At the Upton Metro Station at Pennsylvania Avenue and Laurens Street, an explosion of color greets transit patrons at the conclusion of their escalator journey. “Baltimore Uproar,” a monumental mosaic by the renowned African-American artist Romare Bearden, depicts a jazz band fronted by a singer of ambiguous identity—perhaps Baltimore’s own Billie Holiday. It is no coincidence that Pennsylvania Avenue, which runs directly above ground and recently became a state-designated Arts & Entertainment District, is Baltimore’s historical center for jazz. How did Baltimore attract such a prestigious commission as Bearden?
Born in North Carolina in 1911, Romare Bearden was one of the most influential American artists of the 20th century. He explored numerous forms of art throughout his career, including painting, stage design, and songwriting—but Bearden is best known for his rich collages. His subject matter often dealt with African-American life and the American South, and had a humanistic bent inspired by his experiences serving in World War II. Bearden was also a founding member of The Spiral, a Harlem collective dedicated to debating the role of the African-American artist in the civil rights movement.
A strong baseball player as a young man, Bearden was offered—but declined—a spot on the Philadelphia Athletics fifteen years before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947. In 1932 while playing for the all-Black, semi-pro Boston Tigers, Bearden pitched against the legendary Satchel Paige, who had played for the Baltimore Black Sox just two years earlier.
Shortly after Bearden graduated from New York University in 1935, Carl Murphy, the publisher of Baltimore’s Afro-American newspaper, offered him a job as a weekly editorial cartoonist. Bearden’s cartoons, which featured prominently on the opinions page, reflected on the realities of America in the time of Jim Crow and the Great Depression.
Bearden’s masterpiece is located on a metro line which, while functional, is just a sample of what a comprehensive metro system could have been for Baltimore. A 1968 planning report envisioned a rapid transit system with six lines emanating from downtown and extending out to the greater Baltimore region—but today, only a northwestern line to Owings Mills and a spur to Johns Hopkins Hospital has been completed. Each metro station was designed by a different architect and received a public artwork by artists of varying renown. Bearden, whose $114,000 mosaic cost the MTA about $30,000 more than the second-most expensive artwork, stood out as the most famous artist of the nine selected. The mosaic, made of fine yet fragile Venetian glass and ceramic and measuring 14 by 46 feet, was assembled in Italy.
“Baltimore Uproar” was unveiled on December 15, 1982. In a 1983 Sun article evaluating public art in the fledgling metro system, art critic John Dorsey acknowledged the mosaic’s grandeur and fitting subject matter, but concluded that the reaction of the public would be the only authentic evaluation. Since its unveiling, Baltimore has indeed embraced and appreciated Bearden’s token to the city that helped shape him.
With thousands of rowhouses in every shape, size, and style across the city, not every house stands out. But, 200 ½ East Montgomery Street has earned a rare distinction as the narrowest rowhouse in Baltimore—measuring less than nine feet wide! This mid-nineteenth century treasure was built before the Civil War by the owner of the adjoining house at 200 E. Montgomery Street. Despite its age and small size, the "Little House" features a stylish stained-glass transom and tight brickwork.
In 1974, 91Ƶ honored Mr. and Mrs. John McNair, then owners of the house, at the sixth annual restoration awards in recognition of their work saving 200 and 200 ½ East Montgomery Street from neglect and decay. The couple brought a passion for old houses when they moved to Baltimore from New England and purchased 200 East Montgomery Street (a generous 22 feet wide) and the six-room house next door at 200 ½. The restoration included repointing masonry while matching the original color of the mortar, restoring the interior woodwork, and refinishing the original wood floors.
While 1311 Bolton Street is best known today as the former location for the Bolton Street Synagogue, the story of this handsome stone building begins back in 1875 as the Reformed Episcopal Church of the Redeemer. This former church was converted to a residence in 2005 thanks to a three year creative reuse project by the current owners. Designing kitchens, bathrooms and living spaces in this magnificent and unconventional building meant working with stained glass windows, high ceilings, and spaces that were meant originally for public worship.
The cornerstone laying ceremony in October 1875 was attended by Bishop George David Cummings, who founded the Reformed Episcopal Church in 1873. The architect hired for the building, Charles Cassell, was a native of Portsmouth, Virginia who trained as a naval architect and arrived in Baltimore not long after the Civil War. Cassell, who helped found the Baltimore Chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 1870, also designed the former Stewart's Department Store on Howard Street, the Stafford Hotel in Mt. Vernon, and the chapel at the University of Virginia.
A handful of different churches and community organizations occupied the building from the 1930s through the 1980s. Finally, in 1986 the Bolton Street Synagogue was founded in Bolton Hill as an unaffiliated synagogue serving Baltimore's diverse Jewish community. The synagogue remained in Bolton Hill for 17 years before moving to Cold Spring Lane in 2003. The building found its new use in 2005 and remains a landmark to the long history of churches and creative adaptive reuse in Bolton Hill.
The 14 West Hamilton Street Club, a group of Baltimoreans who enjoy good company, lively conversation, and decent meals, formed in 1925. Young Princeton graduates in the city, eager to continue the traditions of the campus eating club, and several additional members of the venerable Baltimore Club who enjoyed special events with speakers joined forces that year and obtained quarters on this narrow old thoroughfare, which runs for just a few blocks east and west, above Franklin Street and south of Centre, a short distance from Mount Vernon Place. The club grew slowly but confidently. It kept few records and still prides itself on having no officers and as few rules as possible. First occupying a carriage house at 9 West Hamilton Street, then a townhouse at no. 16, the club in 1936 purchased no. 14—the center building of a set of five designed and built by Robert Cary Long, Sr., probably before 1820—and has been there ever since.
The club continues, as originally it did, to draw members from journalism, architecture, medicine, the law, the arts, and scholarship. Founding and early members included, as examples, a juvenile court judge and head of Baltimore social services, Thomas J. S. Waxter; Dr. I. Ridgeway Trimble, a Baltimore native and Johns Hopkins Medical School graduate; the Haverford College star athlete and Harvard-trained member of the Baltimore bar, James Carey III; D. K. Este Fisher, a prominent Baltimore architect; former judge of the Maryland Court of Appeals William L. Henderson; a Cornell University graduate and physician, William F. Rienhoff Jr.; Hamilton Owens, editor of the Evening Sun; the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Sun cartoonist Edmund Duffy and other newspaper editors and writers, among them John W. Owens, Gerald W. Johnson, Frederic C. Nelson, Louis Azrael, William Manchester, and Robin Harriss; the Johns Hopkins research scientist and amateur musician Raymond Pearl; a Peabody concert pianist, Frank Bibb; George Boas, a distinguished Johns Hopkins University philosopher; Sidney Painter, renowned Johns Hopkins medievalist; a University of Maryland Law School dean, Robert H. Freeman; the writer/historian Hulbert Footner; Wilbur H. Hunter, director of the Peale Museum; John Dos Passos and Ogden Nash; and a succession of heads of the Johns Hopkins Medical School—Lewis Weed, Alan M. Chesney, Thomas B. Turner (who celebrated his one-hundredth birthday at the club in 2002), and Philip Bard. Gilbert Chinard, a student of French history and culture at Johns Hopkins, expounded on the delights of French cooking before taking a faculty position at Princeton. The editorial page editor and food critic at the Sunpapers, Philip M. Wagner, established Boordy Vineyards, the first successful vineyard in modern-day Maryland. William W. Woollcott, a free spirit and wit who worked for the family chemical company, once observed, "Here I am, the only businessman in the club, surrounded by parasites." In all, members have shared intellectual curiosity, irreverence, and a devotion to those fine things that deans of liberal arts colleges remind us to cherish—truth, justice, and beauty.
At mid-twentieth century, a Sunpapers columnist and early club member, Francis F. Beirne, published a volume entitled The Amiable Baltimoreans, in which he sketched a portrait of the club. Early in World War II, he reported, a member had explained to a guest that, at Hamilton Street, anyone was entitled to say anything he wanted and talk for as long as he wished, although no one had to listen. The visitor, Lord Lothian, announced that he knew of such a place at home—the House of Lords.
H. H. Walker Lewis, lawyer and anointed club scribe, wrote a delightful history of the club on its fiftieth anniversary in 1975. Not long afterward the club departed long practice and admitted women. To capture the story of that decision and the searching it inspired, Bradford McE. Jacobs, an Evening Sun editorial page editor, contributed a mock-heroic codicil to Walker’s history entitled "A Chronicle of a Certain Episode Which Occurred at Fourteen West Hamilton Street."
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.
707 South Regester Street was built between 1760 and 1780 when Regester was known as Argyle Alley. Deed research tracing back to 1814 shows the house was owned by Joseph Brown until he sold it to Issac Stansbury in October of 1814. It was originally free standing and may have been an outbuilding for a main house fronting on Ann Street.
When Reverend Robert L. Young took on the restoration of the house in 1972, he found many original hand cut nails, which he reused in the rehabilitation. If Young had to replace a historic feature, he searched diligently for one that matched in both age and material. What Young found on the interior of the house was also telling. He found evidence of the original plaster in a few places, as well as the original blue paint and chair rails around the rooms. The interior woodwork has beading and backband molding typical of its era.
Aside from a careful examination of the house and a report on his rehabilitation efforts, Young also completed extensive deed research, finding all of the homeowners dating back to Issac Stansbury in 1814. Reverend Young’s work on the house was an important step in preserving this house. Today, the house is distinguished by its bright red paint and green shutters and the unpainted cypress boards on the north and south sides of the house and remains a well-preserved example of a Fell's Point wooden house.
713 South Ann Street is a rare wooden house surviving within a row from 711 to 715 South Ann Street. Built around 1800, the 1804 City Directory lists Patrick Travis, a sea-captain, as the resident of the house at the time. The earliest deed located for the property is from 1851 and shows the house being sold to Anna Maria White from John J. Roose on November 28th of that year.
After it was covered by formstone for a number of years, owner and construction expert Glenn Henley restored the old wood facade in 2001.
9 North Front Street is the former residence of Thorowgood Smith, a successful merchant and Baltimore’s second mayor. Built around 1790, the Federal style residence served as Smith’s home between 1802 and 1804.
The federal style of architecture was popular during Baltimore’s most vigorous period of growth, from the 1790s to the 1850s, when Baltimore vaulted into second place among American cities. The new residents were mostly housed in 1, 2, and 3½-story dormered brick row houses, less ornate than their Georgian predecessors. They are to be found all around the bustling harbor, from Fells Point through Little Italy and Jonestown to Federal Hill.
During the 19th and 20th centuries, the building served as a hotel, an auto-parts shop, and a restaurant. After Baltimore City purchased the property in 1971 for the urban renewal-era redevelopment of Shot Tower Park, the Women’s Civic League sponsored the property’s restoration.
Archibald Hilton Bull founded the A. H. Bull & Co. in 1902. The company originally ran steamship lines from New York to Florida. Eventually A. H. Bull & Co. expanded to include an office in Baltimore. In the early 1900s, when Baltimore’s steamship industry was booming, A. H. Bull & Co. faced opposition from competitors. Steamship companies vied for control over the Puerto Rican trade and in 1913 Bull accused his competitors of monopolizing the Puerto Rican steamship routes. According to Bull, his competitors were undercutting his steamship line in order to force the Bull Line out of the Puerto Rican trade.
In the early 1920s, Captain Duke Adams took over management of A. H. Bull’s Baltimore offices which the company then renamed “Adams & Co”. Although the company office name changed, “Adams & Co.” remained under the management of the A. H. Bull Company. The Bull Line continued to grow and purchase other steamship lines such as the insular line in 1914, the Puerto Rico- American steamship company in 1925, and the Baltimore Carolina line in 1929. As a result of the company’s expansion, in 1929 A. H. Bull & Co. moved their Baltimore office to pier 5 in order to accommodate their increased business.
During the 1940s, the Bull Company bought one more steamship line known as the Clyde-Mallory Line before beginning to decline in the 1950s. The company remained a family-owned business until 1953 when the Bull family sold the company to American Coal Shipping. Manuel K. Kulukundis was the final owner of the A. H. Bull Steamship Company and in 1963 A. H. Bull went out of business.
Today the A. H. Bull & Co. steamship line no longer exists, but looking out in the inner harbor one can imagine the fleet of A. H. Bull steamships carrying passengers from as far north as New York to as far south as Puerto Rico.
In October 1835, Eleanora Weber, her son, Edward Weber, and her nephew, Augustus Hoen, carried pieces of lithographic machinery, lithographic stones, and ink powders from Coblenz, Germany, to America. Upon arriving in America, Weber founded the Edward Weber & Co. So began 146 years of continuous business for the company, which garnered it the title of the oldest lithographic firm in the United States. After Weber’s death in 1848, Augustus took over and renamed the business A. Hoen & Co., Lithographers and Printers. Hoen helped create an international name for the company. He patented his litho-caustic method of printing, which required citric acid and gum Arabic to be laid over the etching in order to allow the lithographer to see the progress of his work. The company became most readily known for its maps, art reproductions, medical charts, and posters. Also, when the Civil War broke out in 1861, A. Hoen & Co. printed Confederate money. In 1880, the firm operated from a building on Lexington Street next to City Hall. The six-floor building owned by A. Hoen & Co. held ten additional businesses aside from the lithographers. At around the same time that Hoen received patents for producing halftone prints, the Lexington Street building caught fire. The top three floors and the roof suffered severe damage. The fire cost the Hoen Company roughly $150,000 in machinery and building damage. It also cost the Southern Electric Company, occupying an office in the building, approximately $75,000. Immediately after the fire, the firm moved to a temporary location in order to finish their government contracts, which preceded the establishment of the Government Printing Office. In 1902, A. Hoen & Co. moved to a new location on Biddle Street. The Lexington Street building was sold to the city in 1921 and after a failed renovation plan, it was torn down in 1926. During their time in operation at the Biddle Street location, the building had four different additions constructed to give the company more space. In honor of Aloys Senefelder (inventor of the lithographic process), the Senefelder symbol and the words “Sara Loquuntur” (which meant “the stones tell”) adorned the entrance. In 1969, the Maryland Historical Society and A. Hoen & Co. partnered to provide an exhibition of Hoen Lithographers’ history. A. Hoen & Co. succumbed to bankruptcy in 1981 after the pressure of a decline in business, the failure of a merger effort, an adverse tax ruling, and a union disagreement.The building on Biddle Street, after sitting empty for years, is planned for redevelopment. A joint venture aims to turn the abandoned building into housing for nurses, office space, and a café. The building’s 85,000 square feet will cost roughly $17 million to renovate. The redevelopment broke ground in the spring of 2018 and is expected to be complete in 2019.
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Erected in 1879 as an investment property for Arunah Shepherdson Abell, founder of The Baltimore Sun, the Abell Building was designed by famed Baltimore architect George Frederick—architect for Baltimore's City Hall, Hollins Market, and the Old Baltimore City College. Abell spared no expense in constructing the cast-iron framed, masonry façade building and worked to ensure that tenants included multiple, prominent businesses. Though the building quickly became known for its lavish construction, its ornate exterior belied the hard reality that workers within its walls faced. The corner of West Baltimore and Eutaw Streets made an ideal location for local industry along a main streetcar line, just a few blocks from a B&O Railroad station and close to the Baltimore harbor. The grandeur of the building's construction, its two hydraulic elevators, and its imposing size invited immediate recognition and praise in local and national publications. In late nineteenth century Baltimore, as across the country, most skilled professions had declined as craftsmen were replaced by machines that could produce more goods more quickly. Wages for the masses of largely immigrant, unskilled workers who came to cities like Baltimore seeking work in industries remained low and working conditions were unregulated and woefully unsafe. One of the industries that attracted thousands of workers to Baltimore was the clothing or needle trade. In the years following the Civil War, demand for ready-to-wear garments skyrocketed and Baltimore's garment district boomed in response. Strouse Brothers, one of Baltimore's largest clothing manufacturers operated out of this building in the late nineteenth century and was a prominent player in Baltimore's growing needle trade. Strouse ran what was then called an "inside shop"—a multistory factory outfitted with new machines and the latest in manufacturing technology—where workers (largely women) worked long hours to keep the factory's machines running, often earning barely enough to survive. While larger clothing manufacturers escaped the criticism directed to sweatshops by local reformers, producers like Strouse, even when unionized (the United Garment Workers organized in Baltimore in the 1890s), often sent piecework out to sweated workers in small shops or set up their own small, outside sweatshops to avoid paying higher wages or complying with worker demands for better conditions and shorter hours. When the clothing industry slumped after WWI, many of the gains achieved by Baltimore's garment unions eroded as the pursuit of ever-shrinking profits led many manufacturers to once again increase their reliance on sweatshops. Despite the fact that union strikes eventually brought new gains, Baltimore's once thriving garment trade was in sharp decline by the 1930s. Though there are still a small number of women sewing coats and uniforms in various downtown clothing shops, Baltimore's days as a center of ready-to-wear garment production are long gone. Luckily, this handsome brick building weathered the decline of the garment industry and years of neglect. PMC property group acquired the building in 2005 and it now houses well-appointed apartments that feature high ceilings, large windows, and a bit of Baltimore history.
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A.T. Jones & Sons, Inc., costumer for innumerable theatrical performers and party-goers since 1868, succumbed to the effects of the pandemic shutdown.
Imagine a horde of Christmas elves attacking a chorus line of Roman legionaries. Now, if you wish to see this fever-dream in person, take a trip to A.T. Jones & Sons on N. Howard Street. They have a warehouse filled with costumes from any period of history. Alfred Thomas Jones started renting out costumes in 1868. He arrived in Baltimore from North Carolina in the spring of 1861. He was there to collect a $500 prize for a painting he submitted to a contest sponsored by the predecessor of the Maryland Institute College of Art (Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts). He was unable to return to N.C., however, after fighting broke out at the start of the Civil War. So, he settled into a new life as a teacher at the art school that awarded his prize. Jones began buying costumes as a hobby in 1868. He purchased Confederate and Union army uniforms as well as parade and masquerade ball costumes. These costumes served Mr. Jones well as he was able to rent them for masquerade balls, a popular form of high society entertainment in the late 19th century. A costume from one season could be altered and rented the next. Perhaps the largest of the masked balls of the late 19th century was the Oriole Pageant, sponsored by the Order of the Oriole. The first of these pageants was held in 1880 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the settlement of Baltimore. The following year the society outdid itself with a three-day affair that included a parade through the city (illuminated with electric lights), concerts, a parade of boats in the harbor, and, of course, a masked ball. The B&O Railroad added extra cars to accommodate the crowds attending the festivities. All of these events required costumes, some of which were rented out by Mr. A.T. Jones. The costume rental business included supplying local theatre companies. Many of the famous actors of the 19th century depended on the Jones family. Edwin Booth, the most illustrious of a Maryland family of actors, gave Jones some of his own props and costumes, such as a sword used in Hamlet and pound-of-flesh scales from Merchant of Venice. The most loyal and long lasting customer of A.T. Jones & Sons is the Gridiron Club, a journalistic organization in Washington, D.C., made up primarily of news bureau chiefs. It was founded in 1885 and has been renting costumes annually since 1888 for their white-tie banquet that includes satirical skits directed at politicians and journalists. Some of the costumes for this event have been worn by John Glenn, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and news reporter Bob Schieffer. A.T. Jones began by renting costumes for parades, pageants, and theatrical productions, as well as formal wear to young men who could not afford to purchase them. Through the next century and a half, his descendants and successors have adapted to the times and changing demands. From A.T., the shop went to his son, Walter Jones, Sr., then Walter’s widow, Lena, then their son, Walter “Tubby” Jones, Jr. The shop was eventually purchased by a long-time employee, George Goebel. His son Ehrich joined the business and has expanded the market to include opera and theatre companies throughout the United States. The inventory now includes everything from Aida to Elf the Musical. The one costume that is of great demand every year is for Santa Claus. Ever since the first department store version of the fat, jolly, white-bearded old man made its appearance in the 19th century, there has been a run on large red suits with white trim every December. A.T. Jones is always ready to meet the demand from department stores and charitable organizations for Santa costumes.
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Founded in 1871, the Baltimore Chapter of The American Institute of Architects is the third oldest in the country. AIABaltimore serves as the voice of the architecture profession in the Baltimore metropolitan area. The chapter consists of nearly 1,300 architects, emerging professionals, and allied industrial members united to demonstrate the value of architecture and design.
As a professional organization, the most important service the AIA provides is unifying the efforts of individuals and firms to improve the profession and the built environment. This is done at local, state and national levels through proactive legislation and public awareness campaigns. The AIA also provides timely and relevant continuing education to give the AIA Architect a competitive advantage in the market place. Finally, the AIA offers individuals the opportunity to network with other architects, elected officials, community leaders and allied professionals.
The Meetinghouse is the oldest surviving house of worship in Baltimore. Among those who worshipped here were Elisha Tyson, Johns Hopkins, Moses Sheppard, Phillip E. Thomas and the Tyson, Ellicott and McKim families.
In 1775, Patapsco Meeting, in what was then Baltimore County recorded that they wished to move their Meeting to Baltimore Town. By 1781, at the cost of $4,500, a new Meetinghouse had been erected at Fayette Street (then Pitt) and Aisquith Street (then Smock Alley). Designed by George Matthews, it has separate men’s and women’s entrances into a plain and spacious room with a high vaulted ceiling. Sliding wood paneling partitioned the room for Men’s and Women’s Business Meetings. It could be raised for Meetings for Worship or larger gatherings. There soon was a need to provide for the educational needs of the children of Friends. By 1784, Meeting records document the establishment of a committee to oversee a school which became what is now Baltimore Friends School. Baltimore Yearly Meeting was so well attended by the end of the century that in 1772 a thirty-acre tract of pasture land was purchased to accommodate the annual influx of Friends. By 1817, when the first gas lamp was slit at the corner of Baltimore & Holiday Streets, Baltimore had emerged as a center of trade and industry, and the need for a second Meetinghouse to the west resulted in the construction of Lombard Street Meeting in 1807. Restoration of this meetinghouse is 1967 cost about $50,000, through the joint efforts of the City of Baltimore and the McKim Community Association, Inc. under the leadership of mayor Theodore McKeldin and Philip Myers. The historic building was then administered and maintained by the Peale Museum, and leased to McKim for programs.
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Constructed of tooled Indiana limestone, glass, steel, concrete, and granite, the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery is at the center of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County campus both literally and figuratively. Since the library first opened in 1968, it has served as a focal point of the campus and UMBC students’ academic lives. In 1982, the building was named in honor of Dr. Albin O. Kuhn, the first chancellor of UMBC. Chancellor Kuhn helped to found and plan the University of Maryland campus in Baltimore County and took part in the early administration of the new campus. In 1965, Chancellor Kuhn hired his first full-time employee—the university’s first librarian, John Haskell, Jr. Haskell was only 24 at the time, coming to work straight out of graduate school and a few months of active duty in the Army Reserves. He spent many of the early months leading up to UMBC’s opening ordering books, hiring new employees, and creating a catalog ordering system. The campus master plan from that same year also noted the importance of the library:
“The building will be viewed on axis from the main approach drive, appearing unquestionably as the major building on campus.”In its early years, UMBC housed the library collections in different locations throughout the campus. Chancellor Kuhn’s house served as the catalog center for the library’s 20,000 volume collection while other collection materials were held within Academic Building I. As the university’s holdings continued to grow, the UMBC administration began plans for the construction of a specifically designated library building, which would later become known as the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery. Campus architects designed the library to grow with the university, making plans to build it in three phases. Phase 1, in 1968, brought all of UMBC’s library collections, which had previously been scattered across the campus, together into one central location. The new library Brutalist unfinished concrete exterior contrasted with an interior of brightly colored walls and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the pond. Baltimore Chapter of the American Institute of Architects recognized the design with their highest honors in 1975. Phase II opened in 1975 adding the library’s Special Collections department and a select collection of state and federal government documents to the library’s collection and continued the university’s efforts to expand its holdings. Phase III, the Library Tower, opened in 1995, increasing the library’s capacity further to 1,000,000 volumes. As the library has sought to grow and maintain its holdings, the building has also grown as a student-centered space. This role expanded with the completion of the Retriever Learning Center (RLC) in 2011. Student organizations, like the Student Government Association and the Graduate Student Association, advocated for a central group study space as early as the 1980s. The university administration responded by creating the RLC, a space open to UMBC students for collaborative learning and group study. As described by UMBC President Dr. Freeman Hrabowski in 2011, the RLC is “another example of UMBC’s innovation in teaching and learning.”
This small building sits squarely inside the area decimated by the Great Baltimore Fire and surprisingly survived. It was built in 1901 for Alex Brown and Sons: the oldest investment banking firm in the United States. Noted architecture firm Parker and Thomas designed the building. The stained-glass dome inside is thought to be the work of Gustave Baumstark.
Alex Brown and sons was founded in 1800 and stayed in independent operation for almost 200 years. In 1997, it was acquired by Bankers Trust and was ultimately integrated into Deutsche Bank.
The Alex Brown and Sons Building owes its survival of the Great Fire to its small size. As sparks and embers flew through the air igniting the much taller buildings all around it, a thermal updraft acted as a sort of fan keeping the flying flames from landing on the building’s roof. The heat of the fire was so intense that it caused the brownstone to crack apart near the front door. The broken stone is still visible, since the Alex Brown and Sons firm choose not to replace the cracked stone as a reminder of what almost happened. The building was renovated in 1996 and reopened as a bank, which it remained until 2016. A restaurant opened on the location in 2019, but had to close in 2020 due to the COVID pandemic.
If some sea captains downplayed their financial success, others put it on display for all to see. In 1810, Alexander Thompson acquired the grand four-bay-wide house at 1729 Aliceanna (built c. 1780). Now altered, it was then 2½ stories tall. During the war, Thompson invested in, and commanded, the letter of marque schooners Inca and Midas. In August 1814, however, he overstepped his bounds. Seeking to avenge the British burning of Washington, DC, Thompson goes ashore in the Bahamas. His crew burns homes and desecrates the grave of a prominent British planter’s wife. President Madison responds to British complaints by revoking the vessel’s commission and ordering Thompson to pay damages.
Farther east on Aliceanna, across Wolfe, three more imposing houses speak to Fell’s Point’s ties to the sea. 1906 Aliceanna (built c. 1800) belonged to Captain William Furlong, who later built 1902 and 1904 Aliceanna (c. 1807). Original owner of the Comet, Furlong took command of letter of marque schooner Bordeaux Packet in February 1813. He also served as a member of Stiles’ First Marine Artillery. Ship carpenter Benjamin Tims lived next door in the long-since demolished home at 1908 Aliceanna. He served in a militia company organized by Ann Street resident Luke Kiersted. And, next to Tims, is another sea captain, Clother Allen.
The Allied Chemical and Dye Corporation manufactured chemical components for many industrial applications. Quaker merchant Isaac Tyson Jr. established the company that became Allied Chemical in 1828, mining chromium ore and supplying chrome pigment to England which he refined at his Baltimore Chrome Works plant. The operation became Mutual Chemical Company in 1908, merged with Allied in 1954, and became part of Honeywell in 1999. This site, used for dumping the toxic waste produced in chemical manufacturing, is now occupied by a row of houses.
Sites across Baltimore—including this location in Locust Point as well as Harbor Point—were toxic dumping grounds for Allied and its successor company, Honeywell. Chromium, produced here, was used to make stainless steel and certain paints. Tom Pelton of the Baltimore Sun wrote that, “During the city's industrial zenith in the mid-20th century, Allied dumped tons of chrome waste and other pollutants in more than a dozen locations around Baltimore's harbor, both into the Patapsco River and along the shore, according to state records. Chrome waste was often used as landfill under buildings and parking lots.” He pointed out that its “lemon hue lurks under the parking lot of the Baltimore Museum of Industry” nearby.
The term “brownfield” refers to a formerly industrial property that requires environmental remediation for redevelopment efforts—sites tainted by toxic waste. One study by Johns Hopkins University researchers estimated that Baltimore alone has about 1,000 brownfield sites. Environmentalists at local, state, and federal levels have gone to enormous efforts to oversee the cleanup process, to ensure public health at sites such as this one.
Think about the benefits of environmental regulations as you walk through the neighborhood. Although you can’t see it, arsenic and chromium lie beneath our feet in many locations along the harbor. Cleanup efforts remain underway across Baltimore.
Founded in 1887 by twenty-eight-year-old German immigrant Herman Kerngood, the Alma Manufacturing Company manufactured a wide variety of metal clothing trimmings including buckles, clasps, fasteners and steel buttons. The new operation was conveniently located alongside the Baltimore & Ohio railroad tracks. Before Kerngood started his business, textile companies in the United States had imported all their steel buttons from Germany. The firm produced around 35,000 specialized products (the “Superior Pantaloon Button” and “Perfect Trousers’ Hook” to name just a few) and could be found attached to hats, umbrellas, shoes and, of course, clothing produced at factories around the country.
Kerngood lived in northwest Baltimore at The Esplanade and attended Oheb Shalom Synagogue up until his death in 1932. Herman’s sons, Allan and Martin, continued to grow the business, producing around twenty-nine million pieces a month at its height, and maintaining sales offices in cities around the U.S. and internationally. The original complex on Monroe Street closed in 1940 and, in 1946, the Alma Manufacturing Company sold to the North and Judd Manufacturing Company of New Britain, Connecticut.
Over the past seventy years, the Monroe Street complex has been used by bakers, tailors and even candy manufacturers, including the Standard Tailors Company, Acme Packing Company, George Weston Bakers, Peyton Bakers Supply Company, Columbia Container Corporation and American Plastics Industries. Baltimore’s Naron Candy Company, founded in 1945 by Jim Ross and Gerald Naron, occupied the building in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s before their merger with Mary Sue Candies in 1996. Mahendra Shah purchased the building around 1983 and rented the facility as the Shah Industrial Park. In 2001, Shah started a fire in the building which has left it in a perilous state today.
The American Brewery Building at 1701 North Gay Street might be the most “Baltimore” of all buildings in the city. It is in the style of High Victorian architecture, as so much of our city was built, and is just plain quirky. Since 1973, the 1887 J.F. Weisner and Sons brewery building (later known as the American Brewery) stood as a hulking shell lording over a distressed neighborhood. Its restoration is a noteworthy symbol of optimism for the historic structure and the surrounding community. The conversion of the brewery into a health care and community center for Humanim more than fits the organization’s motto: “To identify those in greatest need and provide uncompromising human services.” The project won a 2010 91Ƶ Preservation Award for Adaptive Reuse and Compatible Design recognizing Humanim, Inc., architects Cho Benn Holback + Associates, and contractor Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse.
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The American Building was home to Baltimore News-American, a newspaper that traces its lineage back to 1773.
As opposed to the Baltimore Sun, Baltimore News-American was an afternoon newspaper targeted to working class and blue-collar districts. One of the newspaper’s many editors was John L. Carey. He was deeply interested in the question of slavery in the years leading up to the Civil War and felt that the two races could never live in peace and offered up the solution to re-settle all enslaved people in Africa. The Baltimore News-American would survive for two hundred years, until its final issue on May 27th, 1986.
During the second half of the nineteenth century, the buildings of the Baltimore Sun and Baltimore-News American faced each other at the intersection of South Gay Street and East Baltimore Street. It was one of the most bustling areas of the city, filled with newsies passing out papers and bulletin boards posting the latest news. During elections, the intersection would be packed with massive crowds of people, all waiting to hear the results.
The original Baltimore News-American Building was destroyed by the Great Baltimore Fire and a new towering office, designed by Baltimore native Louis Levi, was built in 1905 by the George A. Fuller Company. The main contractor for the News American Building was Paul Starrett who later went on to be take a leading role in the erection of the Empire State Building.
The oldest building on the Can Company site was constructed by the Norton Tin Can and Plate Company in 1895, and by 1900, the company was the largest can manufacturer in the United States. The founder of the Norton Company became the first president of the American Can Company.
Throughout the early 1900s, the site expanded to occupy the entire triangular parcel, with the construction of the Boiler House, Factory Building and Annex in 1913, and the Signature Building in 1924. Other structures occupied the site as well, including infill buildings constructed in the early 1960s.
At it peak, the American Can Company employed as many as eight-hundred local residents. However, when the American Can merged with the National Can Company in the late 1980s, the factory was closed, all of the jobs were lost, and the property became vacant. In 1987, the City of Baltimore received a UDAG grant, $8.5 million of which was directed towards clearing the site and constructing a mixed-use commercial and residential development by Michael Swerdlow, including two high rise residential towers. After strong community opposition, a PCB spill on the site, and loss of financing, Swerdlow abandoned the project.
In 1994, Safeway purchased the eastern half of the site and demolished the existing buildings to make way for a supermarket and 300 space parking lot. In 1997, The Can Company LLC acquired the remaining 4.3 acres, which included the most historically significant buildings on the site, and quickly began development to allow its first and largest tenant, DAP Products, Inc., the world’s largest manufacturer of sealants and adhesives, to relocate its 40,000 square foot world headquarters to the site in March 1998. The Can Company is now the home to retailers, restaurants, and offices.
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.
The Appold- Faust Brothers Building at 307-309 West Baltimore Street is one of a handful of surviving cast-iron fronted buildings in Baltimore and one of the only structures in the city that can boast two iron facades on front and back.
The building's first owner, George J. Appold, a prominent entrepreneur and owner of Appold and Sons (the city's leading tannery and leather dealer), commissioned builder Benjamin F. Bennet to construct this Italianate structure in 1870. Appold advertised the space as suitable for any business requiring space, light, and an independent entrance on Baltimore Street. With its Corinthian columns, arched windows, and graceful segmented bays, the building was an elegant addition to the area and remains one of the finest examples of iron façade construction in Baltimore.
John Faust, a German immigrant and shoe manufacturing pioneer bought the building from George Appold in 1875 for $78,000. Faust soon demolished two buildings behind the structure and added a cast iron-front on Redwood Street as the entrance warehouse for his shoe factory. Faust was the first shoe manufacturer south of the Mason Dixon line to use machinery to craft shoes.
Though the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 threatened the building it emerged unscathed—together with its neighbors on the south side of Baltimore Street. The building has still seen its fair share of fire and destruction. Just three years after the Great Baltimore Fire, the Baltimore Sun reported that the structure (which at the time housed two local auction firms—Grotjan, Lobe & Co. and Lobe, Winkler & Co.) experienced a fire that caused $95,000 worth of damage, injured 15 people, and killed Baltimore fireman Tillerman Gill, who perished when a poorly constructed portion of the top floor, collapsed.
The owners repaired the building and, in 1908, the Baltimore Shoe House, proudly known as "The Fair and Square House" moved in. Israel Levenstein, a Russian Jewish immigrant who founded the firm in 1895 had welcomed partner Joseph Lubin into the business in that same year. The firm sold shoes and boots in the Mid-Atlantic and the South, and as far west as Texas and Oklahoma. After workers had gone home on a brisk October night in 1911 the Appold-Faust Building once again caught fire. The fire began in the basement and though over $20,000 worth of merchandise was lost, the automatic fire-alarm box in the building alerted the fire department in time and the building itself suffered only light damage.
Various shoe wholesalers and a host of merchants (including Hochschild Kohn, who used it as a warehouse in the 1920s) occupied this site in the early years of the twentieth century. From 1941 to the 1970s, a riding store called The Trading Post operated out of the building and in 2006 it was sold to Faust Brothers, LLC and rehabilitated as office space.
On Baltimore County's historic Patapsco Neck along the Old North Point Road at the intersection of Old Battle Grove Road stands the second oldest known military monument in Maryland and the third oldest known in the United States. It is one of Maryland's least visited War of 1812 sites – the Aquila Randall Monument.
On July 21, 1817, Captain Benjamin C. Howard’sFirst Mechanical Volunteersformed up early in town and marched six miles to the North Point battleground. Accompanying them were wagons conveying the monument blocks to be assembled and dedicated on site that day. The monument’s construction was directed by Lt. Thomas Towson, a stone mason“who aimed at simplicity and neatness.” With a final application of whitewash it was dedicated to honor Private Aquila Randall a member who was killed in a skirmish just before the Battle of North Point, September 12, 1814. The company was joined by other 5thMaryland Regiment officers at the monument while Captain Howard delivered a modest appropriate address:
“….I can picture to myself the sensation of those who in far distant days will contemplate this monument…and the melancholy event which has caused our assemblage at this spot…This monument which we are now erecting, will stand as a solemn expression of the feeling of us all…But I regret that the spot, which is made classic by the effusion of blood, the sport where the long line stood un-appalled by the system and advances of an experienced and disciplined foe, has been suffered to remain unnoticed. It is here where her citizens stood arrayed soldier’s garb, that honors to a soldier’s memory should have been paid. To mark the spot be then our care.…”The inscriptions on the monument read:
The Arch Social Club at Pennsylvania and North Avenues started its life as Schanze's Theater, a movie house constructed in 1912. After serving time as a Wilson's Restaurant from the 1930s through the 1960s (when the lower facade was covered over), the club bought the building in 1972. Originally located on Arch Street, the club was part of the Victorian-era Reformist Movement that promoted working class men to better themselves through lectures and cerebral recreational pursuits. In 1912, a group of African American Baltimore men founded the Arch Social Club to promote charity, friendship and brotherly love. As many reformist Clubs did, the Arch Social Club grew and evolved into a public house and event hall, uses that continue to this day. In 2013, the club brought back the building's historic façade. The newly restored facade more than sparkles at this key intersection in West Baltimore and stands as a bright reminder of the area’s great heritage and promising future.
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405 East Oliver Street has served as a brewery, a factory, and an upholstery shop. Today, the former factory is home to AREA 405—an arts organization dedicated to showcasing and strengthening the vitality of Baltimore's arts community. This 66,000 square feet warehouse offers unique studio and exhibition space for over 30 artists.
German immigrant Frederick Ludwig established the Albion Brewery in 1848 near Greenmount Avenue—advertised in German as "Albion Brauerei... Belvidere Avenue, nahe Greenmount Avenue, an der alten Belvidere Bruecke." The business sold several times and closed heavily in debt in 1877. Brewer Bernhart Berger picked up the mortgage in 1878 and reopened the business with Frank Molz as brewmaster and modern refrigeration equipment.
In 1904, the C.M. Kemp Company purchased the property adding a four-story brick addition right on top of the original stone brewery. The C.M. Kemp Manufacturing Company made compressed air dryers and shared their space with a wide variety of small businesses. In the 1950s, the building was occupied by Tom-Len—an upholstery and furniture manufacturing firm. In 1970, the Crown Shade Company purchased the building manufacturing thousands of window shades and venetian blinds up until 1989.
In 1989, the Crown Shade Company moved to Rosedale and sold the building to Henry's Shade Company which sold off old stock after Henry's death in 1998. When the group of artists behind Area 405 first toured the building in January 2001, they found it full from floor-to-ceiling with "...defunct machinery, debris, rolls of vinyl, old stock and detritus. Henry's telephones were still ominously blinking with messages, and even with the behemoth stockpile and the chill of vacancy, we knew we had found our home."
In March 2002, 3 Square Feet, LLC purchased the building and has undertaken a monumental renovation project to convert the building into studios. Between 2002 and 2009, they removed 133 industrial-sized dumpsters of debris along with countless tons of cardboard and wood for recycling. Two tractor-trailer loads of vinyl were sent to India to be recycled into roofing material (or possibly super hero figurines—Area 405 is not sure which!) AREA 405 officially opened their doors in February 2003 and has now been a hub of arts activity in Station North for over a decade.
The Arena Playhouse at 801 McCulloh Street has been occupied by the Arena Players, an African American theater troupe, since December 1961. Established in 1953 as an outgrowth of the “The Negro Little Theater”, the Arena Players spent a decade performing at varied locations including Coppin State University, the Druid Hill YMCA, the Great Hall Theater of St. Mary’s Church in Walbrook, and the Carl J. Murphy Auditorium at Morgan State University.
When the theater moved to McCulloh Street at the end of 1961 they took over a building with a long history. Originally known by the address of 406 Orchard Street, the three-story building was erected in the mid to late nineteenth century. By 1890, the building operated as a livery attached to the Hartman & Moore Carriage Factory near the northern end of a row of seventeen buildings between McCulloh Alley and Little Monument Street. Around 1892, Patrick Gaierty acquired the livery and continued to operate it as "University Stables" up until his death in August 1911. Shortly after Gaierty's death, St. Mary's Protestant Episcopal Church acquired the building and turned it into a church hall.
In 1918, during World War I, the church hall was converted into the War Camp Community Service Club for Colored Soldiers with a dance hall, food, bath facilities, and accommodations for two hundred sailors or soldiers. In the 1940s, the building hosted the St. Mary's Hall Nursery School and offered low-cost childcare for local Black families.
By the early 1950s, the city had extended McCulloh Street through the middle of the block leaving two short rows of houses and commercial buildings. The adjoining carriage factory had been turned into a factory for the Baltimore Chair Company. And, by 1960, the church hall had been turned into a 13,500-square-foot warehouse and S.J. Stackhouse & Son, Inc. advertised the building for lease (noting the building's "new hearing plant" and "very good condition").
The Arena Players moved in at the end of 1961 and, by November 14, 1969, managed to purchase the building in a deal financed solely by ticket sales. In 1974, Arena Players met with the Neighborhood Design Center (NDC) to seek the group's assistance in planning the expansion of their 200-seat theater. NDC recruited Leon Bridges, a Black architect who had opened an office in Baltimore in 1970, and Bridges drafted a plan for the redevelopment of the building at an estimated cost of $755,000. Between August 1975 and October 1976, the group undertook a major renovation to add a new large theater to the building. The work was supported by a $50,000 mortgage from the Ideal Building and Loan Association, $120,000 in gifts from community groups and individuals, a $3,000 grant from the Maryland Arts Council, and a $321,000 federal grant administered by the city's Department of Housing and Community Development. The new 300-seat theater was commemorated on October 22, 1976 with a performance of Langston Hughes' Little Ham.
For many years, the Arena Playhouse was one of the only venues dedicated to showcasing the works of Black playwrights and performers. While Black performers now have more opportunities, the theater on McCulloh Street continues to be a treasured institution today.
Designed by prolific theater architect Frederick E. Beall, the Astor Theatre originally began in 1913 as the Astor Theater. The fast-growing around Poplar Grove Street evidently packed the 200-seat theater and, by December 1921, the owners decided to expand the building. After a major renovation converting the building to a Spanish design by architect J.F. Dusman, the theater reopened as the Astor Theater on November 14, 1927.
The movie house was equipped with a Kimball organ and, in 1929, the owners added Vitaphone & Movietone sound systems. Plans in 1930 to enlarge the theater to a grand 2,000 seats never moved forward. Unfortunately, the years after World War II proved difficult for many small Baltimore movie theaters. The Astor Theatre closed in the fall of 1953 just a few months after the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education sparked a rapid transition in the formerly segregated white neighborhoods surrounding the establishment. In April 1954, the theater reopened under new management seeking to cater to Black audiences but closed the next year.
The former theater was eventually converted to a market. Today, only a careful observer can still find clues showing the building's origins. On Poplar Grove Street, where the original theater entrance is bricked in, there is a small white stone where the word "Astor" is still engraved. On the back is a faded sign with an even older name—Poplar Theatre—reminding today's shoppers of the theater-goers from a century in the past.
August Rosenberger got into the broom business by chance in the late 1800s. One of his customers, a farmer who was unable to make ends meet, asked Mr. Rosenberger if he would accept a small shack with one broom machine and one sewing machine in payment for his grocery bill. Mr. Rosenberger accepted and sent him on his way. By 1907, Rosenberger had a successful broom business and he set his sights on Baltimore.
Construction began on the Atlantic-Southwestern Broom Company in Baltimore in 1910. The business continued to grow and between 1922 and 1924, the building expanded with additional buildings to the east and north, adding 57,500 square feet of warehouse and space. Production peaked in 1932 at 3.6 million brooms and 300 employees.
The company closed in 1989. Harbor Enterprise Center opened it's doors in 1992 in the old Atlantic-Southwestern Broom Company and quickly became home to an eclectic mix of artists, woodworkers, and startup companies. Completed in early 2009, the ground floor has been converted to 20,000 square-feet of retail with office/studio space above. The factory is now home to more than fifty local businesses.