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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"As much a part of me as my own two hands," is how Henry Louis Mencken described his house at 1524 Hollins Street and his personality can be seen in everything from the parquet floors to the garden tiles. In 1880, Mencken was brought by his parents as an infant to the house and lived there until his death at the age of 75. Much of Mencken's writing, reading and thinking was done in the second floor front study, with its view of Union Square and the surrounding neighborhood. It was here where Mencken's "councils of war" were held over various government actions to suppress books and where Mencken convinced the famous lawyer Clarence Darrow to defend John Scopes in the Scopes Monkey Trial. It was also in this room where Mencken wrote the newspaper columns and books that made him, in the words of journalist Walter Lippmann, "the most powerful personal influence" in America. The house was a central feature of the former City Life Museums, and since its closing in 1997, the Friends of the H.L. Mencken House have cared for the building.
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Union Square began as part of Willowbrook, the John Donnell Federal-period estate, which he purchased in 1802 from Baltimore merchant and later Mayor Thorowgood Smith. In 1847, the Donnell family heirs donated the two-and-a-half-acre lot in front of the manor house to the City of Baltimore to be designated as a public park. Beginning in the 1850s, the Donnell family started to work with a number of speculative builders to develop the neighborhood.
In 1867, the Donnells left Willowbrook (now the site of Steuart Hill Academic Academy), and the house was given to the Sisters of the Good Shepherd. The building served as a convent and home for wayward girls until its demolition in the mid-1960s. The oval dining room was removed from the mansion and recreated in the Baltimore Museum of Art where it remains a part of the American Decorative Arts wing.
This demolition sparked a renewed awareness of historic places and their importance to the community, as residents organized to form the Union Square Association and received historic district designation for the area in 1970.