In 1967, the Baltimore Afro-American called the home in the 2500 block of Harlem Avenue "a typical slice of Baltimore:"
"The 2500 block of Harlem Avenue is a microcosm of middle-class Baltimore. . . . A visit to the neighborhood on a late summer afternoon caught the block in a typical setting. The tall, majestic greystone Union Memorial Church dominates the northwest corner of Harlem and Warwick Avenues. The row homes are separated from the tree-lined streets by carefully tended shrubbery and small neatly trimmed plots of lawn..." "Warren Peck, at 2507, is an arts and crafts teacher for the Department of Education... He has lived in the area since 1952 when he was discharged from the Army [as a World War II and Korean War veteran] ... Like most of the residents in the block, he is a native Baltimorean... He worked as a Pullman porter for several years before he was drafted into the army, and later returned to the railroad. “There was good money in those days,” Mr. Peck maintains. As a matter of fact, it was primarily money saved up from his railroad work that enabled him to buy the home in 1952, he said. He paid $11,500 for the house when the neighborhood was undergoing a racial change... Mr. Peck is one of 11 teachers living in the 2500 block of Harlem Ave. Among the residents are at least two ministers, a nurse, two proprietors of beauty salons, three Social Security Administration employees, and a number of retired persons."The article reported the statements of one of the only two white residents who remained on the block in 1967:
"Miss Julia Knoerr has lived with her two bachelor brothers there since 1926: 'The real estate people used to call me all the time, but I settled them–I made it clear that I didn’t intend to move anywhere. . . . I thought it was silly the way people began to move out [in the early 1950s], but some people will complain about anything.' . . . Contrary to claims of opponents of fair housing who say property value drops when integration comes, Miss Knoerr believes that property values have improved in the block over the past 15 years. 'Everybody takes more interest in keeping their places nicer than people used to,' she noted.”Dr. J. Welfred Holmes, a Morgan State College (now University) professor of English lived at 2559 Harlem Ave. from the early 1950s to his death in 1968. The obituary in the Sun noted that he had earned his Ph.D. at the University of Pittsburgh, then taught at several historically black colleges before coming to Morgan in 1946. One of the co-founders of the Evergreen Protective Association, he also was active in Baltimore Neighborhoods, Inc. (a fair housing advocacy group) and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Perkins Square Baptist Church has been an institution on Edmondson Avenue since the mid-1950s occupying a grey stone church that began in 1913 as Emmanuel English Evangelical Lutheran Church. The two-story tall church was designed by local architect A. Cookman Leach and built by C.C. Watts.
Alfred Cookman Leach graduated from the Maryland Institute Freehand Division in 1896 and worked as a partner of the firm of Tormey and Leach. Examples of Leach’s religious buildings can be found across the city including the Highland Methodist Episcopal Church (built 1906) at Highland and Pratt Streets, the Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church South (built 1927) on Liberty Heights Avenue, and the Alpheus W. Wilson Methodist Episcopal Church South (built 1927) at University Parkway and Charles Street.
Established in 1888, the Emmanuel English Evangelical Lutheran Church had formerly occupied a building at the corner of Schroeder and Pierce Streets. Pastors from ten Evangelical Lutheran Churches throughout Baltimore participated in the cornerstone laying ceremony on July 13, 1913. The church had organized the first of a series of outdoor services the prior Sunday and planned to continue outdoor meetings at the site of their new building through July and August. Within the cornerstone, at the southeast corner of the building, the church placed, copies of The Baltimore Sun, the church constitution, the proceedings of the last synod, a list of officers of the congregation, a hymnal and a bible.
In the decade after WWII, the church, like many largely white congregations in the area, moved west to new neighborhoods at the developing western edge of Baltimore. Under the leadership of Reverend George Loose, Emmanuel Lutheran Church dedicated a new church on Ingleside Avenue in 1957 leaving their building at Edmondson and Warwick to Perkins Square Baptist Church.
Perkins Square Baptist Church was established in 1881 and takes its name from a small park and fresh-water spring located in the area of Heritage Crossing today. The congregation quickly grew to become one of the largest black Baptist churches in Baltimore and hosted regular community meetings, including a 1905 rally to campaign against the "Poe amendment" proposed by Senator Arthur Pue Gorman and the Maryland Democratic Party to disenfranchise black voters in Maryland. Virginia native Ward D. Yerby became pastor of the church in 1970 and led the move west to purchase the new church in January 1956. Rev. Yerby served as executive secretary of the Governor's Commission on Interracial Problems and Relations in the late 1950s.
At a ground-breaking ceremony for the Immanuel Reformed Church on June 24, 1922, twelve trustees, including Charles C. Zies, Sr. and John H. Weller, signed a contract for the construction of the new building. Plans filed a few days later for a white marble structure with a capacity of 750 people at a cost of $50,000. In May 1924, the new building served as the site of celebration for the “golden jubilee” of the Baltimore Classis of the German Synod of the East of the Reformed Church in the United States, including lectures by Rev. Dr. H.G. Schlueter on “The Historical Background of Baltimore Classis” and Rev. J.G. Grimmer on “Baltimore Classis Then and Now.” A classis is an organization of pastors and elders that governs a group of local churches.
In the late 1950s, the church followed others in the neighborhood in a move away from the area, breaking ground on April 7, 1957 at a site on Edmondson Avenue west of Rolling Road in Catonsville. The new building is a “contemporary brick church.” By 1958, the building was home to St. Mark’s Baptist Church, also known as St. Mark’s Institutional Baptist Church, that continues to worship at the building up through the present.
Organized in 1875 by Samuel H. Cummings at Gilmore and Mulberry Streets, the Harlem Park Methodist Episcopal Church relocated to Harlem Park in 1880 under the leadership of John F. Goucher. The church constructed a new building in 1906 under the leadership of Rev. E.L. Watson and then moved again to Harlem Avenue and Warwick Avenue under the leadership of Rev. E.P. Fellenbaum. The new building was described:
“Gothic in design, with an auditorium seating 800 persons. In addition, there will be an educational building, equipped with 10 rooms for Sunday-school work. In the basement will be a social hall. A recreation room with bowling alleys and a lecture room that may be converted into a gymnasium also are planned.”At a mortgage burning ceremony in 1947, Fellenbaum recalled that some criticized the project, and the $100,000 mortgage, as “Fellenbaum’s Folly.” The congregation laid the cornerstone for the new building at 4:00 PM on May 2, 1925. The Harlem Park Methodist Episcopal Church was dedicated at 3:00 PM on November 21, 1926 with Bishop William Fraser McDowell officiating. In May 1953, the Harlem Park Methodist Church merged with the Grove Methodist Chapel, erected in 1857 on Johnnycake Road in Baltimore County, to form the Wesley Memorial Methodist Church in Catonsville, Maryland. Their building was offered for sale at $210,000. Bishop E.A. Love of the Washington Conference appointed the Reverend N.B. Carrington as the leader of the Union Memorial United Methodist Church and assisted in securing help from the Washington and Baltimore Conferences and the Board of Missions to purchase the property. The church had previously moved from Pine and Franklin Streets to North and Madison Avenues in 1951 and had fewer than 100 members when it moved to Harlem Avenue in 1953. By the time of Rev. Carrington’s retirement in 1961, however, the church had grown to over 600 members. Carrigton began pastoring at Union Memorial United Methodist in 1952, and also worked as the supervisor of the AFRO’s pressroom. He later commented, “I married, baptized and buried many of them down there — matter of fact they call me the AFRO’s chaplain.” Commenting on the success of the church in paying off the building’s $225,000 mortgage in 8 years, Carrington noted, “Those are the kind of people we have in our congregation. They wanted to get it out of the way and they worked hard to do it.”
Today, the parking lot of the West Baltimore MARC Station and the concrete highway lanes to the east dominate this site, symbols both of the weight of the past and prospects for the future. In the 1970s major demolition occurred in the corridor to the east to build the first leg in a proposed East-West expressway, envisioned as the eastern extension of Interstate 70. The route was to proceed west along a corridor directly through the Greater Rosemont communities and continue on through the heart of Gwynns Falls/Leakin Park. African American residents in this section of the city fought the road plan under the banner of RAM (Relocation Action Movement). The organization joined with city-wide expressway opponents under the umbrella of MAD (the Movement Against Destruction), a coalition that cut across lines of race, class, and differing interests in opposition to various sections of the proposed expressway system. In the late 1960s, the city condemned hundreds of houses along the corridor to the west of this site for the proposed highway. However, mounting protests initially forced the decision to designate an alternate route and eventually to abandon the section through Greater Rosemont and the parks to the west altogether. Soon, the one-mile stretch of expressway that was completed with such controversy and such cost—economic as well as social—was being called “The Road to Nowhere.” To the west of the station, between Franklin Street and Edmondson Avenue stand 880 houses condemned by Baltimore officials for the proposed construction of the East-West Expressway in the late 1960s, little more than a decade after African Americans had seized the opportunity to acquire homes in neighborhoods formerly closed to them. Witnessing the process immediately to the east where condemnation already had occurred (and demolition was imminent) for the artery to be built between Franklin and Mulberry Streets, Greater Rosemont residents became active in the Relocation Action Movement, which united with others opposing various sections of the proposed expressway system across the city under the banner of MAD. In April 1968, civil disturbances convulsed the city in the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., adding to the general climate of heightened social tension between Baltimore’s citizens and its officials. For RAM, the highway threat was a civil rights issue. As an example, when the group’s proposal for an underground roadway to spare residences was rejected on the grounds that it would be too expensive, a member exclaimed, “It always has been expensive to operate a segregated society.” James Dilts, in a series of articles in the Sun that year, decried the logic of the expressway plan, which he believed amounted to destroying parts of the city and harming its residents, even as it promised to improve the city. Late in 1968, mounting opposition to the Greater Rosemont route led Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro, III, to propose an alternative that would bypass the affected neighborhoods by following a route along the railroad line to the south. However, the following year, when the city announced a plan to sell the formerly condemned houses back to their original owners, only half took up the offer, the remainder having decided to move out for good. A 1970 Sun article referred to Rosemont as “a once stable middle-class Negro community which was devastated by plans to build the East-West Expressway through its core.”
The John H.B. Latrobe House is the only surviving site associated with the "Saturday Morning Visiter" writing contest that launched Edgar Allan Poe's literary career. On an evening in October 1833, Latrobe, along with John Pendleton Kennedy and James H. Miller, read Poe's "Ms. Found in a Bottle" and unanimously declared him the winner. Poe, who was at the time a penniless unknown author, received a $50 cash prize. Perhaps more importantly, Poe struck up a friendship with Kennedy who would help jump-start his literary career.
John Pendleton Kennedy was already a moderately successful author when he met Poe. His first major romance about the agrarian South, "Swallow Barn," was published a year before and helped established the Southern gentleman archetype we have today. In 1838, Kennedy published "Rob of the Bowl"—a tale about religious and political rivalries in seventeenth century Maryland. Kennedy gave up writing when he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives later that year. The peak of his political career was in 1852 when served as Secretary of the Navy.
Poe got his job at "The Southern Literary Messenger" because of a reference from Kennedy; a job Poe was fired from only weeks later when he was caught drinking on the job. Despite Poe's missteps, Kennedy believed in the young writer. Poe would often write to him for favors, money, and reassurance and considered Kennedy to be his friend when no one else was. The relationship became strained once Kennedy got into politics. The loans and favors stopped coming, leaving Poe feeling abandoned by his old friend.
For many years, the Latrobe House held the offices of furniture manufacturing company Fallon & Hellen. Today, it is a private residence and signifies a milestone in Poe's career as an author.
Mencken lived in an apartment at 704 Cathedral Street for five years with his wife, nee Sara Haardt. The third floor apartment’s east windows faced Mount Vernon Place, and the inside was decorated with a distinctly Victorian style. Marion Elizabeth Rodgers provides detailed description of the apartment in Mencken: The American Iconoclast, a thorough chronicle of the writer’s life, who is perhaps best known for his Baltimore Sun editorials and opinion pieces.
The third floor apartment was reached by climbing numerous steep stairs, as the building did not have an elevator, for which Mencken apologized to guests, promising comfortable chairs and a stocked bar once in the apartment. Inside, Sara decorated the drawing room with green chenille and mulberry silk; gilt mirrors, fancy fans, lace valentines, and glass bells hung elsewhere.
There were not many traces of Mencken in the apartment, save a lithograph of the Pabst Brewery plant operating at full swing in the dining room, which was also decorated with his 267 beer steins, a collection of ivories, and an autographed portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Hamilton Owens wondered “how a boisterous and rambunctious fellow like Henry could manage to be comfortable” in the apartment, and many friends privately felt the lithograph of the brewery was Mencken’s one salvation. Before Sara, Mencken was known to be a notorious bachelor.
While living in the apartment, Sara’s health, which had always been poor, continued to deteriorate. Mencken recalled that when he “married Sara, the doctors said she could not live more than three years... actually, she lived five, so that I had two more years of happiness that I had any right to expect.” Mencken continued to live at the Cathedral Street apartment in the months after Sara’s death, but returned to the family home 1524 Hollins Street early in 1936.
After a brief stint in New York, Ogden Nash returned to Baltimore in 1934 and wrote: "I could have loved New York had I not loved Balti-more."
After a brief stint in New York, Ogden Nash returned to Baltimore in 1934 and wrote: "I could have loved New York had I not loved Balti-more." Nash grew up in Rye, New York and first came to Baltimore for love. On a trip to the Elkridge Hunt Ball in Maryland in 1928, Nash met Frances Rider Leonard, a granddaughter of Maryland Governor Elihu Jackson and the woman he would come to marry.
Nash married Frances at the chapel of the Church of the Redeemer in 1931. By this time, Nash was already a national celebrity, known for his witty light verse. He spent his time bouncing between New York and Baltimore before settling down at 4205 Underwood Road-–a handsome stone house in Guilford-–in 1934 where he started a family and began his love affair with Baltimore sports. He enjoyed gambling at Pimlico and became an avid fan of the Baltimore Colts and Orioles. He soon moved with his wife and two daughters to his in-law's home at 4300 Rugby Road where they lived until the 1960s.
Nash published numerous poems about Baltimore sports teams. The December 13, 1968, issue of Life magazine had a cover feature on Nash's love of the Colts complete with poems. In the collection, Nash wrote that "Colt Fever" is "the disease fate holds in store / For the population of Baltimore / A disease more virulent than rabies / Felling men and women and even babies." In 1958, Nash wrote "You Can't Kill an Oriole" when the St. Louis Browns moved to Baltimore for the 1954 season. Present day Orioles manager Buck Showalter has a copy of the poem hanging in his office.
Nash lived in Baltimore for 37 years and led a happy and successful life with his wife, two daughters, and, of course, his dog. Nash adored animals and is credited with coining the phrase: "The dog is man's best friend." He died on May 19, 1971 at Johns Hopkins Hospital of Crohn's Disease. A memorial service was held at the Church of the Redeemer, 40 years after the date he was married there. His old home at 4300 Rugby Road remains a private residence, nestled away in Guilford.
Guilford began in 1780 when the property was confiscated from British land-owners and given to Revolutionary War veteran Lieutenant-Colonel William McDonald. McDonald gave Guilford its name to commemorate the battle of Guilford Court House, North Carolina. His son William, better known as “Billy,” inherited the estate and in 1852 built the Guilford Mansion.
The Italianate design of the mansion was a collaboration of British-born architect Edmund Lind and American William T. Murdock. The 52-room wood house was built over walls of masonry and was imposing in size and rich finishes. A solid walnut staircase rose with a grand sweep in a spiral ascent to the square turret. The drawing-room, library, billiard and reception rooms and great dining room all opened on to a main hall and had exposure to wide verandas shadowed by magnolia trees and draped in wisteria. The main hall itself was as wide as the driveway, paved in marble and lighted with stained-glass windows.
The mansion once stood where Wendover Road now meets Greenway. The entrances of the 300 acre Guilford estate were marked by imposing gates that were guarded by stone lions, reported to be copies of the lions of the Louvre. Frescoes on either side of the drive entrance depicted knights ready for conflict. Gates stood at York Road near present-day Underwood Road, Charles Street at University Parkway and Charles Street just south of Cold Spring Lane. Billy McDonald was an enthusiastic horseman and at Guilford he stabled his renowned mare, “Flora Temple.” The mare was housed at the Guilford estate in stalls that were kept in magnificent style as a suite of four apartments. Above her head was a stained glass window with her portrait.
In 1872, Arunah S. Abell, founder of The Sun, purchased Guilford from McDonald’s heirs. A.S. Abell had a home in the City and several country estates but he spent much time at Guilford living there for 35 years. On August 12, 1887, the New York Times reported that A. S. Abell celebrated his 81st birthday. “Mr. Abell passed the day quietly and pleasantly at his country seat, Guilford, surrounded by his children and grandchildren, who had tastefully arranged in the rooms of the beautiful mansion, particularly Mr. Abell’s private room, many lovely flowers.” Eight months later Arunah S. Abell died.
Rogers Buchanan Cemetery is hardly famous. Few visitors to the park even know where the cemetery is. Fewer still know the surprising stories of the men and women interred behind the wrought iron fence. But for those who know the history, the cemetery is at the heart of the history of Druid Hill Park as the final home to the family that built Auchentrolie as a country estate and sold it to the city in 1860 establishing in park. The earliest burial in the small plot belongs to the man who first created Auchentrolie—George Buchanan. George Buchanan immigrated from Scotland in 1723 and became one of the city’s founding Commissioners in 1729. Through his marriage to Eleanor Rogers, George acquired 250 acres of the whimsically named “Hab Nab at a Venture” that his father-in-law Nicholas Rogers II purchased in 1716. Still not content, George Buchanan expanded to property to 625 acres and named it “Auchentrolie” After his death in 1750, he was buried in the small family plot and left the estate to his son Lloyd Buchanan. Lloyd, his children, and his grandchildren all lived on the estate and were buried in the cemetery, among them a Revolutionary War veteran who served at Valley Forge with George Washington, a Confederate spy and saboteur, and a cantankerous slave-owner who created the “Druid Hill Peach.” When Druid Hill Park was sold to Baltimore for a park in 1860, Lloyd Rogers made only one stipulation—that any living members of his family could be buried at their cemetery in Druid Hill and that the city would maintain the cemetery in perpetuity.
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Leon Day Park is named for Leon Day an outstanding player in the Negro Leagues who was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. A resident of southwest Baltimore, Day joined the Baltimore Black Sox in 1934 when African Americans could not play in the Major or Minor Leagues. He went on to excel as a second baseman and pitcher for several teams and returned to Baltimore in the 1940s as a member of the Elite Giants. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1995 just a few days before he died. Leon Day played every position in the field but catch, and he played them all magnificently.
From picnic and playground facilities to sports fields and courts, Leon Day Park serves as a gathering place for people of all ages in the Rosemont-Franklintown Road neighborhood. Formerly called Claverton, the area contained mills and slaughterhouses before becoming residential in the 1920s and 1930s. The community became known as Rosemont in the 1960s when it opposed plans to demolish 790 homes to make way for the I-70 highway.
Close beside the Gwynns Falls is Ellicott Driveway, completed by the city in 1917 as the kind of stream valley parkway envisioned by the Olmsted Brothers landscape architectural firm in 1904.
Ellicott Driveway was built on top of the millrace that once carried water to Three Mills operated by the Ellicott Brothers near Frederick Road. In the 1800s, twenty-six gristmills along the Gwynns Falls and others on the Jones Falls and Patapsco River contributed to Baltimore's first economic boom. Besides their Ellicott City mills, the Ellicotts built the Three Mills complex in this area and were partners in the five Calverton Mills upstream at Leon Day Park. The Ellicotts also helped build the Frederick Turnpike so wagons could carry their products to ships at their Inner Harbor wharf. The Ellicott Driveway was completed by the city in 1917 as the kind of stream valley parkway envisioned by the Olmsted Brothers landscape architectural firm in 1904. The diversion dam for the millrace created a dramatic waterfall: "Baltimore's Niagara Falls." In 1930, the Municipal Art Society of Baltimore praised the route, writing:
"so gracefully following the curves of the stream in Gwynn's Falls park [Ellicott Driveway]... adapts itself to the con91Ƶ of the terrain and... takes full advantage of natural beauty."Today, the route is closed to cars and trucks and reserves its natural beauty for bicycles and pedestrians along the Gwynns Falls Trail.
Industries flourished in the lower Gwynns Falls Valley since the early 1700s, when the Baltimore Iron Works Company turned iron into nails and anchors and Dr. Charles Carroll's gristmills ground wheat into flour. The Union Stockyards, located south of Wilkens Avenue near the railroads from 1891 to 1967, brought "every hoof under one roof" in was was claimed to be the largest stockyard east of Chicago.
Nearby Wilkens Avenue is named for William Wilkens, a German-born entrepreneur who built a large factory complex in 1845 to the east where the Westside Shopping Center is located. The Wilkens Curled Hair Factory, which had as many as 1,000 employees and operated until the 1920s, processed animal hair from slaughterhouses to make mattresses and upholstery—and, like many other industries, dumped its waste into the waterways flowing to the Chesapeake Bay. Wilkens built housing for some of his workers and provided land for the avenue that bears his name today.
Where the Gwynns Falls flows into the Patapsco's Middle Branch, countless Baltimoreans have come to work and to play over the years. Since the early 1700s this area his been home to mining operations, brickyards, glass factories, and other industries. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, residents came by streetcar to enjoy amusement parks and dance pavilions, picnic grounds and fish houses, swimming beaches and rowing clubs. Crowds watched the Baltimore Black Sox and Elite Giants of the Negro Leagues play at Westport Park and Maryland Park along South Russell Street.
In 1977, the city created the Middle Branch Park by consolidating existing shoreside parks and began restoring environmentally degraded sites. Ten years later, the Baltimore Rowing and Water Resources Center opened, reviving a tradition of rowing competitions on the Middle Branch.
Established in 1922, Olivet Baptist Church has occupied the historic Edgewood Theatre since the late 1960s. Built in 1930, the Edgewood Theatre was designed by one of the city’s most prominent theatre architects—John J. Zink. Born in Baltimore in 1886, Zink graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1904 and started work with architect William H. Hodges and the local architecture firm Wyatt & Nolting. He began working on theatres when he joined architect Thomas W. Lamb in designing the famous Hippodrome Theatre on Eutaw Street and the Maryland Theatre in Hagerstown, Maryland. Over the next few decades, Zink and his partners designed over 200 movie theatres in cities up and down the east coast including over thirty in the Baltimore-DC area including the Senator Theatre on York Road and the Town Theatre (now known as the Everyman). In the Edgewood Theatre's heyday, the marquee featured a tall electric sign (a near twin of the Patterson designed by Zink on Eastern Avenue). Like many smaller neighborhood theatres, the business began to struggle in the 1950s and, after a brief second life as an art house theatre in 1962, ended its life as a movie house. That same year, Bishop Wilburn S. Watson joined the Olivet Baptist Church then located in a modest building on Riggs Avenue. In the late 1960s, Bishop Watson led the effort to purchase the former theatre on Edmondson Avenue and convert the building into a new sanctuary for the congregation.
Like James Keelty, who built many of the rowhouses in Edmondson Village, many of the neighborhood’s new residents were Catholic and attended church to the east at St. Edward's on Poplar Grove or farther west at St. William of York. After James Keelty’s daughter died in 1922 at the age of six, he decided to build a new church for his neighbors and donate the building to the Archdiocese who dedicated the building as a memorial to Nora Bernardine Keelty.
Completed in 1929, the church was designed by architect Francis E. Tormey who also designed the Furst Memorial Chapel at Most Holy Redeemer Cemetery and churches including St. Piux V (1907) at Edmondson Avenue and Schroeder Street, St. Josephs's (1913), and St. Bernard's (1926).
Hundreds of neighborhood residents, pastors from local churches, and even former Mayor J. Barry Mahool came together on Collins Street in March 1926 to see Baltimore Mayor Jackson lay the cornerstone for the new Lyndhurst Elementary School. The new building was a hard fought victory for the Lyndhurst Improvement Association and local families.
When the building had started to deteriorate in the late 1970s, local parents organized to push for the school system to rehabilitate of the building and, in 1976, donated over $7,000 to help the school pay for class trips and multimedia materials. Among the graduates of the school is Congressman Elijah Cummings, who grew up immediately across the street, and was one of seven children in his family to attend the school.
Well known for its sports programs, Edmondson-Westside High School is a landmark near the western edge of the city. Originally known as Edmonson Avenue High School, when construction began on the school on Athol Avenue it was the city's first new high school since Forest Park opened in 1924.
The school expanded in the early 1980s with a move into the former Hecht Company store on Edmondson Avenue. Hecht's opened in 1955 but closed a little more than twenty years later after Hoschild Kohn's and other retail stores had left for shopping areas in the western suburbs.
The Mary E. Rodman Elementary School and the Mary E. Rodman Recreation Center on Mulberry Street are named for a local leader in education for African Americans. Mary E. Rodman graduated in June 1889 from the first class of Baltimore’s first public high school for blacks located at Carrollton and Riggs Avenue. She went on to teach and administer at black schools around the city before her death at home on Calhoun Street in 1937.
The school was built in 1962 by the Lacchi Construction Company for $973,000 and almost immediately filled up to capacity. The Recreation Center arrived in 1974 and was designed by Louis Fry, Jr. a nationally prominent black architect based out of Washington, DC. The name for the Mary E. Rodman Recreation Center had originally been applied to another center at Poplar Grove Street and Lafayette Avenue.
Old St. Paul's Cemetery opened in 1802—just a few years after Baltimore incorporated as a city—and is the final resting place of men and women that include a signatory to the Declaration of Independence, a Supreme Court Justice, and a Governor of Maryland.
Scores of storied veterans from the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Civil War are buried on the grounds. Among them are John Eager Howard (1752-1857), who donated the land for Lexington Market, and George Armistead (1780-1818), who commanded Fort McHenry during the Battle of Baltimore.
Today, a high stone wall surrounds the cemetery and provides some protection from the busy traffic of Martin Luther King Boulevard, whose construction cut the grounds in half in the 1980s.
The congregation of the Carter Memorial Church has its origins in 1926 when James Roosevelt Carter and his wife Catherine Carter arrived in Baltimore from Pennsylvania. James Carter spent years preaching on the city streets before opening his first church on Lombard Street in 1944. The congregation continued to grow and by 1955 under the name of the “Garden of Prayer Church of God In Christ” purchased the former home of the Beechfield Methodist Church that was originally built in 1833 as the Fayette Street Methodist Episcopal Church. The congregation has continued to grow and recently purchased St. Peter the Apostle.
Known for much of the last century as Lietuvių Namai, Lithuanian Hall is familiar to more than just Baltimore’s Lithuanian immigrant community; in recent years local bands and promoters have turned “Lith Hall” into a popular venue for the city’s thriving music scene.
Lietuvių Namai first opened in 1914 in three West Barre Street rowhouses. A growing population of Lithuanian immigrants, including many who attended St. Alphonsus Church nearby on Saratoga Street, soon needed a larger hall for community gatherings. After raising funds from individuals, local businesses, and fraternal organizations, the handsome hall on Hollins Street, designed by architect Stanislaus Russell, opened to a full month of celebrations in February 1921. The building is made of Indiana limestone and tapestry brick with a carving of the Lithuania coat of arms on the entryway pediment. After its opening, the Lithuanian Educational Association, National Lithuanian Library and Lithuanian Orchestra all found homes in the building. Today, the hall takes a different approach and engages a broader community of residents than its original base of Lithuanian immigrants. The hall has incorporated as a non-profit and, on the first Friday of every month, the venue hosts a “Save Your Soul” party playing vintage soul and R&B music.
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The handsome Tudor Revival turrets of the Poppleton Fire Station (Engine House #38) stand out next to the modern glass facades of the University of Maryland BioPark on Baltimore Street. Designed by local architects Benjamin Buck Owens and Spencer E. Sisco, the station opened in 1910 equipped with the most modern fire-fighting tools available.
After the tragedy of Great Baltimore Fire destroyed much of the city's downtown in 1904, the Baltimore Fire Department grew quickly and built scores of new firehouses. A close look above the building's arched entrance reveals a small tribute to the bravery of the Fire Department’s mission with a stone carving of firemen racing to extinguish a fire.
St. Peter the Apostle Church served southwest Baltimore's large Irish Catholic community for over 160 years. From its dedication in September 1844 through its final service in January 2008, the church earned a reputation as "The Mother Church of West Baltimore" for its role in the growth of the Catholic church.
Built from 1843 to 1844, the handsome Greek Revival building was designed by prominent Baltimore architect Robert Cary Long, Jr. who modeled the church on the Temple of Hephaestus in Athens, Greece. The building is now owned by nearby Carter Memorial Church.
A true gem of Baltimore religious architecture, the handsome Gothic Revival tower of St. Luke’s Church is matched by its richly detailed sanctuary. While architect J.W. Priest oversaw the completion of the building in 1857, five other architects also played some part. Unlike many historic congregations that left the neighborhood, St. Luke’s opened its doors on July 10, 1853 and has kept them open for over 150 years.
Constructed in 1911, the American Ice Company is an enduring reminder of West Baltimore’s industrial development with a striking brick facade on W. Franklin Street and a powerhouse that backs up to the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks. At the time of the building’s construction, West Baltimore was quickly developing beyond the 1816 city line as small builders put up new rowhouses that soon extended west out to the Gwynns Falls.
The previous decade had also witnessed significant changes in the ice industry as the business of importing natural ice from rivers and lakes in the Northeast to Mid-Atlantic and Southern cities dwindled in the face of competition from new factories that enabled businesses to supply a more regular and consistent supply of “manufactured ice.”
The building was severely damaged in a 2004 fire. Fortunately, the current owner supported a recent nomination to the National Register of Historic Places and plans to redevelop the property while retaining the historic ice house structure.
Built in 1925 over the loud protests of local residents who opposed a new factory in their residential neighborhood, the Ward Baking Company is a handsome brick box, designed by C.B. Comstock, a New York-based refrigeration architect and engineer. Based in Pittsburgh, the Ward Baking Company, then known as the Ward Bread Company, also had factories in the Bronx, Buffalo, and East Orange, New Jersey. Long retired as a factory, the building has more recently been used as a church.
St. Edward's organized in 1878 as a mission of St. Peter the Apostle, which was led by Fr. Owen B. Carrigan. Carrigan supervised the construction of the first church in 1880 for a congregation that likely included Catholic workers from factories scattered across the Gwynns Falls Valley.
In 1923, the church expanded with a new school, convent, and rectory. A growing congregation of 5,000 people forced the church to hold nine masses every Sunday. In 1938, the congregation started a campaign for a larger building and dedicated the present church on March 9, 1941.
Helen Mackall Park was dedicated by the Rosemont Community on Saturday, December 4, 1971 to honor Mrs. Helen Mackall—a crossing guard for James Mosher Elementary School who lost her leg while saving the life of a 6-year old Bonita Lynn Lineberger at the corner of Lafayette and Wheeler Avenues.
Established in the 1930s, the park was originally dedicated as the Nichols Playground in honor of George L. Nichols, a superintendent with the Baltimore Department of Recreation and Parks who retired in 1945.
“This is a new and finely located ‘place for the dead,’” The Iris reported in 1846. Early plans included a chapel and a residence for a cemetery superintendent. Lots were priced at the “extremely moderate” cost of $5 for an 8’ by 10’ area. Just three years later, in December 1849, the Maryland Assembly passed "An Act to Establish the Western Cemetery" allowing the Trustees of the Fayette Street Methodist Episcopal Church to open a "public" or nondenominational 55-acre cemetery west of the city in Baltimore County. Like Green Mount Cemetery, Western tried to create a park-like open space for visitors to stroll as well as greive. Early burials at the cemetery included both city and county residents from a range of backgrounds. In 1858, the Sun reported on the burial of William Fairbank, a Baltimore County resident who worked as a conductor on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad between 1830 and 1850 and as the keeper of the bridge on the Baltimore and Washington Turnpike. In the fall of 1861, a number of Union soldiers stationed in Baltimore, likely including soldiers recovering from injuries taken at the Battle of Bull Run (or First Manassas) in July 1861, died from typhoid fever and were interred at the Western Cemetery. In 1915, Baltimore City acquired a portion of the cemetery property for the construction of Ellicott Driveway. This required the closure of the “the railroad crossing at the Cemetery lane entrance to Western Cemetery” and an agreement between Baltimore City, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and the officers of the cemetery company. The cemetery continued to serve as a popular place of internment for military veterans and police officers during the 20th century. In July 1926, the Sun reported on a huge crowd of “several thousand persons” who attended the burial of Patrolman Webster E. Schumann, noting, “A full firing squad of eight men from Camp Meade fired three volleys into the air and a bugler sounded ‘taps’ as the services for the war veteran ended.” After World War II, the cemetery, along with nearby Leakin Park, took center stage in West Baltimore’s highway fights. Relatives of the interred joined forces with environmental activists and local residents in opposing the extension of a proposed highway through Leakin Park and into the city. Fortunately, Mayor Thomas D'Alesandro responded to this effort and, in 1969, encouraged state highway designers to consider a new route for the Rosemont section of the East-West Expressway to bypass Western Cemetery.