Harlem Park started as one of the largest squares in West Baltimore, 9 Âľ acres, more than double the size of Franklin, Lafayette, or Union Square. The grounds of the park and much of the land around it had originally belonged to Dr. Thomas Edmondson.
Dr. Thomas Edmondson was born in 1808 as the son of a prosperous local merchant and graduated in medicine from the University of Maryland in 1834. He never practiced medicine and instead focused on art and horticulture, building a grand mansion and greenhouses on a hill now bounded by Edmondson Avenue, Harlem, Fulton and Mount. Dr. Edmondson died in 1856 and his estate presented a section of the property to the City of Baltimore on November 11, 1867 as a gift for the creation of a public park or square.
The city passed an ordinance accepting the gift in February 1868 and improvements on the park soon began. The engineer and general superintendent for Druid Hill Park, August Paul, prepared a plan for the grounds with "Beds and mounds of exotic and native flowers, the most difficult of cultivation" laid out in patterns of "stars, diamonds, Maltese crosses, hearts, ovals, circles, and semicircles, each one of great artistic beauty and of remarkably accurate outline." Another account described a "group of willows that encircled a gurgling spring at the eastern end of the grounds... a white mulberry tree that was a delight to the neighborhood, and a great flowering tree of the lobelia family, abundant in the Hawaiian Islands."
The park was dedicated in 1876, as an asset to the increasingly developed blocks around the park and up to Fulton Avenue. The Harlem Stage Coach Company incorporated in February 1878 to run a line of omnibus coaches from Fulton Avenue to Edmondson Avenue before turning south at Harlem Park. One of the directors of the enterprise was Joseph Cone, who became a tremendously active rowhouse builder in West Baltimore during the 1870s and 1880s, putting up hundreds of rowhouses each year with then modern amenities such as gaslights, hot water, central heating, and door bells. Cone pioneered the financing strategy of "advance credit" where home-owners could pay for their properties piecemeal providing the builder with capital for putting up yet more houses.
Harlem Park was substantially diminished in the early 1960s, with the construction of a $5,300,000 school complex, designed by architects Taylor & Fisher, resulting in the demolition of homes and businesses along the northern edge of the park. The school also took the eastern half of the park to turn it into a school yard. The remaining square endures as a quiet green space still used by West Baltimore residents.
Since 1857, Lafayette Square has been Baltimore’s height of fashion. Situated atop a ridge in an area once noted for its fine country villas and breadth-taking panoramic views of the waterways, rolling hills and public landmarks of the bustling nineteenth-century city, the Square was a favorite outlying destination of Baltimore’s leisure and laboring classes. The popularity of the site, fueled by a desire to enjoy the area’s fresh air and fine vistas on a permanent basis, led to the creation of the Lafayette Square Company for promoting the Square as a fashionable place to live. The drive to develop the area around the Square for residential use came to a halt soon after it had begun, however, for in 1861 the City turned the Square over to the federal government for military use during the Civil War. After the war and minus the green fields and majestic oaks—its main attractions prior to 1861—Lafayette Square reverted back to the city and development efforts resumed. Construction proceeded rapidly under the direction of the Lafayette Square Association (a second organization, incorporated in 1865), which, in 1866, enticed the congregation of the Episcopal Church of the Ascension to relocate from downtown to the Square with an offer of a free corner lot. By 1880, Lafayette Square had been developed to a great extent and ornamented with many buildings of grand proportions. The Church of the Ascension (1867-9, now St. James), many imposing residences, including Matthew Bacon Sellers’ impressive brick mansion (1868-9), Grace Methodist Church (1871-6, now Metropolitain), and, perhaps most conspicuous of all, the new State Normal School (1875-6, demolished), set the scale for subsequent building projects in the neighborhood. Although designed in keeping with the Square’s other Gothic revival buildings, the former Bishop Cummins Memorial (1878, now Emmanuel Christian Community) and Lafayette Square Presbyterian (1878-9, now St. John’s A.M.E.) outdid the more conservative-looking churches of the neighboring congregations in both architectural variety and decorative daring and exuberance, signaling that architectural tastes, even within the prevailing Gothic revival style, were susceptible to swift and dramatic change. Lafayette Square changed dramatically between 1910 and 1930. Built-out by 1910 and starting to show its age, the Square could not compete with the new residential developments such as Ten Hills (begun 1909) and Hunting Ridge (1920s) that offered detached, single-family houses and all the modern amenities of the early twentieth century. Between 1910 and 1930, all but two households on the Square had changed hands, and a new generation of residents had emerged, 95% of which African American, whose numbers and diverse backgrounds brought a renewed vitality to the Square. The Square’s new residents worked as maids, chauffeurs, cooks, and laborers, but also as dentists, physicians, attorneys, and schoolteachers. They benefited from close proximity to the neighborhood’s major commercial, retail, and entertainment districts, being just a few minutes’ walk from the shops and other attractions of Druid Hill and Pennsylvania Avenues. In the short time between 1928 and 1934, four African American congregations moved to Lafayette Square. Metropolitan led the charge with a ceremonial march from Orchard Street in 1928, followed by St. John’s A.M.E. in 1929 (from Lexington Street), St. James Episcopal in 1932 (from Park Avenue and Preston Street), and Emmanuel Christian Community in 1934 (from Calhoun). The spacious sanctuaries, the classrooms, and other amenities of the four grand churches suited the needs of these growing congregations, whose active ministries transformed Lafayette Square into a spiritual center for West Baltimore’s African American community. The old State Normal School, vacated in 1915 and later converted to school district offices, received a new lease on life in 1931 as the home of the George Washington Carver Vocational-Technical High School, the first school in Maryland to provide vocational training for African American students.
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The Harlem Park Theatre was originally built as a church for a congregation that had outgrown the size of their existing building. Construction on this Romanesque-style building on Gilmore Street began in the summer of 1902. The building had a Port Deposit granite edifice and was considered aesthetically modern at the time of construction, designed to be an ornament in the neighborhood.
The new Methodist Episcopal Church was a short-lived venture marred by two destructive fires that led to its eventual abandonment. On December 22, 1908, the building was almost destroyed in a fire. Repairs were completed to the point where the congregation could continue to use the building until a more severe fire in 1924. On April 3, a fire destroyed the church, and the building was abandoned. This was also the period when the demographics of the neighborhood were shifting from predominately white to predominately African American. The Methodist Episcopal Church was a predominately white congregation, so the change in demographics may have influenced the decision to abandon the church.
In 1928, the title for the church was officially transferred to Emanuel M. Davidove and Harry H. Goldberg, who resold the property to their company the Fidelity Amusement Corporation, formed for the purpose of building "a 1,500 seat motion picture theatre for Negroes to be known as Harlem Theatre." The company hired architect Theodore Wells Pietsch, a notable Baltimore architect who also designed Eastern High School and the Broadway Pier. Pietsch took the property's history into consideration when designing the new building: the theatre was made fireproof through the use of steel and concrete, and a fire extinguishing system was also included in the building's design.
Like the church it replaced, the theater was designed as an ornament and a spectacle. The building's decorative theme, inspired by Spanish architecture, was considered the most elaborate on the East Coast, and the theatre was promoted as "the best illuminated building in Baltimore." The bright, decorative facade included a 65-foot marquee with 900 50-watt light bulbs to illuminate the sidewalk underneath, as well as "tremendous electric signs" around the marquee and a forty-foot high sign that could be seen from two miles away.
The opening weekend for the theatre in October 1932, is notable because of the significant celebratory events planned to mark the grand opening. The theatre was introduced "in a blaze of glory," in a grand opening that drew crowds of 5,000 to 8,000 people. The jubilant scene was described by a journalist:
"The blazing marquee studded with a thousand lights made the entire square take a semblance of Broadway glamour. The marquees illuminated the entire Harlem Square which was crowded with those who lined the sidewalk unable to gain admittance."
A parade was held in tribute to Theodore Wells Pietsch and the construction of the theatre. The parade was both photographed and filmed, and the resulting film was shown at the theatre the next week.
After a successful opening, the theatre remained open for nearly forty years. Baltimore citizens remember the theatre with "cavernous three-story high ceiling, a balcony, carpeted floors and thick cushioned seats" and "Ĺ“celestial ceiling with twinkling electrical stars and projected clouds that floated over movie-goers' heads." There are also records of community events, such as a free "Movie Jamboree" in 1968 for the children of Baltimore workers donated by the theatre's then-manager Edward Grot, and midnight shows to raise money for the local YMCA. However, the theatre remained segregated throughout is existence and went into decline by the late 1960s.
By the mid-1970s, the Harlem Theatre was closed. In 1975, it was purchased by Reverend Raymond Kelley, Jr. with the intention of turning it into the Harlem Park Community Baptist Church. Refurbishment included replacement of theatre seats with pews, and removal of the marquee. On July 6, 1975, the new church was dedicated. The building continues to be used by the congregation of the Harlem Park Community Baptist Church today.
Named after Sir Walter Scott's 1814 novel Waverly, Waverly Terrace reflects the wealth of Franklin Square’s residents in the 1850s. The Baltimore Sun praised architect Thomas Dixon’s four-story row as "much handsomer than any yet finished in this city."
Matching the area’s current diversity today, residents in the early 1860s included both Confederate sympathizers (Miss Nannie, Miss Virginia, and Miss Julia Lomax, charged with disloyalty by Union troops) and African Americans (Lloyd Sutton drafted for the U.S. Colored Troops).
High on a hill at 811 West Lanvale Street, behind a chain link fence and past the overgrown yard, is the grand Upton – an architectural treasure by one of Baltimore's earliest architects that has witnessed nearly 200 years of change in the Upton neighborhood that shares the building's name. In the 1830s, Baltimore lawyer David Stewart hired architect Robert Carey Long, Jr. – or so we think, no confirmation of Long as the architect has survived – to design his country villa. R. Carey (as he liked to call himself) was one of Baltimore's first professionally trained architects designing the Lloyd Street Synagogue (now part of the Jewish Museum of Maryland), the Patapsco Female Institute in Ellicott City, and the main gate of Green Mount Cemetery among more than 80 buildings across the country. Son of a Baltimore merchant who armed seven schooners and two brigantines as privateers during the Revolutionary War, Stewart became a prominent local lawyer and got involved in politics, serving a brief month as a US Senator in 1849.
The mansion is widely recognized as the last surviving Greek Revival country house in Baltimore. It remains secluded in urban West Baltimore, sitting high above the neighboring buildings and surrounded by brick and stone walls. In the mid-nineteenth century, you would have seen a grand porch with Doric columns and ironwork bearing the Stewart family crest. Inside the building, you could have observed more than a dozen marble and onyx fireplaces, a main entrance hall, a curved oak staircase, and a banquet room that was so large it has since been divided into multiple rooms. David Stewart enjoyed entertaining guests in his mansion and hosted lavish, indulgent parties there so frequently that he developed gout.
After Stewart's death in 1858, the house was purchased by the Dammann family, who owned the house for so many generations that it became known as "the old Dammann mansion." The family left in 1901, and the house found itself empty for the first time, but not the last. The mansion's next owner, musician Robert Young, took a cue from David Stewart and used the spacious and opulent mansion to host "several brilliant social affairs where hundreds of guests moved about in the spacious rooms." Young would be the last owner to use the building as a home, and his time there was short-lived – he found the house too drafty and abandoned after less than 3 years.
The commercial life of the Upton mansion began in 1930 when one of Baltimore's first radio stations, WCAO, moved into the building. Extensive alterations were made to accommodate WCAO – tall twin radio towers were installed at the edge of the property, walls were torn down and rooms partitioned off to create studios and equipment rooms. The next commercial venture in Upton came in 1947, when WCAO sold it to the Baltimore Institute of Musical Arts. Founded by Dr. J. Leslie Jones, the school was originally opened with the intentions of creating a parallel program to that offered at Peabody, a renowned music school not open to African American students at the time, and at its height in the early 1950s had over 300 students. The school eventually closed in the mid-1950s after desegregation granted black students equal access to public music schools. In 1957, the Baltimore City School System moved in to the building and used it first as the special education "Upton School for Trainable Children No. 303," and then the headquarters for Baltimore City Public School's Home and Hospital Services program. Unfortunately, Upton has sat empty since BCPS left in 2006.
Upton has a rich cultural legacy that extends beyond its use as a social hot spot, a radio station, and a school. In the 1960s, the mansion was chosen as the community namesake during an urban renewal project going on in the neighborhood at the time. As a physical landmark of the neighborhood for more than a century, the Upton mansion's name was intended to serve as "the symbol of a physical and human renewal in West Baltimore."
Despite its presence on the National Register of Historic Places and the Baltimore Landmark List, the city-owned building remains empty and unmaintained in west Baltimore. In 2009, Preservation Maryland included in on a list of the state's most endangered historic places, and the building is threatened by vandalism and neglect. Today, the mansion awaits a new owner, someone willing to restore the beautiful building to its historic potential.
Built in 1868, the Sellers Mansion (801 North Arlington Street) is a three-story Second Empire brick house with a mansard roof that rivaled its outer suburban contemporaries in size, quality of craftsmanship, and attention to detail. Its carved stone lintels, patterned slate roof, original roof cresting, and its two classically detailed porticoes (one of which still retains its elegantly carved wooden columns and capitals) identified this household as one of taste and affluence. Although carefully restored in the 1960s and adapted to a variety of community uses through the early 1990s, the mansion currently stands vacant and in an advanced state of deterioration. The windows are missing, wood trim is rotting, and exterior masonry is deteriorating. The roof has failed in a number of places. The mansion occupies a prominent corner of Lafayette Square in West Baltimore and is at the center the Old West Baltimore National Register Historic District. This district, with over 5000 contributing structures, is one of the largest predominately African American historic districts in the country. The mansion is the only remaining detached private residence on the Square, and one of the first residences constructed there. It is owned by St. James Episcopal Church, also located on Lafayette Square. The Church has expressed an interest in restoring the building. The building was included on the 2006 inventory of endangered buildings by Preservation Maryland. With advanced deterioration, work will need to begin soon if the building is to be preserved.
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The Washington Monument in the elegant Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland was the first architectural monument planned to honor George Washington. In 1815, a statue was designed by Robert Mills, who also designed the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. Construction began in 1815 and was completed by 1829. The 178 foot doric column holds a ground-floor museum offering information about Washington as well as construction of the monument. Climbing the 228 steps to the top provides an excellent view of the city from the historic neighborhood where it is located. Its neighbors include the Peabody Institute. The monument, which was constructed of white marble from Cockeysville, rises 178 feet and consists of three main elements: a low, rectangular base containing a museum; a plain, unfluted column; and, atop the column, a standing figure of Washington. By the time of the monument's completion in 1829, financial constraints had forced a series of design compromises which simplified the monument.
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Construction on the Battle Monument began on September 12, 1815, a year to the day after Baltimore soundly defeated the British in the War of 1812, and the monument endures as a commemoration of the attack by land at North Point and by sea at Fort McHenry. In addition to serving as the official emblem for the City of Baltimore on the city flag, the work is extraordinary in the history of American monument building for a number of reasons. Architecturally, it is considered to be the first Egyptian structure in the United States with a base, designed by French-born architect Maximilian Godefroy, to look like an Egyptian sarcophagus. The base sits on 18 layers of marble, symbolizing the 18 states that then belonged to the Union. The main column is of Roman design and depicts a fasces: a bundle of rods held together with bands in a symbol of unity. In an age when the United States had few public monuments at and when war memorials focused on generals and commanders, the Battle Monument stood out for its focus on the common soldier recognizing all 39 of the fallen soldiers, regardless of their rank, in a ribbon of names spiraling up the central shaft. Italian sculptor Antonio Capellano created Lady Baltimore — one of the oldest monumental sculptures in the country. She wears a crown of victory on her head and holds a laurel wreath in her raised hand as a symbol of victory over the British. In her lowered hand, she holds a ship's rudder as a testament to Baltimore's nautical role in the war. Both arms are now prosthetics after having been blown off in storms. Both also were created by well-known Baltimore artists. The raised hand with the wreath is the work of Hans Schuler, and the lowered hand with the rudder is by Rueben Kramer. The same year that the monument was adopted as Baltimore's emblem, it also helped give rise to the city's nickname as "The Monumental City." In 1827, President Adams visited Baltimore and stayed at a nearby hotel. The Battle Monument had been completed and work was underway for the nation's first public monument to President Washington in "Howards Woods," soon to become the Mt. Vernon neighborhood. At a dinner with dignitaries and veterans from the war, President Adams gave the final toast of the evening: "Baltimore, the Monumental City: may the days of her safety be as prosperous and happy as the days of her danger have been trying and triumphant!" Baltimore's new monuments made an impression on the President, and enough to spark a name that has lasted nearly 200 years.
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Fort McHenry's history began in 1776 when the citizens of Baltimore Town feared an attack by British ships. An earthen star fort known as Fort Whetstone was quickly constructed. The fort, like Baltimore, was never attacked during our first conflict with England. In 1793, France declared a war on England that became known as the Napoleonic Wars. In 1794, Congress authorized the construction of a series of coastal forts to protect our maritime frontier. Construction began on Fort McHenry in 1798 and, by 1803, the masonry walls we view today were completed. The fort was named for James McHenry, our second Secretary of War. In 1809, the U.S. Army's first light artillery unit was organized here. On June 18, 1812, the United States declared war on England, in part to "preserve Free Trade & Sailor's Rights." In August 1814, British forces marched on Washington, defeated U.S. forces, and burned the Capitol. Then, on September 13-14, the British attacked Fort McHenry. The failure of the bombardment and sight of the American flag inspired Francis Scott Key to compose "The Star-Spangled Banner."
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