street and North Avenue flourished in the 1920s, endured through the Great Depression in the 1930s and still continued after World War II. Nearby dealers to the Zell Motor Company included Backus Ford, Weiss Ford, Chesapeake Cadillac, and Oriole Pontiac. Unfortunately for the Zell Motor Car Company, whose founder had died in 1935, the end of Packard’s automobile production in 1956 marked the end of their operation. Like other landmarks on Mount Royal Avenue, such as the conversion of Mount Royal Station into studios for MICA in 1968, the automotive showroom turned into offices and remains in use today. In 2015, the sign above the building’s Mount Royal Avenue entrance reads “The Towne Building” and the structure is up for sale.
The Baltimore Black Musicians Union opened a meeting hall and boarding house at 620-622 Dolphin Street around the 1940s. Due to the discrimination of Baltimore's downtown hotels at that time, traveling black musicians would stay overnight in the rooms located in part of the building. Both locals and traveling musicians also used the building for meetings and socializing. Even in the late 1970s, the building continued to be used for music education. Former neighborhood resident Catherine Bailey recalled in a recent post on the Baltimore Old Photos Facebook Group:
“I used to have marching band practice in the basement as a little girl. We were the pride of Baltimore!”The building later operated as the meeting hall for the Elks fraternal organization and as Mrs. Joanne’s After Hours club.
Constructed of tooled Indiana limestone, glass, steel, concrete, and granite, the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery is at the center of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County campus both literally and figuratively. Since the library first opened in 1968, it has served as a focal point of the campus and UMBC students’ academic lives. In 1982, the building was named in honor of Dr. Albin O. Kuhn, the first chancellor of UMBC. Chancellor Kuhn helped to found and plan the University of Maryland campus in Baltimore County and took part in the early administration of the new campus. In 1965, Chancellor Kuhn hired his first full-time employee—the university’s first librarian, John Haskell, Jr. Haskell was only 24 at the time, coming to work straight out of graduate school and a few months of active duty in the Army Reserves. He spent many of the early months leading up to UMBC’s opening ordering books, hiring new employees, and creating a catalog ordering system. The campus master plan from that same year also noted the importance of the library:
“The building will be viewed on axis from the main approach drive, appearing unquestionably as the major building on campus.”In its early years, UMBC housed the library collections in different locations throughout the campus. Chancellor Kuhn’s house served as the catalog center for the library’s 20,000 volume collection while other collection materials were held within Academic Building I. As the university’s holdings continued to grow, the UMBC administration began plans for the construction of a specifically designated library building, which would later become known as the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery. Campus architects designed the library to grow with the university, making plans to build it in three phases. Phase 1, in 1968, brought all of UMBC’s library collections, which had previously been scattered across the campus, together into one central location. The new library Brutalist unfinished concrete exterior contrasted with an interior of brightly colored walls and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the pond. Baltimore Chapter of the American Institute of Architects recognized the design with their highest honors in 1975. Phase II opened in 1975 adding the library’s Special Collections department and a select collection of state and federal government documents to the library’s collection and continued the university’s efforts to expand its holdings. Phase III, the Library Tower, opened in 1995, increasing the library’s capacity further to 1,000,000 volumes. As the library has sought to grow and maintain its holdings, the building has also grown as a student-centered space. This role expanded with the completion of the Retriever Learning Center (RLC) in 2011. Student organizations, like the Student Government Association and the Graduate Student Association, advocated for a central group study space as early as the 1980s. The university administration responded by creating the RLC, a space open to UMBC students for collaborative learning and group study. As described by UMBC President Dr. Freeman Hrabowski in 2011, the RLC is “another example of UMBC’s innovation in teaching and learning.”
When freshmen students arrived for the opening of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County campus in September 1966, the university had only three buildings: Lecture Hall, Gym I, and Academic I.
UMBC had to locate all of its classes and departments in one building, Academic I, making it the learning hub of the university. In the beginning, the building included five 30-seat classrooms, four science laboratories, and one electronically equipped language laboratory. Along with classrooms, the building housed various faculty offices and academic departments, all of which had to share floor space or classrooms. Even the university’s library was located in Academic I until a dedicated library building was constructed in 1968.
Academic Building I, currently known as Biological Sciences, reflects UMBC’s nontraditional approach to student learning. Following the university’s opening, newspapers and magazines noted UMBC’s “deliberate break with tradition.” Faculty were characterized by their willingness to innovate and students were encouraged to work together with faculty on projects and research. Students could work at their own pace and learn through a method of trial and error.
This strategy mirrored the real-world practice of scientific work, unlike other universities’ classrooms where faculty closely monitored laboratory experiments to ensure that students performed experiments in an exact way. At UMBC, faculty stood back, allowing students to test out new ideas that could lead to great discoveries and new working partnerships.
As the university continued to grow, other academic buildings were constructed providing much needed space for the academic departments crowded within the Biological Sciences building. The social sciences, math, and humanities divisions left the building, while the department of Biological Sciences remained and continues to be housed there to this day.
On a blustery winter day in December 1987, a small crowd of spectators gathered around the Field House at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). They had assembled for the unveiling of a life-size bronze sculpture of the young university’s mascot. The Retriever statue, aka the True Grit statue, currently located in the plaza in front of the Retriever Activities Center (RAC) continues to stand as a reminder of the student body’s pride in their university.
The Retriever was chosen as the school mascot in 1966 by the first class of UMBC. A competition was held and forty different suggestions were presented. After a university-wide vote, administrators selected the Chesapeake Bay Retriever, a dog breed native to Maryland, as the school’s official mascot. The Retriever has since gone on to become the name of the student newspaper, yearbook, and athletic teams.
In 1986, Alumna Paulette Raye, philosophy major and self-proclaimed dog-lover, was commissioned by UMBC administrators to construct a statue for the school’s 20th anniversary, based on the university’s beloved mascot. Raye took several studio art classes during her time at UMBC, even earning three credits towards her degree, for creating the life-size bronze model of the Retriever. Raye’s “conception was that the dog should represent the study body—alert, intelligent, eager to learn and friendly.” To capture this “alertness,” Raye designed a statue of True Grit that would stand upright and gaze straight ahead with his ears cocked.
Raye worked on the statue for almost two years, using a local five year old Chesapeake Bay Retriever named Nitty Gritty as her model. True Grit was the name of Nitty Gritty’s father, and in an interview with UMBC Magazine Raye recalled that she wasn’t exactly sure “why the mascot received that name [True Grit instead of Nitty Gritty]… other than it sounded bold and strong—like the [school’s] team.” Nitty Gritty later had the honor of pulling a black cloth off the statue of himself at the statue’s inauguration.
During the unveiling ceremony on December 7, 1987, UMBC Chancellor Michael Hooker instituted a new tradition for the young university: rubbing True Grit’s nose for good luck. At the unveiling, Hooker remarked, “Tradition is exceedingly important. We used to be young [but] we are adults now. It is appropriate that we begin a new tradition.” Since its unveiling, the Retriever statue has remained a beloved campus landmark, often greeting students with a student newspaper in its mouth or bedecked with a cap and gown during graduation. Students continue to stop by during finals to rub True Grit’s nose, now discolored due to almost thirty years of UMBC students and faculty taking part in a campus-wide tradition.
Visitors and students driving onto the University of Maryland, Baltimore County campus often wonder about the unexpected white silo that stands near the entrance to I-95. The silo is one of few remaining reminders of Spring Grove Hospital which was located on the site of UMBC from 1867 to the 1960s.
Albin O. Kuhn, the university’s first chancellor, pushed to keep the silo in place for a few reasons. Kuhn claimed the structure reminded him of his childhood growing up on a farm. He joked that the silo would be called “the Kuhn Silo because they knew that I had a farm background or an interest in, in fact, farming.” More practically, he suggested it would be difficult to move as “those are fairly heavy concrete things to remove.” So Kuhn conceded and said “Well, let [that] thing stand. It won’t bother anybody and it will be sort of a memory of the fact that this once was used as a farm for the Spring Grove.”
Spring Grove Hospital, formerly known as The Maryland Hospital for the Insane, moved from downtown Baltimore to Catonsville in 1872. The Maryland General Assembly intended for the hospital to “provide for the relief of indigent sick persons, and for the reception and care of lunatics” in the Baltimore region. To do this, the proprietors of Spring Grove used agricultural labor as a source of moral building. As part of their therapy, patients performed agricultural labor, grew their own food, and turned up a profit for the institution. This was especially the case in rough economic times, like the early 1930s, when the hospital had to cut the budget for patient care. However, the lack of strong income from these farming methods eventually outweighed their supposed moral good. By the 1960s, the hospital’s farm was operating at a reduced capacity.
Therefore, when administrators began planning for the UMBC campus, the acreage seemed more appealing as a college than a space for patient therapy. In the 1960s, the Commissioner of Mental Hygiene for the state of Maryland deemed the program no longer crucial to the hospital’s future. Instead, Spring Grove sold the land to make way for UMBC. Though there are few remaining reminders of Spring Grove Hospital that can be seen on the UMBC campus today, the white silo has stood, and continues to stand, as a direct link to UMBC’s historic roots.
When the University Center, known on campus as “the UC,” opened its doors in 1982 it definitively moved student life to the academic center of UMBC’s campus with a goal of cultivating a cohesive, unified community for students, faculty, and staff.
The UC, located between academic buildings Meyerhoff Hall and Sherman Hall, provided the campus community with a variety of amenities, including the campus bookstore, a dining room, a ballroom, and lounge space. Students who commuted and those who lived on campus enjoyed meals in the UC Pub or congregated outside on the patio. The UC provided office space for some student organizations, such as the Student Government Association and the Retriever, UMBC’s student newspaper, and storage space for others.
UMBC began to outgrow the UC within the first decade of its operation as the result of increased student enrollment and already limited student space. In 2002, the university completed construction of a new student center, the Commons, that took on many of the student centered functions of the old UC in a larger space, including housing the campus bookstore, dining amenities, and lounge space. The UC is still used by UMBC students. On a nice sunny day, visitors might see students congregating on the outdoor patio, drinking coffee, or eating lunch on the first floor of the building. The UC ballroom remains a popular venue for banquets and performances by student organizations. The Retriever Weekly newspaper and WMBC, UMBC’s radio station, have their offices in the UC.
Home to the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, the Psychology Center for Community Collaboration, and the English Language Institute, the UC is indeed changing its function over time. In 2009, campus administration announced plans for a full renovation of the UC intended to provide space for new traditional classrooms and active learning spaces, transforming into the aptly named University Learning Center.
University of Maryland, Baltimore County shares in a unique American college phenomenon of open or green spaces. Campus open spaces—places set aside for students, faculty and staff to gather informally or formally—help to shape a sense of community for universities across the country. These areas are a unique part of American college culture, something that cannot be seen in the tight and rigorous design of European universities which often have academic buildings spanning for blocks on end with few open spaces in sight.
UMBC’s most important public greenspace, the Quad, is bordered by Academic Row, the Commons, and the Retriever Athletic Center. The Quad provides the campus with a space for campus related or recreational activities, relaxation, and even class space in good weather. Having been used over the years for student protest, social celebrations, and more, the Quad has been a place where students can congregate outside of the academic buildings and structures on campus.
Throughout UMBC’s history, students have often used the Quad as a gathering place for celebrations. UMBC held the first graduation commencement on the in 1970. Involvement Fest, a day which gives students a chance to meet and learn about the various student clubs and organizations at UMBC, is held on the Quad every year. Most notably, Quadmania, an annual event in the spring featuring musical concerts, food, and other activities was first held on the Quad on September 19, 1981. The event was, and still is, intended to celebrate the campus, the coming of spring, and the nearing end of the school year.
The Quad is not only used for celebrations—it has also served as a meeting space for students to express their concerns or rally together in opposition to various proposals or events. In the late 1970s, students gathered on the Quad to express their disapproval of the Maryland Higher Education Commission proposing to merge UMBC with University of Maryland, College Park. The rally, organized by the Student Government Association (SGA) and other student organizations, included more than 1,000 students and was the largest in UMBC history at the time.
The Quad is just one of several open spaces on campus. Others include the library pond and Erickson Field, east of the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery. Open and green spaces across the UMBC campus, provide the university with a unique way for students to come together as a community. Students can, as they have in the past, use these spaces as they see fit—for gathering, learning, rallying, or relaxing.
In 1990, Catonsville resident Charlie Kucera discovered an illegal garbage dump at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County where the bwTech@UMBC Research and Technology Park is located today. The university cleared away the contents of the dump relatively quickly, but the residents of Catonsville saw the discovery as evidence that UMBC did not care about the environment. This incident worsened the already strained relationship between the residents of Arbutus and Catonsville and the UMBC administration.
The next year, UMBC announced to the public their plans for a research park—the first university research park in the state of Maryland. While some residents were enthusiastic about the possible job opportunities and improvement to the local economy, Charlie Kucera and other residents were unconvinced of the park’s potential. Their opinion of the university had been damaged by their discovery of the dump, on top of which, they were concerned about adding another large scale building in close proximity to their homes and were wary of increased traffic and possible chemical leaks which could harm the environment.
Despite the community’s objections, plans for the research park continued. Residents felt slighted by the university’s unwillingness to incorporate them in the decision making process. These discrepancies led to a series of zoning conflicts between Arbutus, Catonsville, and UMBC administrators lasting for nearly a decade, halting any and all construction. When UMBC finally agreed to scale back the size of the research park in 2000, work began on the bwTech@UMBC Research and Technology Park.
Since the completion of the first buildings in 2002, the research park continues to be a thriving asset to the university. The research park’s two campuses, bwTech@UMBC North and BWTech@UMBC South, are both nationally recognized science and technology business parks that provide a home for over ninety different technological companies and research institutions to this day.
In the summer of 1976, Marc O’Carroll, a student and artist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), designed and installed the Mnemonic sculpture next to the campus’ Fine Arts Building. The sculpture, a collection of steel trees displayed in various stages of being chopped down, brought a unique appeal to an institution that seemed overly engrossed with rapidly expanding in size and scope at any cost necessary.
As a student at the university, Marc O’Carroll grew fond of a massive and ancient sycamore tree that was located behind the school’s Dining Hall. The sycamore had stood on the campus years before administrators had begun planning for the UMBC campus. However, university workers cut down the tree in 1976 to build a short driveway for trucks to pull into during the construction of the new University Center. When O’Carroll was commissioned by the university to construct a sculpture project, he decided to pay homage to the destroyed sycamore tree by building the Mnemonic. O’Carroll intended for the sculpture to stand as a memorial to all the trees that had been cut down to make way for new campus construction projects during the 1970s.
By welding his memories in steel, Marc O’Carroll created a dynamic sculpture that invites people to reminisce about nature and its surroundings. Although the artist is no longer at UMBC and neither is the massive sycamore tree, the Mnemonic carries on the memories of both.
The Joseph Beuys Sculpture Park was established in April 2001 as part of a larger tree-planting effort that supported projects across the Baltimore region. Designer Renee van der Stelt, project coordinator for UMBC’s Fine Arts Gallery, now the Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture, developed the Joseph Beuys Tree Partnership with a mission to “extend beyond the gallery walls [and] bring art to the people.” Joseph Beuys, a German avant-garde artist who emphasized natural materials in his work, inspired the new sculpture park—especially his most famous piece: 7000 Oaks.
Between 1982 and 1987 residents of Kassel, Germany planted 7,000 oak trees in the town and installed a stone next to each tree. As the oaks grow, the stones erode, nourishing the soil around the trees. “The intention of such a tree-planting event,” Beuys explained in a 1982 interview, “is to point up the transformation of all of life, of society, and of the whole ecological system.” Beuys believed that all of nature and humanity are in relationship with one another and this inter-connectedness is represented by both the installation itself and by the collaboration necessary to bring the art into existence. He called this type of partnership “social sculpture.”
In the fall of 2000, hundreds of children and adults pitched in to bring “social sculpture” to Baltimore. With help from nearly two dozen community organizations, the Joseph Beuys Tree Partnership organized volunteers to plant trees and rocks throughout the city. Annapolis-based TKF Foundation, an organization that promotes its mission of peace through the development of green space, provided funding for the Tree Partnership. The volunteers planted trees in Patterson Park, Wyman Park Dell, and Carroll Park in Baltimore. Later, stones were installed in each park to continue the Beuys model. The thirty oak trees and thirty granite stones planted on the UMBC campus in spring 2001 completed the project.
Visitors to the UMBC Sculpture Park can find a journal stored under one of the benches. The book provides an opportunity for visitors to contribute to the social sculpture by recording their thoughts and feelings. In 2011, the journal entries became source material for a music and dance program entitled “Creative Acts: Site Specific Dance & Music in Joseph Beuys Sculpture Park.” UMBC students composed and performed the music for a program hosted by the UMBC Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture (CADVC). Their original works expressed “a dialogue between the human instinct to preserve and enjoy nature while also transforming and polluting it.” They encouraged the audience to add to the journal during the performance, continuing the interactions that make up the social sculpture.
The Joseph Beuys Sculpture Garden, along with its sister parks throughout Baltimore, is a space in which the art is constantly changing. Its material is not just the wood and stone, but the oxygen which the trees contribute to the air to combat the car exhaust from the adjacent parking lot, the minerals slowly eroding into the soil from the granite, and the deep breath that a harried college student takes when she stops for a moment on the bench and records her frustrations in the field journal. All are in relationship, and all are participating in the social sculpture.
By 1990, administrators at University of Maryland, Baltimore County faced a problem. The student body had outgrown the University Center within just a decade of its opening. They considered the solution of building a new activity space to make two campus centers, but students spoke up with a clear demand. In order to continue building the campus community, there could only be one campus center. No space remained on the campus’ “academic row,” an area of the campus consisting of academic buildings, to build an addition to the existing University Center so the university planned the construction of a brand-new student center called the Commons to open in 2002.
A collaboration between Perry Dean Rogers and Design Collective architectural firms, the Commons was designed to shift the center of campus life from “academic row” to a new, emerging quad facing many of the residence halls to the north and east. The university planned to build the Commons on the foundation of Gym I, one of UMBC’s original campus buildings, which housed physical education space and the Commuter Cafeteria. After UMBC funded improvements for the Retriever Athletic Center, the amenities of Gym I were no longer needed, allowing the campus to build the Commons in its place.
While there was a consensus among students, faculty, and administrators that UMBC needed the Commons, there was conflict as to how to pay for it. Students and families worried about the increase in fees placed on students in order to finance the space. Business owners in Arbutus and Catonsville worried that the potential retail space in the new building would create competition between local businesses and isolate students from their surrounding communities. Despite these concerns, UMBC pushed ahead and built what President Freeman Hrabowski believed would be a “university commons for the entire university.”
When the Commons opened on the first day of the spring semester in 2002, students appreciated expanded services and amenities previously located at the University Center, such as additional meeting space for all student organizations, a flexible performance space, retail space, and study areas. The innovative design of the Commons—marked by two larger corridors that intersect at the center and the use of glass walls to light up the space—won a design award from the Maryland Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Most importantly, this functional and aesthetically pleasing space is student-centered with a majority of the spaces controlled by students themselves.
Originally built in the face of projected enrollment increases, the Commons remains a bustling center of campus activity. However, as UMBC continues to grow, a larger student space will need to be constructed to meet continuing population increases. A new Student Services and Student Life building is slated to be constructed in the future to address some of the strains currently placed on the Commons.
More than a century before UMBC situated itself on Hilltop Circle another educational institution formed here; its mission was to advance the reformation of a poor lot of "indigent boys" from Baltimore.
The Baltimore Manual Labor School for indigent boys, also known as the Arbutus Farm School, was established in 1841. The school emerged from of a larger social movement developing in urban Victorian society at the time. Amidst the energetic fervor of the Second Great Awakening, white, middle-class Americans began actively participating in a reform movement to change the lives of the poor, inner-city population. Industrialization in the early nineteenth century brought extreme population growth to urban centers. In Baltimore, the population grew six fold between the years of 1820 and 1860. Specialized private and federal institutions formed to battle a rise in young people living in poverty. They began working to relocate children from what they saw as unpromising home environments to more positive atmospheres. The school provided a, “Free Boarding School for indigent boys, mostly sons of poor widows who are unable to feed, clothe, and train their boys during the years that they should be acquiring an education, to enable each to attain a position of self support.” The School opened its doors in 1841 with fifteen “destitute and orphaned boy[s].” By 1843, the Baltimore Manual Labor School had taken into its care a total of forty-two children. By applying the boys to a rigorous program centered primarily on physical labor, the school intended to mold the character of these young men, while at the same time supplying them with applicable work skills, effectively generating productive members of society. In 1893, directors of the Baltimore Manual Labor School wrote:
“the best occupation we can train our boys up to, is that of a farmer. It is perhaps almost the only calling which is not overcrowded, and the one most likely to produce an honorable and independent livelihood for the boys who have no capital, but health and energy.”The types of farm work included tending to the orchards, vegetable gardens, green houses and livestock. The boys attended educational classes including writing, reading and math. They also attended the Catonsville Methodist Church on Sundays and engaged in daily religious exercises. However, education and religion took a backseat to manual labor which required of a six hour daily shift from each child, even for young boys. The school admitted boys as young as five. In 1922, Spring Grove Hospital purchased the land following a devastating fire in 1916. The Stabler family owned the property and helped to run the school. Family patriarch Edmund Stabler held the position of superintendent from 1884 to 1904. Interestingly, the hospital used the farmland for a patient agricultural rehabilitation program. The state incorporated this and adjacent tracts of land in the early 1960’s in order to create UMBC. The Stabler home was used by Dr. Albin O. Kuhn, UMBC’s first Chancellor, during the construction of the campus and the Albin O. Kuhn Library now occupies the site where the home stood.
Leon's is Baltimore's oldest continuously operating gay bar. The bar’s current name comes from Leon Lampe, who owned the bar during the 1930s. 870 Park Avenue was never a speakeasy though Leon Lampe and his brother Sam ran several speakeasies during Prohibition. They were also into insurance fraud, racketeering, witness tampering and bootlegging. After WWII, the bar became a hangout for beatniks and artists with a mix of gay and straight patrons. Since 1957, Leon’s has operated as a gay bar.
It is rumored that in its early days as a gay bar, patrons had to say a password before they were let in the door: “Are you a friend of Dorothy?” A common identifier among gay men at that time, the phrase is a reference to Dorothy Gale of the Wizard of Oz—reportedly for Dorothy's acceptance of her friends despite their unusual identities.
This location once served as home for the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Baltimore. In 1977, activists involved with the Baltimore Gay Alliance (BGA), established two years earlier in 1975, decided to split that organization into two separate entities. The BGA remained a political organization, and the GLCCB became a new support services organization. One reason for the change was the need to secure 501(c)3 nonprofit status for the GLCCB. GLCCB initially located at 2133 Maryland Avenue in a small basement suite of rooms. The offices had a room for a men's STD screening clinic, counseling services, and meeting space. Gail Vivino, who was very involved with the BGA, lived in Charles Village at the time, and she opened the basement of her home at 2745 N. Calvert Street to house the GLCCB's switchboard. The house also served as a production space for The Gay Paper, established in 1979.
In 1980, the GLCCB purchased the building at 241 West Chase Street to bring all of the organization’s activities under a single roof. Much of the fundraising in 1979 and 1980 that put together the down payment for the building was done by Harvey Schwartz, who served as the first paid employee of the organization. Early efforts to renovate the building, which had formerly been a car dealership, then a pinball warehouse, were helped along by donations of labor, materials, and cash. Lambda Rising, an LGBT bookstore owned by Deacon McCubbin, was located on the first floor of the GLCCB from 1986 until 2008.
After more than thirty-four years at 241 West Chase Street, the GLCCB moved to the Waxter Center in February 2014. It occupies a suite of offices on the third floor of the building and still maintains the programs and services it offered at its previous location.
The Health Education Resource Organization (HERO) was founded in 1983 by Dr. Bernie Branson at the former Medical Arts Building on Read Street. Over the next two decades, HERO grew to become Baltimore's oldest and largest HIV and AIDS service provider and the first grassroots community based organization in Baltimore to help people with HIV and AIDS.
Dr. Branson was one of a number of physicians with offices at the 1927 building. What set Branson apart was that he was gay physician who cared for a large number of gay men as patients. Between 1978 and 1982, Bran served as the medical director for venereal disease clinic for gay men that later became the Chase-Brexton Medical Clinic. After a new and horrible disease began to strike some of his patients, Branson started hosting a small support group in the waiting room of his eighth-floor office.
Two years earlier, in 1981, the Centers for Disease Control had labeled this disease “GRID”—gay-related immune deficiency. With little known about the condition, the name contributed to the stigmatization of gay men with the condition and many health care providers refused to provide care to HIV-infected patients. By the end of 1981, there were 234 known cases across country. By 1987, there were over forty thousand people infected with HIV (the virus that causes AIDS) living in the U.S.
From its humble beginnings with a support group, a hotline, and a small grant from the Goldseker Foundation, HERO soon became a major provider of AIDS education and patient services in the state. In 1984, HERO held the first conference on AIDS in the Black community at the Baltimore Convention Center. The group's AIDS walks attracted 10,000 people at the height of their popularity, and the World Health Organization turned to HERO as a consultant as it worked to set up similar programs around the globe. The organization offered a variety of services: a buddy system that relied on support from hundreds of volunteers; a drop-in resource center; clinical, legal, educational, and counseling services; and even a place to do laundry and collect mail.
Branson left Baltimore in 1990 for a career at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. HERO had become an organization with a national and international reputation for exemplary care. Unfortunately, the organization closed in 2008 amid allegations of fiscal mismanagement, which impeded its ability to do effective fundraising. In 2009, the Medical Arts Building where HERO started was converted to apartments by builders Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse and architect Kann Partners. Despite the organization's sad demise, HERO should be remembered for the many valuable services that it offered to so many people.
Chase Brexton Health Care was founded in 1978 as a gay men's STD screening clinic. The clinic operated as program of the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Baltimore from 1978 until 1989. In 1989, Chase Brexton became an independent healthcare provider retaining its ties to the LGBT community and greatly expanding its health care services. As an acknowledgement of their origins, the new organization took the name Chase Brexton because the GLCCB was located at the intersection of Chase and Brexton Streets. After operating many years at Cathedral and Eager Streets, Chase Brexton Health Services purchased the Monumental Life Building at 1111 North Charles Street in 2012 and by the end of 2013 had transformed the buildings from offices into a new health clinic. The work included repairing the limestone exterior, even keeping and repairing the signature gold lettering spelling out “MONUMENTAL LIFE.” Original marble walls and floors were restored and imitation gold leaf ceiling was refinished using the original methods. An original wood-paneled 1928 board room was fully restored after having been subdivided into offices. The move enabled Chase Brexton to continue to expand its services to the broader community while maintaining its long standing ties to the LGBT community in the Mount Vernon neighborhood. An iconic Mount Vernon Building had not only found a new owner, but found a new life and promises to serve as a great asset for years to come.
Family-owned since 1930, Zissimos lays claim to being the oldest business in operation on the Avenue.
In Charles Barton's 1948 romp, The Noose Hangs High, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello argue over shrimp cocktails. Abbott tells Costello to imagine he's in Grand Central station with a ticket in his pocket. Where is he going? Costello doesn't understand why he should be going anywhere, but Abbott presses him:
"I'll go to Baltimore," Costello says.Lou Costello's connection to Baltimore was more than casual. His aunt, Eva Zissimos, owned Zissimos Bar with her husband, Atha. Eva would host Costello when he was passing through town. His exploits at Zissimos became a riotous neighborhood event. He was known to tapdance on the bar and hand out autographed one-dollar bills to children. Costello was fond of his Baltimore family. During a show at the Hippodrome, he invited Eva's four year old granddaughter, Leiloni Pardue, to perform on stage with him. The last time Lou Costello came to Baltimore was in 1957 on his way to Washington D.C. to perform at President Eisenhower's second Inauguration. He died two years later of a heart attack. Lou Costello's antics at Zissimos are just a small part of the bar's legacy. Zissimos lays claim to being the oldest business in operation on the Avenue. It has been family owned since 1930. Atha and Eva chose the Thirty-Sixth street location because of Hampden's sizeable Greek population. The biggest Greek name in Hampden was Theodore Cavacos. He was the unofficial mayor of Hampden and owned vast swaths of property in the area, including the lucrative Cavacos Drugstore. By the end of the 1950s, there were over a dozen Greek owned establishments in Hampden, several of which were owned by members of the Zissimos family, including a dry cleaners and a restaurant. The history of Zissimos is long and eclectic. Before the building's renovation in 2014, Zissimos looked like a bunker–a fortified brick facade with a sliver of an opening for a window. The facade replaced a large picture window from which Atha sold hamburgers and hotdogs. The window met a violent end after William Zissimos and his brother Louis took over in 1955. Louis was an undefeated heavyweight boxer in the Navy and took a no-nonsense approach to running the bar. Rowdy patrons who picked a fight with him were thrown out the window, and after shattering the glass too many times, the window became irreparable. Zissimos is a much warmer place today, in large part due to the efforts of its current owner, Geli Ioannou, who married into the Zissimos family. Geli renovated Zissimos and opened the upstairs, once the home where Eva served Lou Costello hot meals, and turned it into the space for the bar's comedy night, "Who's on First?"."Of all the towns in the United States, why did you have to pick Baltimore?"
"I got friends in Baltimore!"
During World War II, the SS John W. Brown belonged to a fleet of 2,700 Liberty Ships transporting war materiel and allied troops across dangerous waters. Today, the ship is one of just two Liberty Ships still sailing and serves as a unique memorial museum ship based out of Baltimore.
During World War II, the SS John W. Brown belonged to a fleet of 2,700 Liberty Ships transporting war materiel and allied troops across dangerous waters. Today, the ship is one of just two Liberty Ships still sailing and serves as a unique memorial museum ship based out of Baltimore.
Liberty Ships were born in 1941 out of a an urgent need for cargo ships that could be built quickly during the war. Originally designed by the British, the U.S Maritime Commission modified the design to meet U.S shipbuilding standards, accommodate the shortage of ship-building supplies, and build as quickly and cheaply as possible. What was the result? A fleet of ships commonly known as “emergency ships” or “ugly ducklings” because of their basic appearance. Their name changed, however, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt told the nation that the fleet of ships would bring liberty to Europe. From then on, everyone called them Liberty Ships.
On September 7, 1942, Labor Day, the SS John W. Brown launched at the Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyard. The Brown was one of six Liberty ships launched that day—each named after a different labor leader. The Brown is named after John W. Brown, a labor leader and union organizer from Maine who had died in an accident in 1941. Despite over 200 ships being lost to enemy combat, fire, collision, or other disasters, the ability of American shipyards could build Liberty Ships cheaply and at a large scale made it possible for supplies to continue reaching the allied forces fighting in Europe and the Pacific. Between the beginning and end of the Emergency Shipbuilding Plan, an average of 52 Liberty Ships were constructed per month at ports all over the United States.
SS John W. Brown made thirteen voyages over the course of four years in support of the Allied war effort. She pulled into ports in Iran, Central America, Tunisia, the Caribbean, and Brazil. In 1944, she directly participated in Operation Dragoon, the invasion of Southern France. Her cargo included U.S. troops going to and from Europe, prisoners of war, and a variety of raw materials, such as bauxite (an aluminum ore).
In 1946, the government loaned the Brown to the City of New York, where she became a floating maritime high school, the only one in the United States. For 36 years, thousands of students received training that prepared them to begin careers in the Merchant Marine. Students learned about maintenance and cargo handling in the Deck Department; how to operate the steam plant and auxiliary machinery in the engine department; and how to cook for their classmates and keep the galley stocked and clean in the Stewards Department. Students and instructors lovingly cared for the ship up until the school closed in 1982.
The careful maintenance eased the way for a group of volunteers, who formed Project Liberty Ship in 1988, to restore the SS John W. Brown to sailing condition. The SS John W. Brown returned to her home in Baltimore and was rededicated as a memorial museum ship. She honors the memory of the shipyard workers, merchant seamen, and Naval Armed Guard who built, sailed, and defended the Liberty fleet. Though usually docked in Canton, she shifts to the Inner Harbor and Canton occasionally. She also makes several Living History Cruises per year.
Baltimore’s Locust Point was a rapidly growing neighborhood between the Civil War and 1920. One major factor in the neighborhood’s growth was an immigration pier and depot built in 1867 by the B&O Railroad and the North German Lloyd Shipping Company. Over 1.2 million immigrants landed at the pier between 1868 and 1914, making Baltimore the third largest port of entry in the U.S. at the time (after New York and Boston). B&O extended their railroad tracks up to the pier for the many travellers who purchased a combination ship and rail passage. Most of the earliest immigrants came from Germany but, by the 1890s, a larger number of people came from the Russian and Austrian Empires. Seeing the ever growing number of immigrants, the local German United Evangelical Christ Church decided in 1904 to build a mission house, known as Immigrant House. The mission offered immigrants room and board, clothing, help in finding work, English lessons, and religious ministry. Sailors from the North German Lloyd ships could also stay there when their ships were in port. By 1916, the pastor reported that 3,710 people had stayed at the mission since it opened 12 years earlier. While “The Great Wave of Immigration” from Europe ended in Baltimore with the outbreak of the first World War, Immigrant House remained a boarding home for sailors until the 1930s and truck drivers until the 1950s. Since then, the building has been used for church offices, storage, daycare, and Sunday school. The original boarding rooms on the second and third floors remained unoccupied and unchanged, though in deteriorating condition. Baltimore City designated both the church and Immigrant House as local landmarks in 2006. The Baltimore Immigration Memorial, Inc. (BIM), formerly the Baltimore Immigration Project, was established to preserve and publicize the history of the 1.2 million immigrants who came here. In 2006, this group led the effort to design and install a sculpture garden, Liberty Garden, at the end of Hull Street on the grounds of what is now the property of Under Armour. The immigrants had disembarked at Piers 8 and 9, which were once located nearby. BIM and the Locust Point Community UCC have since worked together for the creation of the Baltimore Immigration Museum on the ground floor of Immigrant House on Beason Street, not far from the Liberty Garden. The museum’s initial exhibit tells the story of global immigration in the nineteenth century, with an emphasis on the U.S. and Baltimore between 1830 and 1914. The stories of Baltimore’s major immigrant groups are told, as well as the story of anti-immigrant movements of the past. Future projects at the Baltimore Immigration Museum will focus on migration and immigration since 1914, including the history of the migration of African Americans to Baltimore from 1914 to 1970, as well as the “new” immigrants, both Latino and Asian, who have arrived in Baltimore since the liberalization of U.S. immigration laws in 1965.
Built in 1914 for Eastwick Motors, Baltimore’s first Ford dealership, 120 West North Avenue has been home to a surprising array of owners and occupants. After its days with Eastwick (a proud supporter of Amoco gasoline and its American Oil Company Baltimore roots), the building changed hands several times. Subsequent dealers sold cars from mostly forgotten manufacturers including Graham Page, Desoto, and Plymouth. By the mid 1930s, Kernan Motors owned the building and sold Nash, Willys, and Jeep vehicles. As North Avenue transitioned from a corridor for car dealerships, the building became vacant several times before finally becoming home to the Lombard Office Furniture company in the late 1970s. The business sold well-used metal office furniture. In 2005, the building became an arts center that included the Single Carrot theatre, a gallery, and studios. The name of the space came about by creatively deleting letters from the existing signage. So, “Lombard Office Furniture” became “Load of Fun” Gallery. Unfortunately, 120 West North Avenue required major renovations to meet the necessary building codes. BARCO, an arts-based development group, acquired the building in 2013 and began making the necessary changes in order to reopen as a hub for the arts. In 2014, the Baltimore Sun quoted project director Amy Bonitz on the unique historic elements of the building:
"The beauty is nobody has messed up the interior. Some of the wonderful features we've uncovered include the original [auto] showroom with a mezzanine where the managers could oversee the work happening throughout the first floor, including the rooms where the sales agreements were finalized.The front facade also contains beautiful leaded-glass windows with large, pivot windows that will be fully restored. The third floor is also a wide-open space with large skylights where mechanics used to work on cars. We will be saving and preserving the old freight elevator that brought the cars up to the upper floors for servicing as well."The Motor House held a grand reopening in January 2016 with space for performances, artists, a cafe, and gallery.
The Baltimore County Almshouse officially opened in 1874 as a public home for the county's indigent, elderly, and infirm residents. Since its closure, the Almshouse has housed the Historical Society of Baltimore County (founded in 1959), and a variety of County government offices and other nonprofits.
The Baltimore County Almshouse officially opened in 1874 as a public home for the county's indigent, elderly, and infirm residents. The Almshouse and its predecessors were the ancestors of today’s nursing homes, mental health hospitals, homeless shelters, and other social services and health care facilities. After Baltimore City and County separated in 1851, the County took over one of two original almshouses that had served Baltimore: Calverton, founded in 1819. The County sold the aging Calverton facility in the 1870s and built a new almshouse farther north. Originally called the Upland Home, the third and final almshouse is now known simply as "the Almshouse."
The project of building the Almshouse began in 1871 when County Commissioners purchased property in the village of Texas, Maryland, from Dr. John Galloway. Galloway also served as one of the Almshouse's early physicians. Builders Codling and Lishear, following designs by local architect James Harrison, used locally quarried limestone to erect the four-story edifice. In 1872, the Sun reported how the main home was "constructed of the best material and in the most substantial manner" and claimed the building would "be a credit to the county." After a total outlay of nearly $60,000, seventy-four "inmates," as residents were known, moved in on January 8, 1874.
Housing for inmates at the Almshouse was rigidly segregated by race and gender. The County built the "Pest House" (short for pestilence), a small structure down the hill from the main home, to quarantine residents with contagious diseases. Far more often, the Pest House served as segregated housing for African American men. In the main building, white men and women lived in the front wing (on separate floors) and African American women lived in the back wing. The Almshouse superintendent reserved the first floor for himself and his family, along with any resident physicians and other privileged employees.
The Almshouse property included a farm of well over 100 acres and able-bodied residents were expected to work as farmhands or within the home in cooking, sewing, laundry or childcare, to help provide for their own upkeep. While the farm was generally described as productive in various reports over the years, the County still spent thousands of dollars annually on items like coal, bread, beef, fertilizer, medicine and salaries. Records from the late nineteenth century show expenditures totaling $7,200 in 1869, $12,520 in 1883 and $11,345 in 1886, for example. Salary expenditures went mainly to the twelve superintendents who oversaw the Almshouse from 1874 to 1958, with varying degrees of success (at least according to accounts in the press, which sometimes carried a whiff of partisan bias). The last two superintendents, who served from 1907 to 1959, were father and son, John P. and William Chilcoat. On balance, the Chilcoats seemed to earn more praise than their predecessors for their care of residents and effective oversight of the farm. William Chilcoat, for instance, was credited with lobbying successfully to secure County funds in 1938 to add more meat and eggs and otherwise upgrade the residents' diet.
The vast majority of inmates are now only knowable through the basic details recorded in the Almshouse ledger books, held in the collections of the Historical Society of Baltimore County. The ledgers recorded residents' age, sex, race, and place of birth. Unsurprisingly, the impoverished Almshouse population included many African Americans and immigrants over the years. A 1946 census of the eighty-nine residents, for example, noted fifteen African Americans and fifteen foreign-born whites, mainly from Germany, Poland, Russia and Ireland. Most of the American-born residents in 1946 came from Maryland, but eighteen were natives of other US states. Some residents registered under partial or false names—a "Daniel Boone" entered on October 1, 1891, and the facility admitted a "Napolean Bonaparte" on June 12, 1899—reflecting the distressed circumstances that sent them to the Almshouse. Some unfortunates came to the Almshouse only in death, to be buried in unmarked graves in the potter’s field on the grounds. We do know a bit more about some individuals. In 1943, the Towson Jeffersonian profiled Fannie Williams, a 104-year-old African American woman and the oldest occupant of the Almshouse. Williams had lived there for forty-one years, "earning her keep" by helping the superintendent’s wife with cleaning and, after she became wheelchair-bound, mending clothes for other residents. Before entering the Almshouse, Williams had worked as a domestic servant in Baltimore County homes. Other residents occasionally landed in the newspapers under more unfortunate circumstances, like Anthony Rose, an elderly white resident who fell down the Almshouse’s elevator shaft and died in 1909.
In the early decades, the facility had a persistent problem with overcrowding, especially during the cold winter months. From 1874 to 1914, more than 10,000 people passed through the Almshouse’s doors as “inmates,” committed to public care for reasons ranging from disabilities to dementia to diseases like measles and tuberculosis. Over time, however, public and private alternatives emerged for those who did not have families able or willing to house and care for them. The founding of the State Lunacy Commission in the early 1890s marked growing concern over the treatment of the mentally ill and disabled. Those considered "insane," who in an earlier era might have lived in an almshouse, were increasingly placed in "asylums." As retirement communities and nursing homes became more common over the twentieth century, the need for almshouses declined further. In 1958, Baltimore County officials closed the historic facility, citing costs.
Since its closure, the Almshouse has housed the Historical Society of Baltimore County (founded in 1959), and a variety of County government offices and other nonprofits. In 1980, the Almshouse was added to the County Landmarks List. Today, the Historical Society maintains its collections and offices, runs a research center for the public, and holds events in this historic structure. The surrounding community of Cockeysville enjoys the open spaces and greenery of the sprawling former grounds, now County Home Park.
Completed in 1872 as a “Cathedral of Methodism,” the Norman-Gothic Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church was a signature achievement for the noted Baltimore architects Thomas Dixon and Charles L. Carson. It was also at first an immense source of aggravation to its neighbors. By the 1870s, Mount Vernon had become the place to live for Baltimore’s elite, and Mount Vernon Place with the Washington Monument was the central jewel of the community. The church’s heavy presence off the north park, green serpentine stone amidst the Baltimore brick and more subdued color palate, and steeple that reached nearly to the top of President Washington’s head sparked a great deal of angst. The fact that the church replaced the house where Francis Scott Key passed away did not help sooth the neighbors. The house was the home of Key’s daughter and her husband, Elizabeth Phoebe Key and Charles Howard. After its early days, however, the church has become a central and admired part of Mount Vernon Place. Architecturally, it was built of striking green serpentine stone, as well as buff, olive and red sandstone. Architects Dixon and Carson embellished it with polished granite columns and carved designs taken from nature. Its many gothic details of flying buttresses, a tower, and arches are purely esthetic in function, as the building is constructed over an iron framework. There are even grotesque stone faces above the windows on the west front (three full cut, two in profile) said to be likenesses of prominent persons living at the time the church was built. On the inside, the church is notable for its iron supporting columns, carved wooden beams, and stained glass cross window over the pulpit. In addition to its architecture, the church’s congregation has made its mark on Baltimore as well. The group began in a building on Lovely Lane (intersecting today’s Redwood Street downtown) and is credited with launching the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States in 1784. The current church on Mount Vernon Place is the congregation’s fourth home. In addition to its spiritual work, the congregation has provided innumerable secular services to Baltimore. In World War II, the church provided beds, food and entertainment to servicemen returning from the front. Beginning in the 1970s, they led efforts to help runaway teenagers and victims of drug abuse, and began a service organization to engage young Baltimoreans in helping their city. The congregation today continues its service to Baltimore in many ways, including opening to 91ĘÓƵ and the curious public.
Stretching along Calvert Street between Madison and Monument Streets, stands a massive Italianate palace, built for the Society of Jesus, a Catholic religious order. Decorating the facade are arched windows with elaborate moldings, and a heavy Italianate cornice that tie together the St. Ignatius Church on the northern half (designed by Louis L. Long and completed in 1856) with Loyola College and Loyola High School on the southern half (designed by O’Connor and Delaney of New York and finished in 1899).
During the 1850s, a wave of anti-Catholic sentiment swept American politics. The populist Know-Nothing Party emerged as a powerful political party characterized by xenophobia and skepticism of wealthy and intellectual elites—and only open to Protestant men. The Know-Nothing agenda called for barring public funding of Catholic schools and reinforcing Protestant values in public schools. In response, Archbishop of Baltimore Francis Kendrick asked the Jesuit Provincial to open a Catholic college. Loyola College opened in 1852 in two adjoining buildings near City Hall on Holliday Street. The college quickly outgrew the space and a new building was commissioned at Calvert and Madison streets. Classes began on February 22, 1855 and St. Ignatius Church opened its doors eighteen months later.
Architect Louis Long modeled the design of the church after the late Renaissance/Baroque Gesu in Rome, mother church of the Jesuits. The interior features an elaborate cornice and pilasters and vivid stained glass windows installed during the 1870s. The early church congregation was a cross-section of the city's Catholic population: native Baltimoreans, Irish and German immigrants, poor and wealthy. Church leaders set aside the basement of the building for African American parishioners, many of whom went on to found St. Francis Xavier, the first all African American Catholic Church in the United States.
Loyola College moved north to the Evergreen Campus in 1922. The southern section remained mostly vacant for decades until it was repurposed in the 1970s for Center Stage’s two theaters. The design was by James Grieves and the firm of Ziger, Hoopes, and Snead.
The St. Ignatius congregation shrank dramatically after World War II as a result of many Catholics moving from the city to the suburbs. In spite of declining numbers, the church remained in the core of the city and expanded its involvement in local communities, offering the building as a shelter for homeless people and starting a middle school for Baltimore City youth. In the 1990s, the church worked to lure suburban Catholics back to the church and doubled its congregation. The decade ended with a massive restoration led by Murphy & Dittenhafer Architects. The work included the restoration of the plasterwork, rich gilding, historic interior colors, and even some of the church’s nineteenth century paintings.
A fire erupted on the morning of February 7, 1904, in the dry goods firm of John E. Hurst & Co., on what is now Redwood Street. The blaze spread wildly out of control, consuming central Baltimore. In a panic and with few options, city engineers recommended demolishing buildings in the path of the fire to create an artificial firebreak. One building on the fire's path was Thomas O'Neill's department store at Lexington and Charles Streets. The Baltimore Sun reported how O'Neill, a devout Catholic, went to a Carmelite Convent on Biddle Street to pray for the safety of his building. He then rushed back to his store to stop the firefighters from setting the charges. Fortunately, the wind shifted so the fire and firefighters spared O'Neill's store from destruction. Thomas O'Neill was convinced that God had answered his prayers. When he died in 1919, he left two-thirds of his estate to the construction of a new cathedral in Baltimore. The Archdiocese of Baltimore selected the prominent architecture firm Maginnis, Walsh, and Kennedy to design the cathedral on a twenty-five acre lot in Homewood. The firm specialized in architecture for the Catholic Church. Their work in Baltimore included the main administration building for Saint Mary's Seminary and University, which is in the Beaux-Arts style. In 1948, Charles Donagh Maginnis, an Irish immigrant, received the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal for outstanding service to the profession, the institute's highest award. The architects were asked to come up with three designs: traditional, modified and modern. The Archdiocese chose the modified design which combined the traditional Gothic style with modern Art Deco elements. Workers broke ground in 1954, and completed the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in 1959. The massive cathedral is 163 feet tall and can seat up to 1,900 people. The cathedral is outfitted with two organs created by the M.P. Moeller Company of Hagerstown, Maryland. Today, the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen serves as the cathedral church of the Primary See, the first archdiocese of the United States and, together with the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, serves as one of two main centers of Catholic liturgical life in Baltimore. It is the third largest cathedral in the U.S. and has hosted several dignitaries over the years, including Pope John Paul II.
Watch our of the cathedral!
The L. Gordon & Son factory is a sixty-four thousand square foot industrial building on the corner of South Paca Street and West Cross Street, a few blocks from M&T Stadium. It is a three-story building of lightly-ornamented but utilitarian brick, with a Star of David design in the brickwork at the top. In the past century, the factory has housed at least four family businesses and each one has left their mark.
Fr. Bergner & Co. erected the factory on Paca Street, designed by architect J. Edward Sperry, in 1905. Two brothers, Frederick and William Bergner, ran the company for over 25 years manufacturing picture frames, photo albums, and other small luxuries. William died in 1902, leaving behind his parents, three brothers, and wife. It was Frederick who moved the business to the new factory and continued to oversee the company until his death in 1919.
The onset of the Great Depression, however, was a greater challenge than fire. In 1930, the company began leasing out the top floor of the Paca and Cross Street factory. In 1931, the company sold two tracts of land adjoining the Paca and Cross Street factory, one to the city to expand Sterrett Street, the other to the Catholic Church. By 1933, at the trial for a fraud case involving forty-two shares of Bergner & Co. stock, the prosecuting attorney implied that “the company consisted only of an empty warehouse.” In March 1933, Fr. Bergner & Co.’s remaining assets were seized, and in 1934 the court-appointed trustee sold the Paca and Cross Street factory to The Hopkins Place Savings Bank, who had held the mortgage for $47,000.By 1940, L. Gordon & Son was operating out of the Paca & Cross Street factory and they purchased the building in 1942. Paca and Cross Street was at least L. Gordon & Son’s third factory in the fifty years since its founding, but the firm would remain in that building for the next sixty years.
L. Gordon & Son was, as the name suggests, a family-owned business. Louis Gordon started the enterprise in 1891, making paper boxes by hand at his house on Orleans Street. He was a Russian Jewish immigrant, and his son Paul was, from the time he was a young man, an active participant in several Jewish and Zionist organizations in Baltimore.
Given his spiritual and political affiliations, it seems likely that Gordon installed the six-pointed star design at the top of the outer wall of the factory around the time they acquired the building. In 1897, the six-pointed star, known as a 'Magen David', was adopted as a symbol by the First Zionist Congress. From that point forward, the star became a symbol of Jewishness in general in the early twentieth century. The crest of Hadassah, the women’s branch of the American Zionist movement and the organization to which Paul Gordon's wife belonged, included the Magen David in their crest design at least as early as 1915.
After Paul's death the company passed to his son, Bertram I. Gordon. In 1951, L. Gordon & Son bought several lots surrounding their factory from Barnett L. Silver, who had spent the last decade buying them up from individual homeowners. Besides buying up half of the block at Paca & Cross Street, Gordon & Son also added a warehouse in 1967 at 2020 Hollins Ferry Road.
In May 1985, Bertram Gordon died of a heart attack. His widow Marjorie Gordon took over the company after his death, and it remained in operation at least through 1991. Marjorie Gordon died in 2009 at the age of eighty. The company sold the factory to Toybox, LLC, in 1997, and it has remained largely empty ever since.
The Maryland Center for History and Culture (MCHC) collects, preserves, and interprets the history, art, and culture of Maryland. Originally founded as the Maryland Historical Society in 1844, MCHC inspires critical thinking, creativity, and community by exploring multiple perspectives and sharing national stories through the lens of Maryland.
As the oldest continuously operating nonprofit cultural institution in the state, MCHC houses a collection of 7 million books, documents, manuscripts, and photographs, and 350,000 objects in its museum and library located in Baltimore. MCHC also serves as a leading center of Maryland history education for people of all ages.
In January 1844, a group of Maryland residents gathered in the offices of the Maryland Colonization Society at the Baltimore City Post Office and established the Maryland Historical Society. They proposed collecting the "remnants of the state’s history" and preserving their heritage through research, writing, and publications. By the end of the first year, the Maryland Historical Society (MdHS) had 150 members. The group quickly outgrew their rooms at the post office and their fireproof safe at the Franklin Street Bank could not hold the growing number of documents and artifacts donated to the institution.
The new committee started work on a grand home for Baltimore’s new cultural institution, including space for an art gallery. They hired Robert Carey Long, Jr., who designed the Athenaeum, a four-story "Italian palazzo" style building with a unique feature for the preservation-minded historical society: fireproof closets.
Membership and donations increased during the 1850s after the society settled in the Athenaeum. Visitors came out for art exhibitions and donated paintings and statues to the society collections. Baltimore philanthropist, George Peabody donated to support the creation of an index of Maryland records in the London Public Record Office and, in 1867, established the society’s first publications fund. Additionally, the MdHS continued its work protecting state history and late in the nineteenth century the state transferred government records into their care.
Like many historical societies around the country, the Maryland Historical Society saw major changes around the turn of the century. Education became an important part of the group’s mission in many historical societies and women gained full membership. Annie Leakin Sioussat and Lucy Harwood Harrison were among the first female members of the Maryland Historical Society and spent decades volunteering their time and services. In 1906, the MdHS launched the Maryland Historical Magazine, a quarterly journal featuring new research and writing on Maryland history.
MdHS moved into its current home at 201 West Monument Street in 1919 soon after the end of World War I. The new building, the former residence of Baltimore philanthropist Enoch Pratt with a state-of-the-art fireproof addition, came as a gift from Mary Washington Keyser, whose husband, H. Irvine Keyser, had been an active member of the society for forty-three years.
As their predecessors had done after the Civil War, MdHS leaders started an effort to collect "the relics" of the recent Great War. In 1920, the state legislature formed a committee including former governor and historical society president Edwin Warfield. This group comprised the Historical Division of the state’s War Records Commission and served as the "official organ" of the federal government in collecting and compiling the military records of those Marylanders who served in World War I. The society initiated a similar agreement during World War II.
The society began expanding the Monument Street facility in 1953 and, in 1968, added the Thomas and Hugg building named after William and John Thomas. Designed by a local firm, Meyer, Ayers & Saint, the new building includes exhibition space, an auditorium, work rooms, storage space, and "to supplement the present Confederate Room--a Civil War Union Room." In 1981, the society added the France-Merrick Wing to the Thomas and Hugg Building.
Perhaps no other object in the holdings of the Maryland Historical Society attracts more visitors than the original manuscript of Francis Scott Key’s Star-Spangled Banner. In 1953, Mrs. Thomas C. Jenkins purchased the document from the Walters Art Gallery for $26,400, the same price the gallery had paid for it in 1933 at a New York auction. Jenkins provided additional funding for its display in a carved marble niche. She had previously donated Key family portraits and a room for their display. One hundred forty years after Key penned his famous verse, state and local dignitaries gathered to rededicate this American icon on September 14, 1954.
A newly renovated and expanded Maryland Historical Society opened in November 2003, amidst much fanfare and publicity. The facility now includes the Beard Pavilion and the Carey Center for Maryland Life which features nearly generous exhibition space for museum and library exhibitions, and new storage space for museum collections. In keeping with the founders’ passion for telling Maryland’s story, the society’s leadership, staff, and volunteers carry out today’s mission, securing the institution’s respected place among contemporary cultural organizations. As it has for the past 164 years, the Maryland Historical Society remains the one of the premier institutions for Maryland history.
In 2020, the Maryland Historical Society changed its name to the Maryland Center for History and Culture.
The Eubie Blake Blake Cultural Center has owned and operated from a historic building at 847 N. Howard Street since 2000, but the history of the organization dates back to to the 1960s.
In the late 1960s, a group of Baltimoreans organized the Neighborhood Parents Club (NPC) to call attention to the importance of cultural arts and formed an after school arts program at Dunbar High School. The group won the support of the Baltimore City Model Cities Agency for their program as a demonstration project and soon expanded their initial grassroots effort into six cultural arts centers located around the city. Model Cities merged with Baltimore’s Community Action Agency in mid-1970s to become the Urban Services Agency, which continued the city’s support of the program that included centers for performing arts (dance, theater, band, voice, and instrument) and for visual arts (painting, drawing, photography, and sculpture).
In 1978, a seventh center was opened, establishing Gallery 409 (at 409 N Charles Street) as the Urban Services Agency’s premier cultural arts center. Around the same time, a group of people in Baltimore began working with musician Eubie Blake’s family in an attempt to bring significant pieces of Eubie Blake’s personal collections back to his home in Baltimore.
Born in Baltimore in 1883, Eubie Blake grew up to become one of the most important figures in early twentieth century African American music, and one whose longevity made him a storehouse of the history of ragtime and early jazz music and culture. Blake began playing piano professionally when he was 16; he wrote his first composition, "Sounds of Africa," (later retitled "Charleston Rag") around the same time. His career did not really take off until he met Noble Sissle in 1915. Together, Blake and Sissle wrote many hits. Blake also collaborated with Andy Razaf (on "Memories of You"), Henry Creamer, and other writers, composing more than 350 songs. In the early 1980s, Marion Blake agreed to donate their collection to the Maryland Historical Society with plans to house a portion of the collection at Gallery 409. In honor of the donation, the Urban Services gallery was renamed as the Eubie Blake Cultural Arts Center in 1983.
In 1993, a tragic fire destroyed the Gallery 409 facility, but a group of supporters organized to establish the new Eubie Blake National Jazz Institute and Cultural Center, Inc., and moved into a building at 34 Market Place at the Brokerage (now the Power Plant Live!). Finally, in 2000, Baltimore City donated the building on Howard Street to the Eubie Blake Cultural Center enabling the Center to take back a portion of the Blake collection from the Maryland Historical Society and resume their role as an important center for cultural arts in Baltimore.