All Stories: 549
Stories
Sort by:
Lenox Theatre: Christ Temple Church on Pennsylvania Avenue
In December 1919, the Rainbow Theatre first opened on Pennsylvania Avenue entertaining an African American audience with vaudeville performances and films. The theatre continued in operation until…
Druid Health Center/Home of the Friendless: From Orphanage to Public Health Center
The Home of the Friendless at 1313 Druid Hill Ave opened as a refuge for orphaned boys in 1870. An earlier institution, the Home of Friendless Vagrant Girls was established in 1854 on Pearl Steet. By…
Ross Winans Mansion
One of a few (possibly the only!) fully intact late-nineteenth-century urban mansions designed almost exclusively by acclaimed by New York architect, Standford White of McKim, Mead & White, the Ross…
Baltimore & Potomac Tunnel
The origins of the Baltimore & Potomac Tunnel begin in 1858, when Charles County planters pushed for the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad to connect their farms to markets in Baltimore. Progress remained…
Canton Methodist Episcopal Church
Founded in 1847, the Canton Methodist Episcopal Church was the first church established in Canton. The Canton Company donated land for the congregation’s first and second church buildings, because the…
9 North Front Street: Former Home of Baltimore Mayor Thorowgood Smith
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…
Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African-American History & Culture
The 82,000 square-foot Reginald F. Lewis Museum opened in 2005 and immediately made history as the first major building in downtown Baltimore designed by African American architects—a joint effort…
Seven Foot Knoll Lighthouse
Seven Foot Knoll lighthouse takes its name from its original location—the rocky shoals where the mouth of the Patapsco River meets the Chesapeake Bay. The sandy, soft bottom of these shoals…
USS Constellation
Docked in the northwest corner of the harbor, the magnificent USS Constellation is a sloop-of-war, a National Historic Landmark, and the last sail-only warship designed and built by the United States…
Fleet-McGinley Company Building: "The Best Equipped Printing Office in Baltimore"
The former Fleet-McGinley Company building at the northwest corner of Water and South Streets was built in 1908—one of scores of new warehouses and factories built around downtown as the city rebuilt…
Whitehall Cotton Mill
Before the rise of textile mills, the fast-flowing water of the Jones Falls instead powered gristmills supplying Baltimore's lucrative flour trade. Whitehall Mill was established as a gristmill in the…
Fifth Regiment Armory
With thick buttresses, parapets, a crenelated roof-line, and a steel roof, the enormous 5th Regiment Armory has served as an imposing landmark between Bolton Hill and Mount Vernon since 1901. The…
The Ivy Hotel
Mount Vernon’s elegant and historic Ivy Hotel has a rich lineage: its roots are as a Gilded Age mansion and its uses have included city offices, a city owned and operated inn, and now a private…
Ma & Pa Roundhouse on Falls Road
The former Ma & Pa Railroad Roundhouse is an often overlooked landmark located on Falls Road just north of the Baltimore Streetcar Museum.
Alma Manufacturing Company: Factory for the “Superior Pantaloon Button” and the “Perfect Trousers’ Hook”
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…
Eutaw Chapel at Herring Run Park
The Eutaw Chapel is a largely forgotten landmark hidden in the woods above Hall's Springs in Herring Run Park. The former church dates to 1861 when the small stone building was built on a property…
St. Philip's Lutheran Church: A Modernist Gem from Urban Renewal
Now in its sixth decade, the St. Philip’s edifice still serves the vibrant community that built it, despite the exigencies of Baltimore’s history over the years since the building’s dedication in…
New Covenant United Methodist Church: Former Central Methodist Episcopal Church South on Wildwood Parkway
The church on Wildwood Parkway, now used as the New Covenant United Methodist Church, was originally built for the Central Methodist Episcopal Church South in 1930.
The church's original…
National Brewery - "Natty Boh"
Located in Baltimore’s Brewers Hill neighborhood, the National Brewing Company building, affectionately known to locals as the "Natty Boh" building, has been standing since 1872. The company was then…
Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park
The Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park is a Living Classrooms Foundation campus (and headquarters). It is a national heritage site that celebrates the contributions of African Americans in…
Mount Washington Mill
Mt. Washington Mill—historically Washington Mill, part of Washington Cotton Manufacturing Company—is one of Maryland’s earliest purpose-built cotton mills. In the early nineteenth century, the…
Lord Baltimore Hotel
Built in 1928, the Lord Baltimore Hotel is a beautiful example of an early twentieth-century high-rise hotel. Designed by prolific hotel architect William Lee Stoddart, it is reminiscent of such…
United States Coast Guard Cutter TANEY: The Last Surviving Warship from Pearl Harbor
USCGC (United States Coast Guard Cutter) TANEY, a National Historic Landmark, is the last surviving warship that was present and fought at the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, December 7,…
Montgomery Park: Award-winning Reuse of the Montgomery Ward Warehouse
Built in 1925, the eight-story tall Montgomery Ward Warehouse and Retail Store is one of nine monumental distribution centers built by the Montgomery Ward mail order company in cities around the…
Mill Centre: Offices at Mount Vernon Mill No. 3
Mount Vernon Mill No. 3, renamed Mill Centre in the 1980s, represented in 1853 an important expansion to Mt.Vernon Company. Led by president and former sailor Captain William Kennedy, both were among…
Avenue Market
The first building for the Avenue Market, originally known as the Lafayette Market, was built in 1871. In the twentieth century, the market and the Old West Baltimore neighborhood thrived as the…
Northeast Market
Northeast Market was established in 1885 as the area around Johns Hopkins Hospital was developed. The market was enlarged in 1896 and, in 1955, the original wooden structure replaced and modernized…
Hollins Market: Baltimore's Oldest Operating Public Market
The market was conceived in 1835 after piano makers Joseph Newman and his brother Elias Newman were given permission by the city to erect a market on the 1100 block of Hollins Street. In 1838, winds…
Atlantic-Southwestern Broom Company
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…
Northern Central Railroad Baltimore Freight Shed
Built by the Northern Central Railroad, the former Baltimore Freight Shed is a rare example of composite timber and iron roof construction of the mid nineteenth century.
The roof structure is…