Born on November 2, 1921, William Donald Schaefer lived most of his life in a modest rowhouse on Edgewood Street. The only child of William Henry and Tululu Irene Schaefer, he attended Lyndhurst Elementary School, Baltimore City College and the University of Baltimore.
After serving in Europe during WWII, Schaefer made two unsuccessful attempts for a seat in the Maryland House of Representatives. In 1955, local political king-maker Irvin Kovens, nicknamed the "The Furniture Man" for his West Baltimore furniture store, and Phillip H. Goodman, founder of the Dandy Fifth Democratic Club, recruited Schaefer to run for the Fifth District Baltimore City Council seat. From this modest beginning, Schaefer went on to become Baltimore City Council President, then Mayor, and Governor of Maryland.
Dr. Alfred T. Gundry established the Gundry Sanitarium on his family farm in the late 1800s, and the Gundry family continued to operate the facility up through 1990. Dr. Gundry served as the medical superintendent at nearby Spring Grove Hospital from 1878 to 1891, where he was a pioneer in ending the use of mechanical restraints on psychiatric patients. One advertisement from 1903 described the santitarium:
“Splendidly located, retired and accessible to Baltimore, surrounded by 28 acres of beautiful grounds. Buildings modern and well arranged. Every facility for treatment and classification. Under the medical management of Dr. Alfred T. Gundry.”
Emory Grove, located in Glyndon, has provided its summer residents with spiritual inspiration and respite from Baltimore City's summer heat for over 145 years. Originally founded in 1868 as a Methodist camp meeting site during the religious reawakening that swept the nation in the aftermath of the Civil War, the Grove now welcomes campers of any denomination. The camp’s 47 rustic cottages only recently saw the installation of flush toilets and electric lights but the lush setting in a cool wooded 62-acres has made it an idyllic retreat for generations of Marylanders.
The Emory Grove Hotel, built in 1887, is a stately Victorian structure on the National Register of Historic Places. At the center of the Grove is an open-air tabernacle that is the heart of the community. Religious services are held weekly along with sing-alongs and dance recitals.
Contained on a little less than three acres across from Clifton Park in northeast Baltimore, the Friends Burial Ground tells the stories of generations Baltimore's Quaker families across their 300 years of rich history in our city. Established in 1713 on a tract of land known as Darley Hall when the Friendship Meetinghouse was built on what is today Harford Road, the cemetery has been in continuous use ever since.
While small, and a bit unassuming, the Friends Burial Ground has approximately 1,800 graves with the earliest legible marker dating from 1802 and, without a doubt, many date from the 1700s. The stone wall around the grounds and the Sexton's House both date back to the 1860s and, in 1926, 122 graves were moved from a Friends cemetery at the Aisquith Street Meeting House in Old Town.
The many notable interments include Louisa Swain, who made history in Wyoming on September 6, 1870 as the first woman to vote in a general election in the United States at age 69, and Dr. Thomas Edmondson who lived in a grand estate that eventually became Harlem Park in West Baltimore. Dr. Edmondson recently resurfaced in the public light as his collection of Richard Caton Woodville’s artwork was exhibited at the Walters Art Museum.
The Institute of Notre Dame is a Baltimore landmark that has educated young women for over 150 years.
Originally established in 1847 as the Collegiate Institute of Young Ladies, the Institute of Notre Dame High School (IND) was founded by Baltimore’s own Mother Theresa – the Blessed Mother Theresa of Jesus Gerhardinger.
A native of Munich, Bavaria, Mother Theresa helped to found the School Sisters of Notre Dame (SSND) in Germany and came to Baltimore with a small group of sisters to educate the children of immigrants and minister to the poor. Mother Theresa purchased the original convent building from the Redemptorist priests assigned to nearby St. James in 1847 and soon expanded the convent into a boarding school when the sisters discovered two orphans left on their doorstep. By 1852, the sisters had built the school that still stands today.
The school continued to grow through the years: adding an auditorium in 1885, a chapel in 1892, additional classroom space in 1926, and their gymnasium in 1992. Since the first graduation ceremony on July 24, 1864, over 7,000 alumnae have graduated from IND including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (1958) and Sen. Barbara Mikulski (1954) who later recalled, “They taught me more than geography or mathematics; they taught me to help those in need of help. They inspired my passion for service.”
The Maryland Art Place is a local cultural institution occupying a five-story Richardsonian Romanesque industrial building on the west side of Baltimore’s Downtown.
The building on Saratoga Street was erected in 1907 as a factory for the Erlanger Brothers Clothing. Owned by New York textile merchants, Abraham and Charles Erlanger, Erlanger Brothers’ best-known product was BVD underwear. Some assumed BVD stood for Baltimore Ventilated Drawers, but, in reality, the letters stood for the names of Bradley, Voorhees & Day, who founded the brand in 1876.
By 1921, the Saratoga Street building hosted showrooms for the Peabody Piano Company where Baltimoreans could purchase pianos, Victor-brand records and Victrola record players. Eventually the building became the Johnson Brothers Radio Producers & Retailers for making early radio receivers and later televisions.
Maryland Art Place started in 1981 when a group of artists and committed citizens began organizing around the needs of visual artists throughout the state and the desire of many people to have more access to and information about artists working in Maryland. The Maryland State Arts Council supported their efforts and, in 1982, this dedicated group of volunteers formed Maryland Art Place (MAP).
In 1986, the Maryland Art Place moved into the former factory on Saratoga Street and, after renovations, opened exhibition spaces on three floors. Long-time executive director Amy Cavanaugh Royce recalled the experience in an interview with the Baltimore Sun, “It's a cavernous building. It has its own aura. I began walking around the back stairwells and the basement and it grew on me." MAP bought the building in 1988.
Today, artists fill the former factory (Jordan Faye Block, a Chicago-born artist and curator, owns a contemporary gallery on the fifth floor) and MAP is building a members gallery.
With thousands of rowhouses in every shape, size, and style across the city, not every house stands out. But, 200 ½ East Montgomery Street has earned a rare distinction as the narrowest rowhouse in Baltimore—measuring less than nine feet wide! This mid-nineteenth century treasure was built before the Civil War by the owner of the adjoining house at 200 E. Montgomery Street. Despite its age and small size, the "Little House" features a stylish stained-glass transom and tight brickwork.
In 1974, 91ĘÓƵ honored Mr. and Mrs. John McNair, then owners of the house, at the sixth annual restoration awards in recognition of their work saving 200 and 200 ½ East Montgomery Street from neglect and decay. The couple brought a passion for old houses when they moved to Baltimore from New England and purchased 200 East Montgomery Street (a generous 22 feet wide) and the six-room house next door at 200 ½. The restoration included repointing masonry while matching the original color of the mortar, restoring the interior woodwork, and refinishing the original wood floors.
Completed in 1912, the Eastern Avenue Sewage Pumping Station opened as a critical engine of Baltimore’s then brand-new sewer system. City engineers built the station to house enormous steam-driven Corliss pumps capable of pumping up to 27,500,000 gallons of sewage a day. The utility of the building did not prohibit a bit of style. The engineers graced the structure with copper roof, gables, and a cupola, turning it into a handsome monument to the growth and development of the city celebrated by proud civic leaders. In 1960, the city replaced the aging steam-driven pumps with electric turbines. The building continues to operate as a pumping station up through the present.
The Baltimore Public Works Museum occupied the building from 1982 up until the museum closed in 2010. The museum gave visitors a behind the scenes look at how a large city provides public works utilities to its citizens. The museum modeled phone lines, street lights, drains and pipes, and sewage disposal.
Formerly home to a whiskey barrel warehouse and the offices of the Baltimore Copper Paint Company, the Jim Rouse Center of the American Visionary Art Museum serves as a prime example of adaptive reuse in the City of Baltimore.
Built in the 1930s, the simple brick exterior housed an intricate timber framework to support the whiskey barrels, walls, and roof. After many years of vacancy, the building was given new life as part of the American Visionary Art Museum, which recognizes the work of untrained artists.
When the museum was rehabilitated the architects reused portions of the timber framing as a design element, and also brought in other creative materials.The project explores the use and reuse of found objects. Glass bottle bottoms, barrel staves, exposed brick, refurbished windows and neon signs bring an eclectic look to the building, while both recycling used materials and allowing the building to receive historic tax credit certification.
The project received a Preservation Award from 91ĘÓƵ honoring the American Visionary Art Museum, Cho Benn Holback + Associates, Inc., J. Vinton Schafer & Sons, Inc., Burdette, Koehler, Murphy & Associates, Hope Furrer Associates, Inc., Miller, Beam, & Paganelli, Inc., Cramptin/Dunlop Architectural Lighting Services LLC, and Alain Jaramillo.
In the late 1970s, Mayor William Donald Schaefer proposed the creation of a museum to tell the story of Baltimore industry across two centuries of American history. Even before they the new museum found a building, Baltimore City officials organized an exhibit at the Baltimore Convention Center, and put up a display about the museum-to-be during the Baltimore City Fair. Roger B. White, a young city employee hired under the Comprehensive Employment Training Act, led the search to find an appropriate location, acquire collections, and recruit private donors. White found a Platt & Company oyster cannery building on the 1400 block of Key Highway and began the process of turning the old factory into a museum. Once one of eighty canneries operating around Baltimore’s harbor, Platt & Company on Key Highway was one of the last canneries left. The museum developed exhibits on three major periods of Baltimore’s industrial growth: 1790-1830, 1870-1900, and 1920 up through the 1970s. White acquired equipment from the American Brewery and furnishings from the local Read’s Drug Store chain. In November 1981, after years of preparation, the doors opened to the public at the renovated oyster cannery reborn as the Baltimore Museum of Industry. By December, Baltimore City had awarded the museum $25,000 to pay for the cost of school field trips and, in 1984, the city decided to purchase the site. The museum originally leased the building for around $25,000 a year but, after the property sold to Baltimore City, the rent climbed to $85,000. The museum organized a corporate membership drive in order to cover the rising rent. At the same time, the museum sought to triple the amount of space in the facility while adding a pier and waterfront improvements. In 1996, with only half of the renovation complete, Alonzo Decker Jr., former Black & Decker chief executive, donated $1 million to the fund. With this single donation, the museum surpassed its' $3.5 million goal and finished the renovation. For his gift, the Museum inscribed Decker’s name on the wall of the main gallery. Today, the museum thrives as an immersive experience of permanent and temporary exhibits that detail and demonstrate the industrial history of Baltimore. The exhibits include machinery from a cannery, garment loft, machine shop, pharmacy and print shop and the collections include around a million artifacts. With a pier and waterfront area, the museum often hosts weddings and corporate events as well.
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Originally known as Druid Mill, Union Mill was built between 1865 and 1872. At the time, it was the largest cotton duck mill in the United States. A unique feature of the mill's construction is the use of locally quarried stone. The other mills in the area were constructed with brick.
Druid Mill was was the first mill in the area to feature a clock tower, which was clearly visible to the workers living in Druidville located across Union Avenue. The mill joined the Mount Vernon Woodberry Cotton Duck Company in 1899, which had a virtual monopoly on the world's production of cotton duck. The mill was then renamed Mount Vernon Mill No. 4.
Today, the mill is home to residences and businesses, including Artifact Coffee.
The site of Peabody Heights Brewery, also home to RavenBeer, Public Works Ale, and Full Tilt Brewing, was the site of Oriole Park from 1916 to 1944. Before this, the ballpark was home to the Baltimore Terrapins of the short-lived Federal League and was called Terrapin Park. During this time, the Orioles were playing in a ballpark literally across the street. When the Federal League went defunct in 1915, the Orioles took over Terrapin Park.
The ballpark was made out of wood, which led to its demise on July 3, 1944. The ballpark caught fire, destroying everything inside. The cause of the fire is unknown, but it was speculated at the time to have been a discarded cigarette.
Peabody Heights Brewery took over the site in 2012, making it the first brewery to be established in Baltimore City in over thirty years. In the late 1800s. there were about 40 breweries in the city, but by the 1970s, most had closed down. Owing to a national resurgence of interest in craft-brewing, breweries in Baltimore have begun to flourish again.
The Oak Street Garage, constructed in 1924 and enlarged in 1927, illustrates the dramatic impact of the automobile. Built and operated by first-generation Italian immigrants, the Oak Street Garage reflects the far-reaching impact of the automobile on Baltimore's urban fabric and economic life.
The evolution of the automobile-related services that it housed and the controversy its construction generated illustrate the striking shifts in the urban landscape and economic fortunes it created in the boom years of the 1920s. The Piraino family owned the one-story storage garage through 1969 and actively operated it most of those years. Neely and Ensor Auto. Co., formerly a high-end carriage manufacturer, was the building's first tenant, occupying a portion of the original garage and all of its addition.
The Hour Haus formerly served as a cornerstone for Baltimore's Station North Arts & Entertainment District. Inside you found rehearsal rooms for musicians, a recording studio, a large stage and a revolving cast of colorful characters. For over twenty-five years the Hour Haus survived as functioning music and art space. Unfortunately, the Hour Haus closed in July 2015.
The Hour Haus was once the headquarters of the Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad. The "Ma and Pa" once operated passenger and freight trains on its original line between York and Baltimore, Maryland, from 1901 until the 1950s. The Ma and Pa gained popularity with railroad enthusiasts in the 1930s and 1940s for its antique equipment and curving, picturesque right-of-way through the hills of rural Maryland and Pennsylvania.
Baltimore welcomed public mass transit in 1859 as the city ballooned to 170,000 people and the need for affordable transportation swelled. As transit technology raced ahead from horse drawn carts to steam, cable and eventually electric powered cars, Baltimore's system expanded to seemingly every corner of the city. After World War II, however, streetcars in Baltimore (and across the country) went downhill fast as automobile companies bought and retired street car lines and returning soldiers and their families moved to federally subsidized homes in the suburbs and out of reach of the streetcar systems. By 1963, Baltimore had run its last streetcar. Only a few years later, members of the National Railroad Historical Society's Baltimore Chapter founded the Baltimore Streetcar Museum in 1966. They located a permanent home along Falls Road at a former Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad station and moved the collections there from Lake Roland Park in 1970. Volunteers worked hours to install track and overhead wire so that visitors can again ride along a stretch of Falls Road. With a unique track gauge (5 ft. 4 1/2 in.) and historic cars, the ride is more than a fair likeness to what a passenger would have experienced in 1885 as Baltimore launched the first electric streetcar system in the country from downtown to a bustling mill village in Baltimore County called Hampden.
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Second Chance was founded in 2001 to develop solutions to sustainable employment and environmental issues. In 2003, a training and employment program was created to address the pressing needs of Baltimore City residents who were facing multiple challenges to employment, good wages, and progressive skills
.
Today, Second Chance trains and hires unemployed individuals in deconstruction, salvage, warehousing, retail, operations, and customer service. Second Chance works with local and regional architects, builders, developers, and property owners to identify residential and commercial buildings entering the demolition phase and remove all reusable elements through deconstruction for waste diversion and resale to consumers.
The oldest building on the Can Company site was constructed by the Norton Tin Can and Plate Company in 1895, and by 1900, the company was the largest can manufacturer in the United States. The founder of the Norton Company became the first president of the American Can Company.
Throughout the early 1900s, the site expanded to occupy the entire triangular parcel, with the construction of the Boiler House, Factory Building and Annex in 1913, and the Signature Building in 1924. Other structures occupied the site as well, including infill buildings constructed in the early 1960s.
At it peak, the American Can Company employed as many as eight-hundred local residents. However, when the American Can merged with the National Can Company in the late 1980s, the factory was closed, all of the jobs were lost, and the property became vacant. In 1987, the City of Baltimore received a UDAG grant, $8.5 million of which was directed towards clearing the site and constructing a mixed-use commercial and residential development by Michael Swerdlow, including two high rise residential towers. After strong community opposition, a PCB spill on the site, and loss of financing, Swerdlow abandoned the project.
In 1994, Safeway purchased the eastern half of the site and demolished the existing buildings to make way for a supermarket and 300 space parking lot. In 1997, The Can Company LLC acquired the remaining 4.3 acres, which included the most historically significant buildings on the site, and quickly began development to allow its first and largest tenant, DAP Products, Inc., the world’s largest manufacturer of sealants and adhesives, to relocate its 40,000 square foot world headquarters to the site in March 1998. The Can Company is now the home to retailers, restaurants, and offices.
In 1942, after taking a powerful loss during the early years of the Great Depression, the Hochschild Kohn & Co. Department Store was finally ready to expand. An anchor for this planned growth was their brand-new warehouse at 520 Park Avenue that housed all of the sundry items that the department store offered.
Founded in 1897 by Max Hochschild and brothers Benno and Louis Kohn, Hochschild Kohn was the first of Baltimore’s big department stores to expand beyond the downtown shopping district of Howard and Lexington Streets. The company established its first suburban store in Edmondson Village (1947), then another on York Road and E. Belvedere Avenue (1948). It eventually had stores in Towson, Harford Mall, and beyond.
The warehouse on Park Avenue is a massive building of reinforced concrete. More impressive than the building’s size is that it got built at all. In 1942, the United States had just entered World War II and the federal government strictly rationed building materials, including the concrete and steel the building needed. Company records indicate that it took vice president Walter Sondheim (who went on to lead the integration of Baltimore’s school system after Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 among many other civic contributions) pleading with the U.S. War Department that the building justified an allocation of construction materials as it would serve as a distribution center. Sondheim’s persuasion worked, and the building opened and operated as a warehouse and furniture showroom until 1983.
In 1983, the Bank of Baltimore purchased the building and converted it into offices. In 2014, the building underwent another conversion when Marks, Thomas Architects, Kinsley Construction, and The Time Group transformed the building into 171 apartment units with commercial space on the ground floor.
Today, the one-time furniture showroom and department store warehouse that defied war time rationing is now a hub of activity at the edge of the Mount Vernon neighborhood.
Built by the Northern Central Railroad, the former Baltimore Freight Shed is a rare example of composite timber and iron roof construction of the mid nineteenth century.
The roof structure is comprised of a series of tricomposite trusses with timber top chords, wrought iron tension rods, and cast iron compression members. This use of both timber and iron in the same roofing system formed a transition period between short span timber trusses and longer span iron and steel trusses that would be in widespread use by the end of the century. The building remains in use today as the home of the Merritt Downtown Athletic Club.
August Rosenberger got into the broom business by chance in the late 1800s. One of his customers, a farmer who was unable to make ends meet, asked Mr. Rosenberger if he would accept a small shack with one broom machine and one sewing machine in payment for his grocery bill. Mr. Rosenberger accepted and sent him on his way. By 1907, Rosenberger had a successful broom business and he set his sights on Baltimore.
Construction began on the Atlantic-Southwestern Broom Company in Baltimore in 1910. The business continued to grow and between 1922 and 1924, the building expanded with additional buildings to the east and north, adding 57,500 square feet of warehouse and space. Production peaked in 1932 at 3.6 million brooms and 300 employees.
The company closed in 1989. Harbor Enterprise Center opened it's doors in 1992 in the old Atlantic-Southwestern Broom Company and quickly became home to an eclectic mix of artists, woodworkers, and startup companies. Completed in early 2009, the ground floor has been converted to 20,000 square-feet of retail with office/studio space above. The factory is now home to more than fifty local businesses.
The market was conceived in 1835 after piano makers Joseph Newman and his brother Elias Newman were given permission by the city to erect a market on the 1100 block of Hollins Street. In 1838, winds from a severe storm destroyed the original market, which was rebuilt the following year. The market found success in the following decades and expanded in 1864 with the creation of the current Italianate building, designed by architect George Frederick.
Northeast Market was established in 1885 as the area around Johns Hopkins Hospital was developed. The market was enlarged in 1896 and, in 1955, the original wooden structure replaced and modernized with a massive brick building with funds from a $102 million city bond issue. The last renovation of the twentieth century was in the 1980s.
In 2013, the market received a much needed facelift. The market received $2 million in renovations, giving the market a more clean and inviting look. Funds were provided by the Baltimore Public Market Corp. (which owns all six public markets in Baltimore), Johns Hopkins, and the Historic East Baltimore Community Action Coalition, Inc. In addition to exterior renovations, seven new vendor stalls were added and the market has put a focus on healthy eating.
The first building for the Avenue Market, originally known as the Lafayette Market, was built in 1871. In the twentieth century, the market and the Old West Baltimore neighborhood thrived as the Pennsylvania Avenue became a center of Baltimore culture. When the wooden market burned to the ground in 1953, merchants banded together to rebuild it.
The market survived as many of the neighborhood's historic buildings were abandoned, and in the 1970s, demolished in the name of urban renewal. Enthusiasm for urban renewal in the 1970s waned, and by the 1990s, the Lafayette Market was in desperate need of a makeover. It closed in 1994 for renovations and reopened in 1996 as the Avenue Market, an homage to Pennsylvania Avenue, the cultural heart of the neighborhood. The market was again renovated in 2012.
Built in 1925, the eight-story tall Montgomery Ward Warehouse and Retail Store is one of nine monumental distribution centers built by the Montgomery Ward mail order company in cities around the United States.
Built in 1925, the eight-story tall Montgomery Ward Warehouse and Retail Store is one of nine monumental distribution centers built by the Montgomery Ward mail order company in cities around the United States. Founded by Aaron Montgomery Ward in Chicago, Illinois in 1872, the store sent catalogs (sometimes known as the "Wish Book") listing thousands of items, from clothing to tractors, to rural communities around the country. Designed by in-house company Engineer of Construction, W. H. McCaully, the building on Washington Boulevard is a testament to the importance of the company’s early success.
Montgomery Ward located its Atlantic Coast Headquarters in Baltimore largely due to the efforts of the city government and the Industrial Bureau of the Association of Commerce to attract new businesses—an early example of a public economic development program.
For nearly 60 years, Montgomery Ward was a major business in Baltimore. It employed thousands of people, sent out hundreds of thousands of catalogs emblazoned with the name Baltimore to customers throughout the eastern seaboard, and provided a unique retail option to generations of local residents.
Today, Montgomery Park has been adapted to a new use as offices. The new use also gave the building a new name, but saved the sign while replacing only two letters from the historic "Montgomery Ward" sign to preserve this icon on the southwest Baltimore skyline. The development won the Environmental Protection Agency's 2003 Phoenix Award.
Built in 1928, the Lord Baltimore Hotel is a beautiful example of an early twentieth-century high-rise hotel. Designed by prolific hotel architect William Lee Stoddart, it is reminiscent of such famous American hotels as New York's Vanderbilt Hotel or Chicago's Palmer House. The twenty-two-story steel frame building was the largest hotel building ever constructed in Maryland. However, the Lord Baltimore is also a reminder of the city’s history of racial discrimination and the long fight for integrated public accommodation. In 1954, the same year the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education called for an end to segregated schools, black players from three American League teams with integrated rosters came to Baltimore to play against the Orioles. White players stayed at the Lord Baltimore, the Emerson, and Southern Hotel downtown. But for their black teammates, the only option was the African American-owned York Hotel in West Baltimore. A year later, in 1955, students at Johns Hopkins University moved the prom away from the Lord Baltimore to the at the Alcazar Hotel in Mount Vernon in protest to the hotel manager’s refusal to admit black students to the dance and his threat to “stop the dance if Negroes attended.” By the late 1950s, after lobbying by Baltimore’s progressive Mayor Theodore McKeldin, the Lord Baltimore Hotel consented to rent rooms to black ballplayers and some conference attendees. In 1958, Baltimore hosted the All-Star Game and six black All-Stars, including Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson, registered at the Lord Baltimore. For visiting black spectators, however, the hotel was not an option. Jimmy Williams, an assistant editor at the Afro American, advised spectators to bring pup tents and box lunches, writing, “The box lunches will be to ease the pangs of an aching stomach… The pup tents will provide a place for them to rest their carcasses after the last door of the downtown hotels have been slammed in their face and the uptown hotels are filled.” Williams predicted visitors would leave “just loving the quaint customs of Baltimore, which boasts of major league baseball and minor league businessmen.” By the early 1960s, policies finally began to change. After hotel management realized they had rented rooms for the campaign office of segregationist presidential candidate George Wallace in 1964, the management refused to let them stay and the campaign was forced to move to a motel in Towson. In 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr., stayed at the hotel during a meeting of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, where he gave a lengthy press conference and received symbolic keys to the city from Mayor Tommy D’Alesandro III. The hotel was one of the few historic buildings retained as part of the redevelopment of Charles Center and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
Located in Baltimore’s Brewers Hill neighborhood, the National Brewing Company building, affectionately known to locals as the "Natty Boh" building, has been standing since 1872. The company was then known exclusively for its National Premium beer. In 1885, National Brewing began brewing its flagship National Bohemian beer, Natty Boh, and a hometown favorite was born. Production of Natty Boh continued on this site, with the exception of the Prohibition years, until 1975 when the company was bought. The brewery was shut down and the brewing operations were moved to Wisconsin.
Today the old brewery has been converted to office space and is part of the Brewer's Hill complex. The complex includes multiple breweries that were home to the Gunther, Schaefer, Hamm’s, and, of course, Natty Boh labels. Also, it is where the nation’s first “six pack” was invented in the 1940s.
The Brewers Hill neighborhood that surrounds the 27-acre brewery site was developed between 1915 and 1920 and is replete with rows of brick homes and marble steps.
The church on Wildwood Parkway, now used as the New Covenant United Methodist Church, was originally built for the Central Methodist Episcopal Church South in 1930.
The church's original congregation was organized around 1866 and, in 1876, erected a sanctuary on Edmondson Avenue near Harlem Park. In 1926, the church purchased a property on the street then known as Wildwood Driveway and, in November 1929, sold the building on Edmondson Avenue and announced plans to begin building a three-story Sunday school designed by architect Guy E. Gaston.
Construction on a new church began in May 1930 with a cornerstone laying ceremony attended by three hundred people. The building was estimated to cost $65,000. Around 1954, the congregation merged with the Summerfield Methodist Church after the Rehoboth Church of God in Christ Jesus Apostolic purchased the latter congregation’s building on Poplar Grove Street.
Through the years, the church offered a variety of programs and religious services. In February 1965, the church (then known as the Central-Summerfield Methodist Church) offered an “old-fashioned minstrel show” in their fellowship hall. While minstelry had a long history as popular entertainment for white Baltimoreans, the show was a particularly striking choice given the neighborhood's ongoing transition of largely segregated white to segregated black between 1960 and 1970.
Eventually, the church became the Wildwood Parkway United Methodist Church and operates today as the New Covenant United Methodist Church.
With thick buttresses, parapets, a crenelated roof-line, and a steel roof, the enormous 5th Regiment Armory has served as an imposing landmark between Bolton Hill and Mount Vernon since 1901. The building was designed by architects Wyatt and Nolting (who also designed the Pikesville Armory and Liriodendron Mansion in Bel Air among other notable buildings). In 1912, conventioneers to the Democratic National Convention packed the huge drill hall to nominate soon-to-be president Woodrow Wilson. Unfortunately, in 1933, a severe fire destroyed the roof and gutted the interior but the state soon rebuilt the structure and has continued to use the building up through the present. In addition to its role in training the Maryland National Guard, the armory has housed a military museum since 1982. The Maryland Museum of Military History contains artifacts and stories from not just the state’s National Guard, but from all Marylanders who served in the military. Over the last several years, the museum has opened new exhibits focusing on military history of today and yesterday. One of the new exhibits features the armed services from the 1991 Persian Gulf War to the present while another dives into the role of Marylanders in the War of 1812.
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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.
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.