With 48 rooms, a soaring portico, and a Tiffany designed glass canopy, Evergreen House stands out as one of Baltimore's best Gilded Age mansions. The house was originally built in 1857 by the Broadbent Family. John Work Garrett, president of the B&O Railroad and a burgeoning railroad tycoon, purchased the mansion 19 years later (in 1878) for his son T. Harrison Garrett. (Incidentally, five years before this, John Work Garrett purchased the Garrett Jacobs Mansion on Mount Vernon Place for his other son, Robert). The Mansion was expanded in the 1880s and again in the 1920s by two generations of Garrett family members.
Evergreen House has over 50,000 items from the Garretts, including drawings by Degas and Picasso and the world's largest collection of Tiffany glass pieces. The building's rare book library was designed by noted Baltimore architect Lawrence Hall Fowler, and contains 8,000 volumes that include original works by Shakespeare and Audubon, as well as the signatures of every signer of the Declaration of Independence. The mansion even has its own theater, which is elaborately decorated by the Russian designer Leon Baskt and is the only known theater to retain original sets by him. In 1942, the mansion and surrounding 26 acres of landscaped lawns and gardens were deeded to The Johns Hopkins University, under whose care they remain today.
In 1800, Charles Carroll of Carrollton (the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence and the wealthiest signer to boot) decided to give his son (also Charles) and bride, Harriet Chew, a nice present: a country estate just north of the city. Taking his father's money but not his advice to renovate an existing farm house, the younger Charles and Harriet commissioned Homewood House. No expense was spared, and at a price tag of $40,000 (a fortune at the time), Homewood became a show place for the elite young couple.
The house is noted as one of the best examples of Federal style architecture in the country. Built on a Palladian-inspired five-part plan, Homewood is renowned for its elegant proportions, fine workmanship and materials, and the extravagant detail in all aspects of its construction, from the intricately carved wooden fireplace surrounds, doorways, and chair rails, to the marble painted baseboards and mahogany grained doors and the ornate plaster ceiling ornaments. Johns Hopkins University acquired the building, which gave rise to the "Homewood Campus" name, in 1902 and opened it as a museum in 1987.
Small in size but featuring a nationally significant story, Baltimore's Irish Railroad Workers Museum on Lemmon Street offers a rare glimpse of immigrant home life in America in the middle of the 19th century.
An avalanche of Irish immigrants hit Baltimore in the 1840s and1850s, many escaping Ireland's Great Hunger Famine of 1845-1853. Many of these immigrants settled in southwest Baltimore and promptly went to work for the vibrant Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. The B&O had located in the countryside that was then West Baltimore in 1827 and quickly built a roundhouse, station, shops, and other buildings in the years that followed. All of this construction required human labor, as did the operation of the railroad itself, and Irish immigrants came to fill the need. The Irish Shrine consists of two renovated alley houses in 900 block of Lemmon Street that were built by carpenter Charles Shipley on land leased to him by John Howard McHenry, a grandson of Col. John Eager Howard. By September 1849, all the houses had been sold to Irish households, including many who worked for the B&O Railroad — Thomas McNew, a watchman; Thomas Medcalfe, a fireman; and Dennis McFadden and Cornelius McLaughlin, laborers. One of the houses is furnished as a period house museum, reflecting the lives of the Irish-immigrant family that lived there in the 1860s. The other house offers exhibits on Irish-American history and local neighborhood life. With a lot of hard work and a lengthy law suit, a number of dedicated Baltimoreans founded the Irish Shrine (now the Irish Railroad Workers Museum) in 1997 to save the buildings from proposed demolition.
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Built in 1845 at the center of what was a thriving Jewish community in East Baltimore, the Lloyd Street Synagogue was the first synagogue erected in Maryland and today is the third-oldest standing synagogue in the country.
In building the synagogue, the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation commissioned noted Baltimore architect Robert Cary Long, Jr. Long chose a Greek Revival style. Architect William H. Reasin expanded the building in 1861, maintaining the original façade and the classical style of the sanctuary. The building was home to the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation from its beginning through 1889, when it transitioned into a catholic church. St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic Church, one of the first Lithuanian "ethnic" parishes in the United States, owned and worshiped there through 1905.
In another flip, Shomrei Mishmeres HaKodesh, one of the leading Orthodox Jewish congregations of the Eastern European immigrant community, bought the building in 1905 from the Catholic church. The new congregation occupied the building until the early 1960s, when it moved out. The vacant building was threatened with demolition at that time and the Jewish Museum of Maryland was formed to purchase and care for this historic landmark. In 2008, the Museum began an ambitious $1 million restoration project with the help of the national Save America's Treasure's Program. The work restored the building to its 1864 appearance and created a multimedia exhibit, The Building Speaks, to interpret this history. The work also won a Historic Preservation Award from 91Ƶ in 2009.
In 1784 during the "Christmas Conference" at the Lovely Lane Meeting House in Baltimore, American Methodist was born. Surprisingly, this predated the organization of the Methodist community in England where it originated. In 1784, English Methodism founder John Wesley reluctantly agreed that Methodists in the newly formed United States of America could organize their own church. Francis Asbury was chosen to become the first General Superintendent by consecration at Barratt's Chapel in Delaware, but he demurred until a majority of Methodist preachers in the country would elect him. After a six-week, 1200 mile campaign up and down the east coast, Asbury was consecrated at Lovely Lane Meeting House in Baltimore later that year. The meeting then occupied a small structure at what is now Redwood and Calvert Streets, and relocated to Light Street in 1786. This site now contains the Merchant's Club building that houses the Baltimore Culinary Institute. Nearly a hundred years later, in 1883, the church's pastor, Dr. John F. Goucher, hired Stanford White, the famous Victorian architect, to build a new church as a centennial monument to the founding of Methodism. The present building at 22nd and St. Paul Streets was completed and dedicated in November 1887. After experiencing hard times in the 1960s and 1970s as much of its congregation moved away from the area, the congregation began restoration work in earnest in 1984 on the 200th anniversary of the founding of Methodism here in Baltimore. The work included refurbishing the extraordinary domed ceiling that depicts the morning sky with the stars and planets as they were at 3:00 am, November 6, 1887 the date on which the church was dedicated.
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On June 16, 1808, Elizabeth Bayley Seton arrived at St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore on the same day that Bishop John Carroll, the first bishop in the Unites States, dedicated the seminary's newly built chapel. Elizabeth came to Baltimore from New York to set up a boarding school for girls. During her one-year stay in what is now the Mother Seton House, she took the vows of a Daughter of Charity, thus cementing her conversion and commitment to Catholicism. Following her start in Baltimore, Mother Seton, as Bishop Carroll dubbed her, went on to found Saint Joseph's Academy and Free School in Emmitsburg, Maryland, the first free school for girls in America, and the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph, the first apostolic community of women in the United States.
The St. Mary's Spiritual Center, as the location is now called, is also the original home of St. Mary's Seminary, the first seminary in America. The seminary has trained a number of notables, including: Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange, a Haitian immigrant who founded the Oblate Sisters of Providence (the first African American Catholic community) and St. Francis High School; Father Gabriel Richard, who is called "The Second Founder of Detroit"; and Father Michael McGivney, who went on to found the Knights of Columbus in Connecticut.
Mill No. 1 sits on the site of Laurel Mill, a late 18th-century flour mill originally owned by prominent businessman and abolitionist Elisha Tyson. In 1849, the newly chartered Mount Vernon Company built a textile mill on the site. Mill No. 1 stood at the threshold of a burgeoning textile empire that would control most of the world’s cotton duck production, a heavy canvas used primarily for ship sails.
The textile mill and neighboring village Stone Hill shared a close relationship well into the 20th century. Residents renting company-owned housing in Stone Hill were required to be employed in the mill to live there. The mill's bell called workers to the factory floor for their twelve hour shifts. Mill boss David Carroll lived in a mansion at the top of the hill overlooking the village and mill his wealth built. The extant mansion later became the Florence Crittenton Home.
In the mid-1800s, about 400 men, women and children—some as young as eight years old—worked in and lived next to the mills. The company expanded in 1853 with the construction of Mill No. 3 across the street. In 1855, the Mt. Vernon Company controlled six mills in the Jones Falls Valley from Mt. Washington to Remington, and established adjoining villages that would grow into the neighborhoods of Hampden and Woodberry. When Mill No. 1 burned in 1873, it was replaced with the larger factory that stands on this site today. Inside the mills, the cotton looms made a lot of noise, and dust from the cotton was always in the air. Excess cotton had to be swept off the floor and cleaned off the looms to prevent fire. Workers heard the constant loud humming of the looms and breathed in the cotton dust. An entire paycheck could go to rent for the company houses and toward groceries purchased from the company store.
In 1899, area mills merged to form the Mount Vernon-Woodberry Cotton Duck Company, at the time the world’s foremost manufacturer of cotton duck, with mills from South Carolina to Connecticut, and a board of directors based out of New York City. By 1915, the Mt. Vernon-Woodberry Cotton Duck Company broke apart and was reformed as Mt. Vernon-Woodberry Mills, which controlled mills in Hampden and Woodberry, South Carolina, and Alabama, and employed about 2,200 workers locally. Production boomed during World War I and workers leveraged demand to gain a 10 percent wage increase, a reduced 55 hour work week, and cleaner facilities.
Demand for cotton duck dropped immediately after the war, and management cut wages by one-third and increased hours. Tensions within the company culminated in a 1923 strike, when 600 workers voted to reject the offer of a 54-hour work week and 7.5 percent pay increase and demanded a 48-hour work week with a 25 percent pay increase. Despite support from local clergy and the Textile Workers Union of America, the workers were forced by necessity to return to the mills. The company began to sell off its housing and move its operations to Alabama and South Carolina where labor was cheaper and less organized. During the Great Depression, many mill workers were laid off. Many went on welfare. Others, however, refused to go on welfare, and searched for additional jobs to support themselves. At this time most workers made between five and seven dollars per week and worked ten hours a day.
World War II created new demand for canvas. Tarps, rope, netting, mailbags, tents, and stuffing (made from cotton bits called ‘shoddy’) were all in demand from the military. Synthetic fabrics, which required bricking up the mill's windows to control humidity levels, emerged as new products. Many people from the South came to work in the mills at this time. After the war, production declined, never to regain its earlier levels. The Mount Vernon Company finally closed its Baltimore mills and moved all operations to North Carolina in 1972.
Some industry persisted in the mill buildings. Life-Like Products, a maker of model train sets and styrofoam coolers, was one. The international textile firm Rockland Industries, with origins upstream, used Mill No. 3 to store its textile supply after the Mount Vernon Company left. In 2013, Mill No. 1 was redeveloped by developer Terra Nova Ventures and now includes apartments, office space, a restaurant, and an event venue. Although they no longer function as mills, these buildings continue to serve as places of housing, food, and work within Hampden.
Old Otterbein Church, built in 1785, is one of the oldest churches still standing in Baltimore. With its classic brick and white trim tower (with bells brought over from Germany), the church shows off its landmark stature for countless Orioles fans and anybody traveling around downtown and Camden Yards.
Old Otterbein got its start in 1771, when a group of Baltimoreans erected a temporary chapel to house the German Evangelical Reformed Church. A few years later, the church hired Philip William Otterbein as pastor. Otterbein had come from Germany to Pennsylvania, and accepted the position in Baltimore as his fifth pastoral duty.
Otterbein apparently took to Baltimore, preaching at the church for 39 years and staying in the city for the rest of his life. Otterbein was a remarkable man. In 1784, he assisted Francis Asbury in founding the Methodist Episcopal Church, and in 1800, he and Martin Boehm helped found the United Brethren in Christ, with Otterbein's church in Baltimore as the cradle of the new denomination.
Members of Baltimore’s German immigrant community played a central role in the defense of Baltimore during the War of 1812 from Peter Gold and George Decker who volunteered as superintendents overseeing the construction of fortifications, Brigadier General John Stricker who commanded the Maryland Militia at the Battle of North Point (and later became Vice-President of the German Society of Maryland), and the Baltimore Jagers and die Union Jagers - two companies of German immigrants commanded in the German language. Many of these men, along with their families, worshipped with Philip William Otterbein at what is now Old Otterbein Church. Otterbein himself died less than a year before the Battle of Baltimore and remains buried in the churchyard with a monument placed over his grave in 1913.
The present church structure was erected in 1785, with the nearby parsonage in 1811 and the city's first German Sunday School in 1827. The interior of the church has been remodeled at various times, but the sanctuary remains the oldest in continuous use in Baltimore.
"My library shall be for all, rich and poor without distinction of race or color, who, when properly accredited, can take out the books if they will handle them carefully and return them."These were the words of Enoch Pratt in 1882 when he gave a gift of over $1 million to Baltimore City to create a central library and four branches. By 1894, the Pratt Library had the fourth largest collection in the country and one of the most active circulations. With assistance from Andrew Carnegie, the library system and its branches grew tremendously in the early 1900s, expanding to over 20 neighborhood branches. In 1927, the citizens of Baltimore voted to spend $3 million in city funds to build a new Central Library building. The construction of the current central library building on Cathedral Street began in 1931 and was completed in 1933. Architect Clyde N. Friz hoped to avoid the old-fashioned institutional character of the past in his design and instead to give the library "a dignity characterized by friendliness rather than aloofness," as Pratt Director Joseph Wheeler stated. The new building allowed the library to form specialized departments, such as "education, philosophy, and religion," "industry and technology," as well as the "popular library," now known as the fiction section. Although allowing for expansion, the design of the new building retained one of Pratt's steadfast requirements: that there be no stairs leading into the main entrance. This seemingly odd requirement, and one that certainly went against the grain of architectural design for grand civic institutions at the time, was based Pratt's philosophy that the library should be open to all people. Pratt saw grand stairs as an impediment, especially to a growing segment of the reading population: women who may be pushing babies in strollers. Far before the advent of the Americans with Disabilities Act and its accessibility requirements for public buildings, the main entrance to the library pointedly tell the story of Pratt's vision and commitment to inclusivity. Watch our on the building!
There are few places where you can stand in the middle of a room and almost everything you see is made or decorated by Tiffany: glass, paint, finishes, etc. St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church on St. Paul Street, with its entire interior designed by the Tiffany Company of New York, is one of them.
In the 1890's, the St. Mark's congregation engaged architect Joseph Evans Sperry (who would later go on to design Baltimore's Bromo Seltzer Tower, among other notable buildings) to help them build a new church. Sperry came up with a Romanesque design that is known for its heavy stones, arched doors and windows, and short columns. Romanesque design comes from central and western Europe, where many of St. Mark's congregants also traced their lineages. To this day, an Estonian congregation called EELK Baltimore Markuse Kogudus continues to use St. Mark's for worship each month. In 1898, the church was completed and since then has been one of Baltimore's outstanding examples of Romanesque architecture.
On the inside, St. Mark's engaged the Tiffany Glass Decorating Company, under the direction of Rene de Quelen (Tiffany's head artist), to come up with a plan that was equally fitting to the grand architecture. De Quelen used a Byzantine approach, with deep colors, lots of jewels, and many mosaics. Louis Comfort Tiffany, son of Tiffany's founder and then head of the company, had studied art in Paris and had spent time in Spain and North Africa where he learned about this approach to decorating, and is thought to have helped direct de Quelen in his approach. The interior boasts Tiffany windows and Rubio marble inlaid with mother of pearl for the altar, pulpit, and lectern.
Founded in 1791, St. Mary's Seminary and University was the first Catholic seminary in the United States. It was granted a civil charter by the State of Maryland in 1805 and in 1822, Pope Pius VII established it as the first seminary in the U.S. to grant ecclesiastical degrees, which it still does to this day. Originally on Paca Street, the seminary moved to its present location on Roland Avenue and Northern Parkway in Roland Park in 1929.
This massive building, designed by Boston architects Maginnis and Walsh, has a classical entrance. Immediately inside stands a statue of Mary, the patroness of the seminary, called Sedes Sapientiae, or Our Lady Seat of Wisdom. The main chapel, fitted in marble and oak, contains a Casavant pipe organ and stained glass windows imported from Paris. Today the seminary is cared for by the Sulpician Fathers and the building still houses seminarians following their calling.
Who knew that tucked away inside the Mount Pleasant public golf course off Hillen Road sits a remarkably well preserved 150 year-old Methodist chapel?
Taylor's Chapel has its roots to the Taylor family, which is one of the oldest in Maryland, stretching back to the 1600s. As brothers, John Taylor was one of the first commissioners of Baltimore County and Thomas Taylor ("Colonel Taylor" at the time) was a councilor to Lord Baltimore. The chapel was built on a tract Colonel Taylor's land called "The Ridge" where William Penn and Lord Baltimore first met to resolve their dispute over the boundary line between the colonies. The Chapel has its origins in a Quaker meeting house that likely was built by Joseph Taylor in the mid-1700s on his property, called Taylor's Range (then in Baltimore County). Joseph was disowned by the Society of Friends for "speaking evil" of some fellow Quakers and refusing to apologize, and went off and built his own Quaker meeting house a little further away on the corner of his property. The Taylor Family kept this wooden building as a meeting house for a number of generations. Interestingly, the Quaker family allowed Bishop Francis Asbury, a leader in the founding of Methodism in America, to preach there in 1777. The conversion was surely slower that Bishop Asbury would have liked, but about thirty years later, the worshippers at the wooden building did indeed switch from Quakers to Methodists. In 1853, Elijiah Taylor inherited the property and tore down the log meeting house to build the Methodist chapel that stands today. By 1930, however, regular services had ceased and the building sat vacant until the early 1960s, when a group of volunteers from St. John's of Hamilton United Methodist Church began taking care of it. From parent to child over a number of generations, this group still acts as caretakers of this little known jewel, and opens it up for weddings, baptisms and other events. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983, and still contains the original 1853 frescoes on its walls, among many other original features.
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In 1869, the Freemasons finished a new Grand Lodge for the State of Maryland on Charles Street in downtown Baltimore, with each room more decorated than the last. Originally designed by Edmund G. Lind, who also designed the Peabody Institute in the Mount Vernon neighborhood, the Masonic Temple is a testament to architectural wonder.
The building boasts what seem like miles of marble floors, stained-glass windows, painted ceilings, and decorative columns. The building's primary 19 rooms have names that portray a litany of architectural styles and historical frameworks that were important to the Masons: Oriental Room, Marble Room, Corinthian Room, and even an Edinburgh Hall. Each is done in a different architectural style and glamor. The building, completed in 1869, caught fire on Christmas Day 1890 and again in January of 1908. Although much of the interior was destroyed, the thick walls saved the structure and the decorations were brought back each time.
The Masons completed repairs to the building in 1909 following a design by Joseph Evans Sperry, who also designed the city's landmark Bromo Seltzer Tower. The building then spent over eighty years with little outward drama until the Masons moved out to a new headquarters in 1994. The city spent the next few years devising plans to raze the structure for a parking garage. Luckily, the William C. Smith Company bought the building in 1998 and with the help of architects Murphy and Dittenhafer, completed a complete overhaul following exacting preservation standards. The building today serves as a stunning conference facility.
Founded in 1880, the Woman's Industrial Exchange helped craftswomen discreetly earn a living and operated at 333 N. Charles Street in various forms. Launched by Mrs. G. Harmon Brown, the Woman's Industrial Exchange was founded "for the purpose of endeavoring by sympathy and practical aid to encourage and help needy women to help themselves by procuring for them and establishing a sales room for the sale of Women's Work." It was the third oldest women's exchange in the country. The building was constructed in 1815 and was used as a boarding house before the Exchange bought it in the late 1880s.
The Exchange underwent extensive renovations in 2004 (incidentally, winning a 91Ƶ historic preservation award for the work). The renovations maintained the original materials (and charm), while modernizing the apartments and commercial kitchen.
In June 2020, the Exchange stoped operating and the Maryland Women's Heritage Center (MWHC) moved into the building. The MWHC is the first comprehensive state-based women’s history center and museum of its kind in the nation. It has adapted the storefront of this landmark building into an exhibit center and small event space. Changing exhibits in the bay window facing North Charles Street feature various women artists and their creations. The center celebrates Maryland women —past and present, famous and not—and adds “HERstory to history to tell our story.”
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"Huge and, alas! we must say ungainly," is how the Baltimore Sun described The Severn in 1907. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1972, few locals would still dismiss the grand Severn Apartment House as an intrusion on Mt. Vernon Place, but in the 1890s the construction of the building created a real controversy among Mount Vernon's wealthy residents.
Baltimore builder Joseph M. Cone and architect Charles E. Cassell unveiled plans for a new ten-story apartment house in September 1895 at the northeast corner of Mt. Vernon Place and Cathedral Street. The new building would rise to a height of 122 feet, just 7 feet shy of the 1894 Hotel Stafford, a Richardsonian Romanesque landmark around the corner facing the north garden of Washington Place. Known as "The Severn," the proposed apartment house included twenty apartment suites for families and nine bachelor apartments, along with a drug store and a kitchen for room service.
The corner had been occupied by a beautiful townhouse first built as the home of Chancellor John Johnson, Jr., a notable Baltimore lawyer (whose portrait still hangs at the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse) and brother of well-known Maryland politician Reverdy Johnson. One of the last owners, Henry W. Rogers was a well-established real estate investor and, after his death in 1901, his son, himself a well known real-estate agent, sold the property to Joseph Cone.
Neighbors objected to the prospect of replacing the old house with the still unfamiliar form of an apartment house. Building came to a stop in the fall of 1895 as a group of area residents approached Joseph Cone to try to buy back the property. Their effort ultimately failed when they could not raise the necessary amount to buy out the builder. However, the Severn did motivate residents to successfully lobby the state legislature to pass a bill prohibiting development in Mt. Vernon taller than seventy feet.
By the 1970s, when The Severn was designated a National Historic Landmark, Mt. Vernon was not quite as grand as it had been in the past and the apartment building sold to developer Caswell J. Caplan for the modest sum of $250,000. Over the next several years, Caplan worked to modernize the apartments, preserving the original wood floors and tile while renovating the kitchens and other elements. The Severn continues to be owned by members of the Caplan family and is now appreciated more than scorned as one of Mt. Vernon's grandest historic apartment houses.
The Marlborough Apartments is an eleven-story landmark well-known for its architecture and as the home to the famous Baltimore art-collecting Cone Sisters. Before the construction of the Marlborough, the property was the site of a large mansion owned by the wealthy Popplein family. In 1880, only three years after Eutaw Place was extended up to North Avenue, Nicholas Popplein commissioned a massive 24-room brick mansion on Eutaw Place. Popplein was a wealthy paint manufacturer and a local leader in the area's development who owned Eutaw Place from McMechen all the way to Laurens Street. Unfortunately, Popplein died at home in 1885, shortly after construction of the new mansion was complete. His estate sold the mansion in the spring of 1901 to Dr. Thomas Shearer, a local specialist in homeopathy. An adjoining lot at the corner of Eutaw Place and Wilson Street sold to William Cochran in 1905. The two proposed to combine their investments and construct the Marlborough Apartment House, designed by architect Edward Glidden. Glidden designed an eleven-story apartment house, the largest in the city at the time. It was 141 feet wide on Eutaw Place and extended 130 feet back along Wilson Street. One of the first new buildings in Baltimore to be completely wired for electricity, the Marlborough even featured a rooftop garden. Among the 96 suites, a few apartments included as many as ten rooms. Among the many wealthy locals who moved in during the first few years were Dr. Claribel Cone (1864-1929) on the sixth floor and Miss Etta Cone (1870-1949) on the eighth. The sisters were born to Herman and Helen Cone, a German-Jewish family who immigrated to Baltimore in 1871. The family's wholesale grocery business, H. Cone and Sons, prospered and the sisters' older brothers relocated to Greensboro, North Carolina, where they started a successful textile business. While inheritances from their parents kept them comfortable, the profits from their brother's mills during WWI grew their wealth considerably. Etta was the first to start purchasing art, in 1898. She met both Picasso and Matisse while visiting friends Gertrude and Leo Stein in Paris, and was inspired to become Matisse's life-long patron. Claribel was a more experimental art buyer who sought out avant-garde works at high prices, like Matisse's Blue Nude for 120,760 francs. Eventually, the sisters covered nearly every space on every wall in their apartments with their collection. After Etta's death in 1949, the Cone Collection was donated to the Baltimore Museum of Art. It included over 3,000 works, 500 of which are by Matisse, with an estimated value of one billion dollars. The decades following the Cone Sisters were not kind the Marlborough. Absentee owners allowed the building to deteriorate severely by the early 1970s. A substantial renovation that converted the building apartments started in 1973.
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The Washington Apartment House at the northwest corner of Charles Street and Mt. Vernon Place is a one of the finest Beaux Arts apartment houses in Baltimore. After the controversial construction of The Severn in 1895, many Mt. Vernon residents were suspicious of new "skyscrapers." Just a month after the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904, the Baltimore Municipal Arts Society successfully pushed the Maryland State Legislature to pass an "Anti-Skyscraper Bill" prohibiting the construction of any building (other than churches) over seventy feet high within one block of the Washington Monument. William F. Cochran, the developer of the Washington Apartments, built right up to the limit of 70 feet before suing to erect an 8 foot addition. His lawsuit failed, reinforcing the restriction that became known as Maryland's first zoning law and was one of the earliest zoning laws in the United States.
William Cochran was born to privilege–his grandfather, Alexander Smith, had amassed a fortune as a carpet manufacturer in Yonkers, New York. Cochran moved to Baltimore in 1902 after marrying Annie Lorraine Gill. Despite his comfortable position among the local high society, he found his personal wealth troubling, explaining in an address on the "Passing of the Idle Rich" at Westminster Church, "The joy of having abundance is terribly mitigated when one is confronted with the sight of and appeals from people living under the opposite conditions. It seems all wrong."
While Cochran was vocal about his socialist ideals, he also sympathized with in the wealthy Mt. Vernon residents who sought to control the character of their neighborhood's development. He explained his purchase of the property at 700 Washington Place, remarking, "A strong desire of property holders on Mt. Vernon Place to control the kind of building to be erected on this site led me to purchase it to prevent anyone from building a skyscraper." Cochran bought the vacant mansion, built for Edward McDonald Greenway in 1835, in April 1905 for $160,000 and soon starting planning for a modern apartment house that could meet with approval from the neighbors.
The architect Cochran selected for the job was Edward H. Glidden, a Cleveland native, who arrived in Baltimore around the same time as Cochran. Glidden had already started a career that led him to become one of the city's foremost architects for apartment buildings with projects including the Stork Apartment House (1903) at Park and Monument, the Marlborough Apartments (1906) on Eutaw Place, Homewood Apartments (1910) at Charles and 31st Street, The Latrobe, Canterbury Hall and Tudor Hall Apartments. Glidden even lived at Homewood Apartments at the time of his death in 1924.
Washington Apartments went up quickly in 1906 at a cost of $300,000. Its six stories included 28 luxurious apartments and 29 rooms for servants. Measuring 69 feet and 8 inches tall, the building stood just under the recently instituted 70-foot height limit. Less than a year after completion, however, Cochran sought a permit application to build one more story, eight feet tall and set back twenty feet, to contain additional rooms for servants. The permit was denied and Cochran went to court, lost, then lost again on appeal in June 1908 with an important decision that affirmed the ability of the city to regulate building heights.
The Walbert building stands out in the Station North skyline with a bright coat of paint and rich Beaux Arts details.
The story of this landmark begins in 1907, when Charles J. Bonaparte—a great-nephew to Emperor Napoleon I of France, a prominent local lawyer and, at the time, attorney general under President Theodore Roosevelt—first announced plans for the building.
Acting as the trustee for the Walter R. Abell estate, which owned the property, Bonaparte commissioned the construction of an eight-story fireproof apartment house at the northwest corner of Charles Street and Lafayette Avenue. Working from a design by Baltimore architects Wyatt & Nolting, builder James Stewart & Co. soon completed the building at a cost of $190,000, with a fire-proof steel frame, pressed brick, and ornamental terra cotta details. The first floor featured several offices, designed for physicians or dentists, along with a large dining room. The largest and most luxurious apartments in the new building rented for as much as $900 or $1,000 per year (equivalent to over $23,000 today).
Baltimore native James B.N. Wyatt and William G. Nolting organized their partnership of Wyatt & Nolting in 1887. Wyatt was a close neighbor to The Walbert since 1876, when he designed and built a home for himself and his mother at Maryland and North Avenue across from the contemporary MICA Graduate Studio building. Charles Bonaparte also commissioned the firm to design his own home–Bella Vista–built in 1896 in Baltimore County. Wyatt & Nolting went on from the Walbert to design the Algonquin Apartments at St. Paul and Chase in 1914, along with scores of other projects across the city.
The Walbert was later converted into an office building and remained in the ownership of Crane and Crane for years while falling into some disrepair. Fortunately, the building underwent a substantial renovation in the mid-1980s through a partnership led by Howard Brown of David S. Brown Enterprises and it remains in good condition today.
At the northeast corner of Charles and Read Streets stands the beautiful Latrobe Apartment House. The name for the building comes from the original Latrobe House, built just after the Civil War and torn down in 1911 to make way for the new apartment building.
When John H.B. Latrobe built his home in Mt. Vernon in the 1860s, development had only recently started to migrate north from the fashionable area around the Washington Monument. John's son– future seven-term Baltimore mayor Ferdinand Latrobe–moved into the house with his wife Louisa Sherlock Swann, the daughter of Thomas Swann (a former Mayor of Baltimore and Governor of Maryland). Right next door to the Latrobe House was another 1860s mansion built by the family of Clinton L. Riggs, who moved to Baltimore as a young child. After Latrobe's death in 1911, Riggs decided to purchase the home and tear it down, along with his own family home, to build a modern nine-story apartment house.
Architects Glidden & Friz designed the building in an early Italian Renaissance style. According to the Baltimore Sun, it was "fitted with many of the latest conveniences" with "many quarters especially designed for bachelors." Edward Glidden had already made his mark in Mt. Vernon with the Washington Apartments on Mt. Vernon Place and the Rochambeau at Charles and Franklin (demolished in 2006). His partner Clyde Friz was just starting to develop the reputation that within the next few years would make him one of Baltimore's best-known Beaux Arts architects, with buildings like the Standard Oil Building on St. Paul Street (1922), the Scottish Rite Temple (1930), and the Enoch Pratt Free Library (1933).
Like many historic apartment buildings, the Latrobe Building experienced notable changes over the years, first converted to medical offices and then converted partially back to residences in the 1970s. The Latrobe Building underwent an expensive $3.5 million renovation supervised by architects Cochran Stephenson & Donkervoet in the 1980s and now serves as offices to many Baltimore non-profit organizations.
At the southwest corner of Chase and St. Paul in November 1912, the Algonquin Building Company completed a modern ten-story apartment house that neatly complements the historic 1903 Belvedere Hotel down the block. Architect William Nolting, of Wyatt & Nolting, evidently liked the building so much he moved in and lived there for nearly twenty years. The Algonquin Building Company was organized by Webb & White, a partnership of George R. Webb, a Baltimore capitalist who helped to consolidate the city's many street railway companies, and Theophilus White, a successful executive in the new telephone industry. The partnership purchased the building lot on Chase Street from General Francis E. Waters, a local lumberman and financier. Designed by architects Wyatt & Nolting and built by J. Henry Smith & Sons Company at a cost of $200,000, the new building was nine stories high with terra cotta details on the first three floors. Each floor contained two "large housekeeping apartments and two bachelor suites." The firm of Wyatt & Nolting began in 1887, a partnership of Baltimore native James B.N. Wyatt and William G. Nolting. The partnership also designed the Walbert apartments just up the street at Charles and Lafayette. Nolting not only designed the Algonquin but became one of its first residents, living in apartment E-8 from 1917 through 1936. After his death in 1940, the Baltimore Sun devoted an editorial to expressing regret for his passing, describing Nolting as "one of the very small group of architects–small nationally as well as locally–who by main strength lifted American architecture out of the doldrums in which it had rested during the latter part of the nineteenth century and gave it new vitality." In the 1940s, the building converted its apartments to doctors' offices and became known as the Medical Arts Building. In 2015, after several years of vacancy, the building reopened with fifty-six new market-rate apartments. Waldon Studio Architects converted the original luxury apartments into smaller, energy-efficient units with a design that sought to comply with current codes while preserving original historic details.
A survivor that has endured decades of abandonment, the 1914 Lebow Building is an impressive example of early twentieth century industrial architecture that is just starting a new future as the Baltimore Design School. While it takes its popular name from the Lebow Brothers Clothing factory that occupied the building from the 1950s through 1985, the Lebow Building actually shares a common history with the Copycat Building next door and the artist-owned Cork Factory – all three were built by Baltimore's Crown Cork & Seal Company.
Founded by prolific inventor William Painter in 1892, the Crown Cork & Seal Company centralized their operations on the 1500 block of Guilford Avenue in a new Romensque six-story warehouse in May 1897. William Painter died in 1906 but the business continued to grow and the Lebow Building was built in 1914 to serve as a machine shop. The design by architect Otto G. Simonson featured vast expanses of glass – windows made up nearly 75% of the exterior facade – and a unique ventilation system. Simonson had arrived in Baltimore in 1904 to work as the superintendent for the construction of the U.S. Custom House located at South Gay and East Lombard Streets. Born in Dresden, Germany, Simonson immigrated to Hartford, Connecticut at age 21 and worked for many years in the office of supervising architect of U.S. Treasury Department in the early 1880s, eventually becoming the superintendent of construction of public buildings.
The builder, Herbert West, had supervised the construction of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York before moving his architectural career to Baltimore in the aftermath of the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 to focus on developing fireproof buildings. West became a leader in the local architectural community and helped to develop city building codes as president of the Building Congress and Exchange of Baltimore.
By the 1920s, the Crown Cork & Seal Company provided a full half of the world's supply of bottle caps. Between two and three hundred people worked at the machine shop and employees benefited from amenities including an outdoor rooftop recreation area for ladies and a separate area for men in the building's courtyard. In 1930, however, the company began to consolidate operations at their 35-acre factory complex in Highlandtown.
In 1950, the machine shop was leased to Lebow Brothers Clothing Company – a preeminent manufacturer of men's clothing at the time and especially well-known for their coats and suits. In 1982, private developer Abraham Zion purchased both the company and the building. However, Lebow Clothing ceased manufacturing and the building was shuttered in 1985.
In 2013, the abandoned building was transformed into the Baltimore Design School. The school focuses on creating a collaborative and progressive educational environment. The former loading dock is now an outdoor performance space for fashion shows. Salvaged equipment from the clothing factory is exhibited in the former freight elevator to honor the building’s previous life. The project met the Secretary of Interior Standards for historic preservation and received state and federal tax credits and is a LEED Silver certified green building.
Established in 1857, the Peabody Institute is the second-oldest conservatory in the United States and a landmark at the southeast corner of the Washington Monument. Born in 1795 in Massachusetts, George Peabody lived briefly in Washington, DC, fought in the War of 1812, and, in 1816, settled in Baltimore where he lived for the next 20 years. Starting in the wholesale dry goods business and later through banking and finance, Peabody accumulated a tremendous fortune eventually moving to London to direct the banking firm of George Peabody & Co. Inspired by the many cultural and educational opportunities available to residents in London, Peabody set out to bring these same opportunities to the United States through philanthropy. The most significant of these efforts remains the Peabody Institute, founded in 1857 through a donation of $1,400,000. The construction of a home for the new Peabody Institute was delayed by the start of the Civil War, the Conservatory building opened in 1866. The Conservatory was joined in 1878 by the George Peabody Library, directly to the east, opened in 1878 and is one of the most spectacular enclosed spaces in our city. Designed by architect Edmund G. Lind, in collaboration with the first provost Dr. Nathaniel H. Morison, the library is distinguished by the unique interior architectural ironwork fabricated by the Bartlett-Robbins & Company. The Peabody Stack Room features five tiers of ornamental cast-iron balconies that rise to a skylight set 61 feet above the floor. The building is a rare example of Edmund Lind's architectural work as only a few other surviving buildings remain from his prolific 40-year career.
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Beginning in 1872, the mansion was the home of Robert Garrett, president of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, and his wife Mary Frick Garrett. After Robert Garrett's death, Mrs. Garrett married Dr. Henry Barton Jacobs and the couple added the ballroom by purchasing the neighboring house and converting it into an space for entertaining.
The mansion is exceptional for many things, including that it can boast of being the product of two renowned architects, Stanford White and John Russell Pope. The building, and particularly the ballroom, was the location of many society balls and Gilded Age parties that included dinner, dancing, live music, theater, and other festivities often for hundreds of people.
After Mrs. Garrett passed in 1936 and Dr. Jacobs in 1939, the Mansion had a series of different owners. In 1961, The Engineer's Club leased the building from the City of Baltimore. The city had acquired the property as part of an urban renewal plan to demolish the south side of Mt. Vernon Place and make way for an expansion of the Walters Art Gallery. Fortunately, these plans never received the funding required and in 1962 the Engineer's Club purchased it outright beginning a dedicated effort to preserve and maintain the historic structure.
In 1761, a group of Scots-Irish "Dissenters" (opponents of the Church of England) came to Baltimore Towne from Pennsylvania to escape the French and Indian War. They founded the First Presbyterian Church, appropriately named as it really was the first, and remains the oldest, Presbyterian church in the city. The founding minister, Rev. Patrick Allison (1740 – 1802), was a Chaplain to the Continental Congress and was a personal friend of George Washington.
After locating in several places downtown, the congregation moved to Mount Vernon and built the current church between 1854 and 1859. With its New Brunswick freestone exterior and 273-foot tall steeple (still the tallest in the city), this Gothic Revival church dominates Midtown Baltimore.
Construction started in 1854 under the supervision of architect Nathan G. Starkweather, a native of Oxford, England, and finished by his assistant Edmund G. Lind. Famed bridge engineer Wendell Bollman and the Patapsco Bridge and Iron Works of Baltimore produced the structural cast iron used throughout the church including the spire, which was not added until 1873.
The church is a notable example of Gothic Revival architecture and a landmark in the City of Baltimore. The interior boasts a triple-vaulted sanctuary with massive plaster pendants and is considered one of the finest Victorian plaster interiors in the country. To pile on to this beauty, the church has many windows from Tiffany Studios, as well as a host of other companies from England, Italy, New York and Boston. In 2009, the church embarked on an extensive restoration plan under the guidance of Murphy and Dittenhafer architects.
In 1973, the First Presbyterian Church united with the Franklin Street Presbyterian Church to form The First and Franklin Street Presbyterian Church, and in 2012 the congregation voted to change it to the simpler First & Franklin Presbyterian Church.
Touted as "modern market in the country," and now considered an early prototype for suburban shopping centers, the North Avenue Market opened in 1928 with twelve retail stores and twenty-two lane bowling alley on the second floor at a cost of $1,850,000.The site of the market between Charles Street and Maryland Avenue had originally been the site of two country houses (including one used by Confederate General Robert E. Lee) but thanks the rapid development of north Baltimore in the early twentieth century the new market drew in fifty thousand visitors on its opening day and soon attracted more than two hundred grocery vendors.
After WWII, however, as many industrial businesses began to leave the area, the market began to decline and only thirty of the stalls were occupied when a destructive six-alarm fire in August 1968 shut down a portion of the market and led to substantial changes for the building. The fire, which started in the Woodlawn Lunch stall, was so hot that it cracked glass display cases and caused canned food to explode. A crowd of eight hundred residents gathered to watch the fire, tragically including elderly market manager, George Horshoff, suffered a heart attack and collapsed while viewing the damage and died shortly after. Two of the main factors in the extensive destruction caused by the fire were a lack of a sprinkler system and the sheet metal window guards, which obstructed fire fighters trying to enter the building.
After the fire, the market was purchased by James and Carolyn Frenkil, owners of the Center City, Inc., development company, who planned to reopen a portion of the market over the next six years and sold the northern portion of the building to be developed into high-rise senior citizen housing. The northern portion of the market was razed to accommodate the seventeen-story retirement home. The remaining part of the building was turned into a supermarket which opened in 1974.
Despite efforts to rejuvenate the building or redevelop any of the property, the heart of the building was closed off and vacant for nearly forty years following the fire. In 2008, a $1 million project for the building was launched to restore the building as an "arts-focused mix of shops, eateries, and offices." The rehabilitation process for the property is still ongoing, but has been successful so far. In 2012 the continued rehabilitation project for the market was awarded grant money from the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development as well as from the Central Baltimore Partnership. The newest plans for the space include new paint, addition lighting, and re-opening exterior windows that were covered decades ago.
The Charles Theatre began not as a movie house but as a street car barn and powerhouse designed by architect Jackson C. Gott and built in 1892. The building then became a popular dance club hosting national acts such as Tommy Dorsey and the Glenn Miller Orchestra. The Times Theatre opened in the building in 1939 taking its name from its role as the city’s first “all newsreel movie house.” In 1959, the owners renamed the business the Charles Theatre. During the theatre’s early history it showed art house films and frequently screened early works by John Waters. The theatre was managed by Pat Moran, who went on to become a notable casting director, and the projectionist was Garey Lambert, a gay rights activist who John Waters called “the Harvey Milk of Baltimore.” In 1999, the theatre was expanded adding four additional screens with modern auditorium style seating and large concession area.
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Erected in stages between 1890 and 1910, the former H.F. Miller & Son Company building consists of a 77,000 square foot brick manufacturing plant that occupies half of the city block bounded by 26th Street on the south, 27th Street on the north, North Howard Street on the west and Mace Street on the east. The complex incorporates the original, four story, "L" shaped brick building (1890-1895), a large three story brick addition (1910) and a two story brick stable that was remodeled as an open storage shed in 1928.
The H.F. Miller & Son Company building represented a significant era in the city's industrial history. In the late nineteenth century the company was one of the largest manufactures of tin boxes in the United States. Between 1890 and 1895 the company erected a state of the art industrial facility which incorporated new types of mechanization that greatly improved the efficiency of the can making industry. The company distributed its wares widely to Canadian, Mexican, European, African and South American markets, as well as in the U.S.
In 1953 the company ceased operations on the North Howard Street site. Between 1954 and 1985 the Miller Factory building was divided into several spaces. A series of businesses including the Commander Garment Company, Rombro Brothers, Ember Reuben and the Majestic Furniture Company occupied the building. During the 1990 census, the building served as the local headquarters of the U.S. Census Bureau.
Since the completion of the census, the building stood vacant until Seawall Development Company began renovations. Combining green construction and a focus on creating apartments for teachers, Miller's Court combines great historic preservation work with an interesting new approach to finding a new life for older buildings.
Constructed across from the venerable Ford's Theater in 1911, the Empire Theatre (as the Everyman was first called) was designed in the Beaux Arts style by Baltimore architects William McElfatrick and Otto Simonson. Although its advertising slogan was appealing, "Better Burlesque," and it boasted its own soda fountain and billiard parlor, the theatre never caught on with burlesque or a few years later, with vaudeville.
By 1915 it had switched to a single screen movie theatre with seats for over 1500. Movies did not fare well either, and after a brief stint back as a burlesque theatre, the building was shuttered in 1927. In 1937 it reopened, but as a parking garage. For some reason, this use also did not stick, and in 1947 the building was rebuilt back into a theatre. With architects Lucius White and John Zinc in the lead, the new theatre was fully modern, with Art Moderne styling, amoeba-shaped wall decorations, and even a concession stand selling new fangled orange-coated ice cream treats called Dreamsicles. The Town Theatre, as it was then renamed, opened with a premier showing of "It's a Wonderful Life," complete with Jimmy Stewart in the audience.
It was during this period that a real life drama took place in 1953 when the FBI received a tip that a wanted criminal, John Elgin Johnson, was at the theatre. He was in a phone booth when the FBI approached and he opened fire, wounding agents J. Brady Murphy and Raymond J. Fox. Additional agents returned fire, killing Mr. Johnson. Agent Murphy later died from his wounds.
From the 1960s into the 1970s, the Town was Baltimore's only "Cinerama," a film technique where multiple film strips are shown on a single projector. This run didn't last either, and the theatre closed again in 1990, about a week before the Hippodrome a block away also went dark.
The building was given to the Everyman Theatre in 2006, which was then in search of a new home. After raising considerable capital for a major renovation, the restoration included both the historic exterior and a wholly new interior to accommodate modern performance requirements. The theatre now has 250 seats and a host of other spaces: a scene shop, dressing rooms, a green room, a rehearsal hall, classrooms, offices, costume shop, and a prop shop. The company's first performance in the new space was in January 2013.
In January 1799, the Maryland Legislature approved a petition for a charter to incorporate a society of physicians in Maryland to be known as the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of the State of Maryland. As written, this special act of the Maryland Legislature was intended to "prevent the citizens (of Maryland) from risking their lives in the hands of ignorant practitioners or pretenders to the healing art."
The society became the seventh of its kind in the country, and some of its notable achievements include the creation in 1807 of what became the University of Maryland School of Medicine, the establishment in 1830 of a medical library, and the creation of the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery in 1839 that was the first institution of its kind in the world. MedChi has been in its current building since 1909 and Dr. William Osler, co-founder of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, is given credit for the creation of the MedChi library that is still housed there today.
When Dr. Osler arrived in Baltimore in 1889 he was disappointed to find that the Society's library consisted of only 7,000 volumes of outdated and dilapidated books. He convinced the Society to purchase a building on Eutaw Street for use as a library but the collection soon outgrew the location.
The Society purchased a lot at 1211 Cathedral Street and dedicated the current building in 1909. Modeled after the medical society libraries of Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City, the building included a roof-top apartment (described by the Baltimore Sun as the "first penthouse in Baltimore") and a garden for a full-time, live-in librarian. The building was later renovated in 1962 by University of Maryland architect Henry P. Hopkins.
Lexington Market, originally known as Western or New Market, was started at the western edge of the city at the turn of the 19th century to take advantage of the trade with the recently opened Northwest Territory. The first market shed was built c. 1805 on land once belonging to John Eager Howard. It grew quickly along with the city, which was advantageously situated on the western most harbor along the East Coast. This access to transatlantic trade routes, then the railroads, were major factors to the growth of Baltimore through the 19th century. After a visit to the market, Ralph Waldo Emerson dubbed it the “gastronomic capital of the world.”
The larger and more established public markets, like Centre, Hanover, and Broadway markets, were often used for court ordered auctions of enslaved people. Having been located at the edge of the city, there is not much evidence that such sales were common at Lexington Market. The only information found so far indicates that at least one such auction did take place here in 1838. A monument was recently erected here to memorialize the woman sold at that court-ordered auction and a runaway enslaved man who had worked at the market. Their names were Rosetta and Robert.
Hotels and taverns proliferated near public markets, including this area around Lexington Market. It was a common practice during this time to arrange business meetings in hotels and taverns, to such an extent that bartenders and inn keepers would take and relay messages for regular customers. The meetings could be business or social. Transactions discussed could be anything from starting a chapter of a fraternal organization to the selling and buying of real estate, farm animals, or enslaved people. Many slave traders got their start in this manner--Slatter, Woolfolk, and Purvis to name a few. An example of an ad from the early 19th century informed buyers of people “to apply at Mr. Lilly’s Tavern, Howard Street” and another directed buyers to “Fowler’s Tavern near the New Market, Lexington Street.” The latter of these might be William Fowler’s Sign of the Sunflower, which was located in this area.
Although the original intention of the market was to sell Maryland-grown produce, by the turn of the twentieth century, the market offered an international selection as thousands of immigrants moved to Baltimore, becoming both vendors and customers. The city kept the price to rent a stall at the market low to encourage aspiring business owners. This practice was particularly beneficial for immigrants who had few job opportunities upon entering the country. As a result, immigrant communities grew around Lexington Market and helped establish a diverse community in West Baltimore. The new products offered at the market contributed to the international fame it would attain at the turn of the century.
While the form of Lexington Market has changed dramatically over the decades — an early frame market shed was replaced in 1952 following a 1949 fire and the city significantly expanded the market in the 1980s — the community of vendors and locals continues to draw crowds of residents and tourists daily.