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Levering Hall on Johns Hopkins University Homewood Campus
Built in 1928-1929, Levering Hall is named in honor of Eugene Levering, a local banker. Levering, who served as a trustee for Johns Hopkins University from 1898 to 1928, donated the funds to build a…
Grace & St. Peter's Church: Gothic Episcopal Architecture on Park Avenue
The first true brownstone building in Baltimore, today’s Grace & St. Peter’s Church opened its doors in 1852 as Grace Church on Park Avenue in Mount Vernon. Architecturally, it was the first church…
Severn Teackle Wallis Statue: The Municipal Art Society's Memorial to a Maryland Lawyer
The Severn Teackle Wallis Statue by French sculptor Laurent-Honoré Marqueste was dedicated on January 9, 1906 in the south square of Mount Vernon Place in front of the new building of the Walters Art…
Maryland Institute College of Art: One of the Oldest Art Schools in the U.S.
The Maryland Institute College of Art was chartered on January 10, 1826 as the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts. Within months, the new school began offering classes and other…
Former Fells Point Branch, Enoch Pratt Free Library: Branch No. 19 and the Education-Based Latino Outreach (EBLO) Center
Built in 1922, the former Enoch Pratt Free Library Branch No. 19 at 606 South Ann Street was one of a large number of branch libraries that opened in the early twentieth century. Between 1908 and…
Maryland Penitentiary
The Maryland Penitentiary on Eager Street was completed in 1897, as part of a national prison building boom prompted by reform efforts. The building was designed by architect Jackson C. Gott.
Gott…
Canton Branch, Enoch Pratt Free Library: The First Branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library
The Canton Branch is one of four branch libraries, all designed by local architect Charles L. Carson, built by the Enoch Pratt Free Library in 1886. It stands alone, however, as the first to open and…
Saint Mary's Seminary Chapel
The Seminary Chapel at the St. Mary's Spiritual Center is a historic gem. Completed in 1808, the chapel was designed by Maximilian Godefroy, the architect of many historically important structures in…
Round Falls
Hampden Falls, now known as Round Falls, was once part of a dam servicing Rock Mill. Completed in the early nineteenth century and rebuilt several times, it became a popular subject for local…
Babe Ruth Birthplace & Museum: Original Emory Street Home of the "Sultan of Swat"
On February 6, 1968, the city paid $1,850 to buy four vacant, vandalized rowhouses on Emory Street—an unusual birthday celebration for famed Baltimore native Babe Ruth. Exactly seventy-three years…
Billie Holiday Statue: Monument by James Early Reid on Pennsylvania Avenue
The Billie Holiday Monument on Pennsylvania Avenue commemorates the life and legacy of the famed "Lady Day" who was born as Eleanora Fagan in Baltimore on April 7, 1915.
Billie Holiday's childhood was…
Saint James A.U.M.P. Church: Towson's Second Oldest Church and the East Towson Black Community
The origins of this two-story frame church on Jefferson Avenue began in 1861 when a group of Black Baltimore County residents established the Saint James African Union First Colored Methodist…
Lutherville Colored School No. 24: A Two-Room Schoolhouse and Segregated Education
Constructed in 1908, Lutherville Colored School No. 24 is a simple two-room schoolhouse located on School Lane. Today, the building operates as a small museum of Maryland’s Black history and the…
John Stuban at 911 Tyson Street: Activist Founder of ACT UP Baltimore
John Stuban moved from New York City to Baltimore, Maryland in 1987 and settled in a small rowhouse on Tyson Street. That same year, a group of New York City activists founded ACT UP (AIDS Coalition…
Oakenshawe Green Space: A Former Parking Lot Turned Community Open Space
In October 1987, the members of University-Birkwood Association celebrated nearly fifteen years of work on a former parking lot turned green space on Barclay Street. Earlier that year, the small civic…
Tochterman’s Fishing Tackle: A Family Selling Reels, Rods, Bloodworms, and More
Tochterman’s ostensibly sells fishing tackle but owners Tony and Dee Tochterman—the third generation of the Tochterman family to run this Eastern Avenue institution—are part of a hundred year long…
Meyer Seed Company of Baltimore: When this article first appeared, Meyer Seed Company was over 100 years old. Unfortunately, the business closed in 1921. The location is to be developed into an apartment/retail space.
Like the countless seeds the Meyer Seed Company has sold over the past hundred years, the story of this long-running legacy business starts with water. Before he held a seed bucket or a watering can,…
Hilgartner Natural Stone Company: Marble Steps and Monuments for the Monumental City
Founded in 1863 by German immigrants Ludwig Hilgartner and Gottfried Schimpf, Hilgartner Stone has made some of the nation’s finest stonework for over one hundred and fifty years. Of course, the…
DiPasquale’s Italian Market
In 1914, Luigi DiPasquale, Sr., an Italian immigrant to Baltimore, established a small corner store on Claremont Street stocking groceries and household goods for residents in the developing…
Budeke’s Paint: Storefront on Broadway Burned but Still in Business
A family-owned business has been around since 1868, Budeke’s paint products have been delivered via police car, motorcycle, bicycle, and roller skates, not to mention more conventional commercial…
Faidley's Seafood: A Tradition of Quality for Four Generations
Faidley’s is as much about the people as the seafood. Whether gathered around the store’s raw bar at one of the stand-up tables near the busy line of workers making crab cakes, customers are often…
Masjid Ul-Haqq: Former Home to the Nation of Islam in Baltimore
Mosque No. 6, the predecessor of the Masjid Ul-Haqq, first moved into their present building on Wilson Street around 1958. The two-story brick building had most recently housed a automotive garage but…
Woodberry Factory and Park Mill
The Woodberry Factory and Park Mill were built near the site of an eighteenth-century gristmill. An active industrial area for nearly two centuries, buildings here have been replaced and repurposed to…
I Am an American Day Parade: Immigration and the Making of the East Baltimore Documentary Photography Project
East Baltimore's "I Am An American Day" parade is captured in a unique 1981 news program from WJZ-TV and a book of documentary photographs showing the people and places of East Baltimore in the late…
Interstate 395 and Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard: Cal Ripken Way and the Former Harbor City Boulevard
The little-known history of Baltimore's Interstate 395 (I-395) and Martin Luther King Boulevard, Jr. Boulevard offers a reminder of the years of contentious planning efforts that ended with the…
TV Hill: WBAL, WJZ, WMAR, and the Tallest Broadcast Tower of 1958
For over sixty years, tall broadcasting towers have stood high above the old homes in Baltimore’s Woodberry neighborhood. The two tallest towers now standing on Television Hill beam out the signals of…
Martick's Restaurant
Martick’s Restaurant Francais on Mulberry Street is a place of fond memories where Baltimore enjoyed fine food, lively music, and art for nearly a century.
The once-famous restaurant started in 1917…
Patapsco River Project, 1977: A South Baltimore Gateway for the Baltimore Sculpture Symposium
Artist Jim Sanborn’s first public sculpture, the Patapsco River Project was created as part of the Baltimore Sculpture Symposium sponsored by the city and administered by the Department of Housing and…
The Brumbaugh House: "Dr. B" and the Elkridge Heritage Society
The handsome Victorian on Elkridge’s Main Street now known as the Brumbaugh House was built around 1870 and began serving as a doctor's office in the nineteenth century. The home’s most famous…
Elkridge V.F.D. Station One: Former Home of the "Best Homemade Fire Truck in America"
In April 1942, less than six months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, a group of Elkridge residents established a new volunteer fire department. The new fire department was one of…