James Carey originally sold the generous country estate that became Loudon Park Cemetery in 1853. The new owner, James Primrose, built a stone wall with an ornamental railing at the cemetery entrance and enlisted an engineer to map out lots for purchase at twenty-five cents per square foot. The cemetery鈥檚 popularity grew quickly, leading to reburials from Green Mount Cemetery, Loudon鈥檚 greatest competitor. The cemetery made a series of large land purchases including William F. Primrose鈥檚 nearby 鈥淟inden鈥 estate. In 1895, the cemetery purchased the last parcel of land bordering on Wilkens Avenue to build a main entrance to the grounds. This still serves as the main entrance to this day.
Loudon Park Cemetery became the first cemetery to have its' own trolley system, opening a railway line in 1905. Baltimore City used a special trolley car named the 鈥淒olores鈥 to transport caskets and grieving family members to the cemetery gate. From there, the family transferred to the cemetery鈥檚 personal trolley and a horse-drawn hearse carried caskets to the grave. Baltimore City sold the cemetery two rail cars, later renamed 鈥淟oudon鈥 and 鈥淟inden鈥. Equipped with oak finishes and velvet lining, each car seated up to thirty.
The National Cemetery and Confederate Hill also occupy space at Loudon Park. During the Civil War, Maryland contributed around 63,000 Union forces and about 22,000 Confederate forces. As a 鈥渂order state鈥 families from both sides needed to bury their loved ones. Loudon Park sold a portion of its land (5.28 acres) on the eastern boundary to the government for the burial of Union soldiers. Lots sold at ten cents for soldiers and twenty-five cents for officers. Confederate Hill came about as lot-holders with southern sympathies donated their plots for the burial of Confederate veterans. On the southwest corner of the Loudon Park National Cemetery, a stone monument marks the burial place of twenty-nine Confederate soldiers who died at Fort McHenry as prisoners.
Cemetery monuments mark more famous plots such as the Jerome Bonaparte Monument by the remains of Napoleon鈥檚 nephew, niece-in-law, and several other members of the Bonaparte family. The family of Charles Weber, who established the Fifth Regiment Band, erected a mausoleum lined in Japanese Hollies with his likeness etched in stained glass. Richard B. Fitzgerald鈥檚 striking monument contains beautiful statues and large urns while the Weisskittels built a silver-painted, cast-iron one. Lastly, the Weissner Monument, for the family that once owned the American Brewery, stands tall with detailed angels and urns.
In 1784 during the "Christmas Conference" at the Lovely Lane Meeting House in Baltimore, American Methodist was born. Surprisingly, this predated the organization of the Methodist community in England where it originated. In 1784, English Methodism founder John Wesley reluctantly agreed that Methodists in the newly formed United States of America could organize their own church. Francis Asbury was chosen to become the first General Superintendent by consecration at Barratt's Chapel in Delaware, but he demurred until a majority of Methodist preachers in the country would elect him. After a six-week, 1200 mile campaign up and down the east coast, Asbury was consecrated at Lovely Lane Meeting House in Baltimore later that year. The meeting then occupied a small structure at what is now Redwood and Calvert Streets, and relocated to Light Street in 1786. This site now contains the Merchant's Club building that houses the Baltimore Culinary Institute. Nearly a hundred years later, in 1883, the church's pastor, Dr. John F. Goucher, hired Stanford White, the famous Victorian architect, to build a new church as a centennial monument to the founding of Methodism. The present building at 22nd and St. Paul Streets was completed and dedicated in November 1887. After experiencing hard times in the 1960s and 1970s as much of its congregation moved away from the area, the congregation began restoration work in earnest in 1984 on the 200th anniversary of the founding of Methodism here in Baltimore. The work included refurbishing the extraordinary domed ceiling that depicts the morning sky with the stars and planets as they were at 3:00 am, November 6, 1887 the date on which the church was dedicated.
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with research support from
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鈥檚 Black history and the appropriately named School Lane is a dead-end street located just a short distance away from a large highway interchange. From 1909 when the school first opened up until 1955, Black students enrolled in grades one through seven walked from nearby homes on Railroad and Seminary Avenues. Students came from Texas, Beaver Dam, Cockeysville, Riderwood, Ruxton, Brightside and Bare Hills, for their first seven years of education in Baltimore County鈥檚 racially segregated public schools.
The first three grades met in one room while, grades four through seven met in the second, larger room of the school. One teacher, Ms. Bea, taught the first three grades and two others, Mrs. Ross and Mr. Harris, taught grades four through seven. But the Lutherville school, like segregated schools throughout Baltimore and Maryland, was not only segregated but also inadequately funded.
The county school board paid Black teachers and administrators, including principal Roland Harris (who later served in World War II) and Mrs. Arabella Ross (who replaced Harris as principal), less than white teachers and administrators doing the same work. The school couldn鈥檛 afford updated teaching materials. The building lacked bathrooms forcing students and staff to rely on an outhouse year-round. Without enough space for social activities inside the school, extracurricular activities took place at the nearby Edgewood United Methodist Church.
In the early twentieth century, Black students graduating from the Lutherville school had few options to continue their education beyond seventh grade. In 1926, the county government operated six high schools for White students but offered no public high school for Black students. Black households in the county could send their children to Douglass High School in the city but were required to pay transportation costs and tuition totaling over $150 a year. Fifty students paid the fees and made the trip that year but, in 1927, the county instituted an examination for Black students that cut the number of eligible students down to just twelve.
Black parents pushed back immediately with over three hundred people joining a rally organized by the County-Wide Parent-Teacher Association of Baltimore County held in Towson鈥攂ut the discriminatory policy persisted. The construction of the county鈥檚 first Black high school in Towson (named after George Washington Carver) in 1939 provided a closer option but some students continued to take the test and pay out-of-district tuition to attend Booker T. Washington Junior High and Frederick Douglass High School in west Baltimore.
Lutherville Colored School closed in 1955 and the county officially desegregated public schools in 1956, allowing Black students in Lutherville to attend the historically white Lutherville Elementary on York Road. In 1994, Arthur and Helen Chapman purchased the property and converted it into a museum that continues to occupy the building today.
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.
The former Ma & Pa Railroad Roundhouse is an often overlooked landmark located on Falls Road just north of the Baltimore Streetcar Museum.
The Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad, known as the Ma & Pa, connected Baltimore, Maryland and York, Pennsylvania, over a circuitous seventy-seven mile route. In 1881, the Falls Road site became the Baltimore terminal for the Baltimore & Delta Railway (a predecessor of the Maryland & Pennsylvania) originally including a wood frame roundhouse. The original roundhouse burned down in 1892 but, in 1910, the Ma & Pa rebuilt built tracks, roundhouse, the adjoining yard office and power house, as part of a $47,000 investment in their terminal facilities. The Ma & Pa thrived in the 1900s and early 1910s providing regular commuter service between Belair and Baltimore, country excursions for city residences, and milk and mail delivery between Baltimore and Pennsylvania. The business began to decline after WWI and, by the 1950s, passengers had dwindled to about 12 people per train. After the company lost the contract to operate the Railway Post Office, they abandoned their Maryland operations and moved offices to York, Pennsylvania. In 1960, two years after the Ma & Pa ceased operations, the city bought the roundhouse and the terminal complex. Baltimore City purchased the buildings for $275,000 with plans to use the roundhouse as a highway department warehouse. For the past 58 years, the site has been used by Baltimore City for truck parking and winter road salt storage. While the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum has successfully preserved the former Mount Clare Roundhouse in southwest Baltimore as an iconic attraction for railroad buffs young and old, most roundhouses have been lost to demolition or neglect. Years of service to the Baltimore Department of Transportation has taken a toll on this structure too. Unfortunately, in August 2014, the roof at the roundhouse suffered a partial collapse when the several salt-damaged supports failed. Action is needed to stabilize the building and prevent further deterioration. Watch on this site!
Overlooking the Inner Harbor from Federal Hill stands the statue of Major General Samuel Smith (1752-1839). Smith's life as a Revolutionary War officer, merchant, ship-owner, and U.S. Senator earned him the experience and fortitude in the momentous crises before to successfully command Baltimore during the War of 1812 and its darkest hour: the British attack on Washington and Baltimore in 1814. The statue, funded by the city's 1914 centennial celebration of the Battle of Baltimore, is the design of sculptor Hans Schuler (1874-1951) who studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art. The statue was first erected at Wyman Park Dell at North Charles and 29th Streets in 1917 and dedicated on July 4, 1918. In 1953, the Recreation and Parks Department moved the sculpture to "Sam Smith Park" at the corner of Pratt and Light Streets, the future waterfront site of the 1980 Rouse Company Harborplace project. In 1970, with the Inner Harbor renewal project underway, the statue moved again to the present site on Federal Hill, where in 1814 a gun battery had been erected and the citizens of Baltimore witnessed the fiery bombardment of Fort McHenry. The inscriptions on the monument read:
MAJOR-GENERAL SAMUEL SMITH, 1752-1839 / UNDER HIS COMMAND THE ATTACK OF THE BRITISH UPON BALTIMORE BY LAND AND SEA SEPTEMBER 12-14, / 1814 WAS REPULSED. MEMBER OF CONGRESS FORTY SUCCESIVE YEARS, / PRESIDENT U.S. SENATE, SECRETARY OF THE NAVY, MAYOR OF BALTIMORE. /HERO OF BOTH WARS FOR AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE 鈥 LONG ISLAND 鈥 WHITE / PLAINS 鈥 BRANDYWINE 鈥 DEFENDER OF FORT MIFFLIN 鈥 VALLEY FORCE 鈥 / MONMOUTH 鈥 BALTIMORE. / ERECTED BY THE NATIONAL STAR-SPANGLED BANNER CENTENNIAL
with research support from Maryland Zoo
Put Druid Hill Park's tennis and basketball courts, roads, reservoir, conservatory, and zoo all aside for a moment. In essence, the park is 674 acres of forest and tree-shaded lawn, an oasis of green in the center of a busy city of brick and asphalt. Lawns bound and slope all over the park, but the one that has always reigned supreme is the one that cascades down the hill in front of the Mansion House toward the reservoir.
"Buttercups bloom and children play joyously amid the grasses and sunshine," waxed one Sun reporter poetically of the Mansion House lawn. Since the park's founding in 1860, the grassy hillside attracted thousands upon thousands of visitors for music concerts, Easter egg rolls, public rallies, patriotic celebrations, Boy Scout campouts, private picnics, golf and track practices, and quiet kite-flying afternoons. It has remained open, green, and welcoming鈥攁nd trim鈥攁ll the while. Before anyone used lawnmowers, sheep trimmed the Mansion House lawn and other grassy spaces in Druid Hill Park. The newly elected governor of Maryland, Oden Bowie, supplied the park with its first flock of Southdown sheep in 1869 from his family farm. The sheep remained at work until the 1940s when they were sidelined by automobiles. (Apparently, with increased traffic inside the park, the sheep wandered in front of cars too often.) Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of American landscape architecture, thought that sheep did a better job trimming grass than lawnmowers. Active in the latter half of the twentieth century, Olmsted designed many of America's most famous city parks (although not Druid Hill). Several of these also maintained flocks, including Central Park in New York, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, Franklin Park in Boston, and Washington Park in Chicago. Some wealthy estate owners kept sheep for the same purpose, including John D. Rockefeller, who replaced his fleet of lawnmowers with sheep in 1913 after doing a cost and quality analysis that favored the ruminants. "What a beautifully peaceful thing it was to see the sheep moving out in the early morning and drifting homeward again at the end of the day," wrote Roland Mepham in 1966 of his turn-of-the-century childhood in Druid Hill Park. Mepham's father had been the park's blacksmith and wheelwright. Milton Stanley, a neighborhood kid who often visited the park, was amazed by their canine caretakers. "It seemed a near miracle to an inner city boy," the high school principal recalled in 1979, "that the shepherd dog could perform his job with such intelligence and expertise." A handful of shepherds tended the sheep over the years. The longest-serving of these was George McCleary, affectionately known as "Mr. Mac." He was a fixture in Druid Hill Park for twenty years, from 1906 to 1926. Devoted to his collies and sheep, he also mentored many young park enthusiasts. Writing in The Sun in 1958, Malcolm Lowenstein recalled visiting the shepherd almost every afternoon after school and "practically living" at the park on weekends. Mr. Mac "was better than any teacher we had in school," he wrote. "His favorite subject was animals, and the good sense exhibited by so many of them. We all learned a great deal about animal and human nature from him." When Mr. Mac turned seventy-eight, City law forced him to retire. The sheep continued on the job for another two decades but have long since disappeared from Druid Hill Park. They are replaced by tractor-sized lawn mowers whose weekly din is deafening, louder even than a seventeen-year swarm of cicadas. It really makes you think: there is something to be said for sheep and a shepherd, quietly trimming and teaching.
Martick鈥檚 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 as a small grocery store established by Harry and Florence Martick, both Jewish Polish immigrants. The Federal style corner building is even older鈥攄ating back to at least 1852鈥攁nd the Martick family continued to live above the shop raising a family of five children. Following the end of Prohibition, the store (which may have already been operating as an illegal speakeasy) turned into a bar later known as Martick鈥檚 Tyson Street Tavern. After Harry鈥檚 death in the the 1940s, Florence鈥檚 five children pitched in to keep the business going. Morris Martick turned the family bar into a unique institution reportedly attracting what journalist Alan Feiler called 鈥渁 mix of artists, musicians, journalists, working Joes and assorted self-styled bohemians, beats and hipsters鈥 in the 1940s. But, by the 1960s, Morris Martrick was ready for a change. After a failed run for state legislature, Morris traveled to France where he studied French cooking and attracted a chef. Returning to Baltimore, he renovated and re-opened the bar as Martick鈥檚 Restaurant Francais in 1970. The restaurant鈥檚 reputation grew eventually attracting celebrity guests that include Baltimore-born filmmaker John Waters, actor Nicolas Cage and actress Barbara Hershey. The restaurant closed in 2008 and Morris Martrick passed away in 2011 at eighty-eight years old.
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鈥檚 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.
The Maryland Art Place is a local cultural institution occupying a five-story Richardsonian Romanesque industrial building on the west side of Baltimore鈥檚 Downtown.
The building on Saratoga Street was erected in 1907 as a factory for the Erlanger Brothers Clothing. Owned by New York textile merchants, Abraham and Charles Erlanger, Erlanger Brothers鈥 best-known product was BVD underwear. Some assumed BVD stood for Baltimore Ventilated Drawers, but, in reality, the letters stood for the names of Bradley, Voorhees & Day, who founded the brand in 1876.
By 1921, the Saratoga Street building hosted showrooms for the Peabody Piano Company where Baltimoreans could purchase pianos, Victor-brand records and Victrola record players. Eventually the building became the Johnson Brothers Radio Producers & Retailers for making early radio receivers and later televisions.
Maryland Art Place started in 1981 when a group of artists and committed citizens began organizing around the needs of visual artists throughout the state and the desire of many people to have more access to and information about artists working in Maryland. The Maryland State Arts Council supported their efforts and, in 1982, this dedicated group of volunteers formed Maryland Art Place (MAP).
In 1986, the Maryland Art Place moved into the former factory on Saratoga Street and, after renovations, opened exhibition spaces on three floors. Long-time executive director Amy Cavanaugh Royce recalled the experience in an interview with the Baltimore Sun, 鈥淚t's a cavernous building. It has its own aura. I began walking around the back stairwells and the basement and it grew on me." MAP bought the building in 1988.
Today, artists fill the former factory (Jordan Faye Block, a Chicago-born artist and curator, owns a contemporary gallery on the fifth floor) and MAP is building a members gallery.
First established in 1857, the Maryland Club started in a residence designed by Robert Mills on the northeast corner of Franklin and Cathedral streets and many of the Club's members lived in the area around Mount Vernon Place. At the start of the Civil War in 1861, many members of the Club sympathized with the Confederacy and Unionist members resigned, including Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte, the President of the group. Eventually shut down by Union military officials in Baltimore, the building re-opened in 1864 as "Freedman's Rest," offices for the new Freedmen's Bureau and a place to offer support to any "sick, helpless and needy" former enslaved people.
The Club re-opened following the Civil War and prospered along with the economic success of Baltimore merchants and industrialists. The group purchased a vacant lot at Charles and Eager Streets, and hired architect, Josias Pennington of the firm Baldwin and Pennington, to design a new building. The new club house features heavy blocks of white marble from Baltimore County in a Romanesque style. The new Maryland Club opened on New Year's Day, 1892 and has a center of activity through the present.
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 programs at "The Athenaeum," a lecture hall at the southwest corner of Lexington and Saint Paul Streets. Unfortunately, the Athenaeum was destroyed by a fire in 1835 and the Maryland Institute stopped offering programs for twelve years.
The 鈥淣ew Maryland Institute鈥 reorganized in 1847 and, two years later, established the Night School of Design to meet the growing city's demand for skilled technical artists and designers. In October 1851, the school moved to the new Center Market building on Baltimore Street. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the Maryland Institute boasted over one thousand students and a new mission (adopted in 1879): 鈥渄iffusing a knowledge of art鈥 fostering original talent鈥 and laying a permanent foundation for a genuine school of high art in Baltimore.鈥
Even as the students and the curriculum changed and adapted through the end of the nineteenth century, the Maryland Institute continued to occupy the Center Market. Then, on Sunday, February 7, 1904 a fire broke out on Redwood Street and spread across downtown. The Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 burned for thirty hours and destroyed over fifteen hundred buildings鈥攊ncluding the home of the Maryland Institute.
With help from local businesses, alumni, and faculty, the Institute started working to rebuild. Michael Jenkins, a member of the wealthy family that had supported the construction of Corpus Christi Church on Mount Royal Avenue, offered the Institute a place to build a new School of Art and Design next door to the church. The State of Maryland and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie contributed funding and a national competition awarded the commission to architects Pell & Corbett of New York City. Inspired by the architecture of Venice's Grand Canal, the building features ornate Renaissance Revival details and large blocks of Beaver Dam marble from nearby Cockeysville. The cornerstone was laid on November 22, 1905 and the Institute's Main Building opened for students in 1907.
In 1959, the school adopted a new name, the Maryland Institute, College of Art, and, over the past few decades, the campus has grown to include a converted train station, an old firehouse, and a former factory. Today, MICA's Main Building is a beautiful reminder of the school's long history making it the oldest continuously degree-granting college of art in the nation.
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 served as one of eight founding members of Baltimore鈥檚 chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 1870. He designed the Masonic Temple and Eastern Pumping Station in Baltimore, as well as Western Maryland College (now McDaniel College) in Westminster.
For the Penitentiary, Gott鈥檚 Romanesque Revival design and his choice of heavy Port Deposit granite created a landmark whose appearance truly reflects its somber purpose.
The Maryland School for the Blind (MSB) was established in 1853. Formal education for blind people in the U.S. and western Europe was still a relatively recent invention. In 1765, Henry Dannett established the first school with this mission in Liverpool, England. The first school in the United States to follow this model was the New England Asylum for the Blind, now known as the Perkins School For the Blind, established in March 1829. In Maryland, the new school was established thanks to the efforts of David E. Loughery, a graduate of the Pennsylvania Institution for the Instruction of the Blind, and Washington County native Benjamin F. Newcomer, a wealthy industrialist and philanthropist. Together, they were able to generate enough interest in creating a school for the blind that the Maryland General Assembly incorporated the school in 1853. David Loughery was appointed the school鈥檚 first superintendent. Frederick Douglas Morrison, a national leader in his profession, began his forty-year tenure as superintendent in 1864. He had a lasting impact on the school for several reasons. He was instrumental in the founding of the American Association of Instructors of the Blind; he moved the campus to North Avenue in 1868; and officially changed the name to The Maryland School for the Blind. He also founded The Maryland School for the Colored Blind and Deaf in 1872 and served as the superintendent of both schools. The practice of segregated education for black blind and deaf students continued up until 1956. John Frances Bledsoe became superintendent in 1906 and two years later relocated the school in 1908 to the present campus in northeast Baltimore. During his thirty-seven years at the helm of the school, Dr. Bledsoe oversaw its expansion and professionalization. It was during this period when the school began its residential program with the construction of four cottages and Newcomer Hall. The latter was named for Benjamin F. Newcomer who was one of the founders of the school and who served on the board of directors for over forty years.
In January 1799, the Maryland Legislature approved a petition for a charter to incorporate a society of physicians in Maryland to be known as the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of the State of Maryland. As written, this special act of the Maryland Legislature was intended to "prevent the citizens (of Maryland) from risking their lives in the hands of ignorant practitioners or pretenders to the healing art."
The society became the seventh of its kind in the country, and some of its notable achievements include the creation in 1807 of what became the University of Maryland School of Medicine, the establishment in 1830 of a medical library, and the creation of the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery in 1839 that was the first institution of its kind in the world. MedChi has been in its current building since 1909 and Dr. William Osler, co-founder of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, is given credit for the creation of the MedChi library that is still housed there today.
When Dr. Osler arrived in Baltimore in 1889 he was disappointed to find that the Society's library consisted of only 7,000 volumes of outdated and dilapidated books. He convinced the Society to purchase a building on Eutaw Street for use as a library but the collection soon outgrew the location.
The Society purchased a lot at 1211 Cathedral Street and dedicated the current building in 1909. Modeled after the medical society libraries of Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City, the building included a roof-top apartment (described by the Baltimore Sun as the "first penthouse in Baltimore") and a garden for a full-time, live-in librarian. The building was later renovated in 1962 by University of Maryland architect Henry P. Hopkins.
with research support from
Disc golfers playing on Druid Hill Park鈥檚 course sometimes toss their Frisbees accidentally over the Maryland Zoo鈥檚 perimeter fence. The discs land alongside a flat, understated red-brick building whose bland exterior contrasts with a fascinating interior. This is the Zoo鈥檚 Animal Hospital. Since 1984, it has been the hub of medical research and animal care for a wonderfully diverse array of wild patients, ranging from five-gram ruby-throated hummingbirds to five-hundred-pound lions. Before the Animal Hospital was built, the Zoo鈥檚 veterinary staff worked out of a small sick ward in the basement of another Zoo building. Their move into the hospital afforded incredible new opportunities. The facility was equipped with a full surgical suite, an intensive care unit, separate wards for mammals, birds, and reptiles, as well as a quarantine ward, a veterinary laboratory, and a medical library. Today, the hospital also houses the Zoo鈥檚 Panamanian Golden Frog Conservation Center and its Animal Embassy, including an outdoor mews, where the program animals known as 鈥淎nimal Ambassadors鈥 live. The Baltimore Zoological Society (BZS), a non-profit organization formed to support and ultimately manage the Zoo, first proposed an animal hospital in its 1976 Master Plan. It then took several years to secure the聽necessary funding. Dr. Torrey Brown, then Secretary of the State Department of Natural Resources and a board member of BZS, and Dr. John Strandberg, Director of Comparative Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, were instrumental in the effort. The Animal Hospital officially opened in January 1984 at a cost of $3.8 million that the State of Maryland funded with a grant. From the beginning, the Zoo鈥檚 veterinary staff has worked closely with colleagues at Johns Hopkins University. They have also collaborated with veterinary and human medicine experts to add depth to the Zoo鈥檚 medical program. A local dentist who volunteered his services to the Zoo recalled that 鈥渨hile doing a root canal for one of the Zoo鈥檚 medical staff, I was asked if I wanted to help out.鈥 He went from never doing a root canal on an animal before to adapting his own equipment to the task to eventually becoming a member of the American Association of Veterinary Dentists. The Animal Hospital has seen its fair share of extraordinary patients, too. There was the male Kodiak bear that broke the x-ray table under his massive weight. And the tiny golden frog that visited the O.R. to have an even tinier tumor removed. A bald eagle, found injured along the Gunpowder River, was treated for broken bones in its shoulder. That same eagle was released soon thereafter by then-President Bill Clinton at a 1996 ceremony marking the down-listing of bald eagles from endangered to threatened. More recently, an African penguin got a new lease on life after successful cataract surgery. In addition to patient care, the Animal Hospital remains to this day an epicenter of important medical research, veterinary training, and ongoing wildlife conservation work that often involves partners such as the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Visiting any zoo in the world today, you expect to find it surrounded by a fence. It might seem difficult, then, to imagine that for nearly a century there was no fence around the Baltimore Zoo. The zoo was open to anyone who visited Druid Hill Park, anytime day or night. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, after the Zoo鈥檚 founding in 1876, Druid Hill Park attracted residents of every race, age, and background. The park served as an oasis of natural beauty in the middle of an increasingly crowded industrial city. Visitors strolling through the park would happen upon a small zoo at its center. By the mid-twentieth century, the Zoo had grown in size and automobile traffic within the park had increased. People could drive past several of the Zoo鈥檚 animal exhibits and sometimes stopped to picnic or just to observe the animals for a few minutes. This casual and carefree approach to visiting the Zoo by day, however, had a disturbing and destructive counterpoint by night. The local press reported all too frequently on grisly acts of vandalism against Zoo animals. A 1968 report issued by the Baltimore Zoological Society, a friends group that supported the Zoo, noted that over the course of a single year, thirty-one animals were killed by vandals and another forty-nine killed by marauding packs of wild dogs. Stoning and poisoning were the most common causes of vandal-induced death, underscoring intentional cruelty. The Society advocated strongly for a perimeter fence and for charging admission to the Zoo, to protect the animals and to raise the revenue necessary to support their care. The anticipation of these proposed changes sparked criticism in the op-ed pages of local newspapers. Some writers lamented the loss of unrestricted access to all parts of the park while others charged discrimination. One citizen complained in a letter The Baltimore Sun on July 8, 1970:
鈥淔irst the animals were fenced in, now the public is fenced out. Once the turnstiles are in place and admission fees in force, the days of a casual stop at the zoo... will be over. A zoo visit becomes an organized expedition, money in hand, while penniless urchins are left outside to peer in at their financial betters.鈥Despite criticism in the press, the Zoo completed its fence project in late 1970, erecting a nine-foot barrier around its three-mile perimeter. The Zoo also began to charge a fifty-cent admission fee to visitors over the age of fourteen. Vandalism and budget considerations prompted these moves, but by then the fence was also required by the U.S. Department of Agriculture under the Animal Welfare Act of 1966. In addition to the USDA, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums also now requires that all of its accredited members (including The Maryland Zoo) have secure perimeter fences to protect animals within a facility and to act as a secondary containment system. While some may have felt inconvenienced by the Zoo鈥檚 new perimeter fence, the benefits were immediate and undeniable. Within one year of erecting the fence, the Zoo could afford to hire its first full-time veterinarian and reported not a single case of vandalism against its animals.
On August 5, 1948, Mayor Thomas D鈥橝lessandro and other Baltimore City dignitaries came by motorcade to Druid Hill Park for the official opening of the Baltimore Zoo鈥檚 new Reptile House. They pulled up in front of a small, yellow-brick building a short distance from the Zoo鈥檚 main campus. A crowd of several hundred people gathered for the ceremony and then walked inside, eager for their first glimpse of the scaly and slick, slithering and hopping new residents. They entered an oval room with a shallow, tile-lined pool at its center where small alligators and turtles swam. Set into the walls of the room were brightly lit tanks containing an eye-popping array of local and exotic snakes, lizards, and amphibians. Artists employed by the City鈥檚 Bureau of Parks had painted woodland, desert, or swamp scenes inside each tank to mimic the natural habitats of the occupants. The visitors moved from tank to tank, admiring the 250 animals ranging in size from a four-inch worm snake to a twelve-foot python. If any visitors looked up to see the murals of marine life decorating the arched walls, they might be reminded of the building鈥檚 fascinating past. With funding from the federal Works Project Administration, this same building鈥攁 former pump house for a park reservoir that was later filled and turned into a softball field鈥攈ad been converted ten years earlier into Baltimore鈥檚 first aquarium. It showcased Chesapeake Bay fish and several exotic species. There had even been talk of exhibiting a pair of penguins and a manatee from Florida, but neither event came to pass. Unfortunately, the aquarium was short-lived. Fred Saffron, one of its primary backers, recalled that in late 1941, 鈥渙ur biologist had to go into war work, and the park laborers took over. Within a month, the alligators and the terrapin were all that were living.鈥 By the time Arthur Watson, newly hired director of the Baltimore Zoo, arrived on the scene in early 1948, the aquarium stood empty. A lifelong snake enthusiast and a showman by nature, Watson smelled opportunity and was quick to act. 鈥淲hen we open, we鈥檒l have one of the best collections of snakes in this country,鈥 he promised. 鈥淲e鈥檒l be short only a cobra, mambo and python.鈥 To make good on his promise, he sent his newly hired reptile curator鈥攁n eighteen-year-old named John E. Cooper鈥攐n a collecting expedition to the Ogeechee River in Georgia. Cooper returned with many specimens, and somehow Watson also found a python by opening day. Within months, Cooper left the Zoo, on to future adventures as a biology teacher, naturalist, science writer, cave diver, and expert on crayfishes and cave fauna. His successor, the legendary Frank Groves, would oversee the Reptile House and its intriguing residents for the next forty-four years, until his retirement in 1992. During his tenure, Groves published countless scientific papers, earned a national reputation as a serious herpetologist, and pioneered breeding programs for several species that had never been bred in captivity before. The Reptile House closed its doors permanently in 2004, but Groves鈥 interests in research, captive breeding, and education passed to his successors and became hallmarks of the Zoo鈥檚 amphibian and reptile program continuing to this day.
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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 it dated back to the 1870s and operated as part of P. Bradley鈥檚 Livery Stables up through the early 1900s. By the 1920s, new owners converted the stables into a garage and service station. As Black residents moved into rowhouses along Division Street, Druid Hill Avenue, McCulloh Street, and Madison Avenue the business changed as well. By 1938, the business then known as Jack鈥檚 Garage had a Black manager, William Goodwin. That same year, Chandler V. Wynn acquired the business. A North Carolina native, Wynn moved to Baltimore and graduated from Morgan State College in 1931. Wynn was just one of thousands of African Americans moving from North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland鈥檚 Eastern Shore to seek new opportunities in Baltimore in 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s. In Baltimore, along with New York, Detroit, Chicago, and Philadelphia, the migration coincided with a rise of new Black religious movements鈥攊ncluding the Nation of Islam founded by Georgia-native Wallace Fard Muhammad in Detroit, Michigan in 1930. Elijah Muhammad became the leader of the Nation of Islam in 1934. Around 1935, Muhammad helped establish a temple in Washington, D.C. making it the fourth temple after Detroit, Chicago, and Milwaukee. The growth of the movement slowed after Elijah Muhammad鈥檚 arrest for resisting the draft and spent four years in prison from 1942 to 1946. Baltimore鈥檚 mosque was established the same year as Muhammad鈥檚 release and grew quickly in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In 1957, the congregation, then led by Minister Isaiah Karriem, was formally designated Temple No. 6 (later known as Mosque Six) and bought their building on Wilson Street the next year. Since the end of World War II, the garage had seen use as the Maryland School of Camera Repairs and as a warehouse for the Gelco Corporation, a distributor for aluminum storm windows, doors, and awnings. In 1958, Malcolm X came to Baltimore to speak and help the nascent temple to raise money and adapt their new building to their needs. On Sunday, June 26, 1960, Elijah Muhammad spoke at Mosque Six before a crowd of nearly one thousand people packed into the building鈥檚 main auditorium while another five hundred listened to the speech over a public address system downstairs, and several hundred stood or sat outside the building listening the to speech over outdoor loud speakers. Within weeks, Minister Isaiah Karriem launched a fundraising campaign seeking $60,000 for the addition of a 鈥済ymnasium-recreation center鈥 at the rear of the 300-seat temple. Karriem made the case for the planned addition of a modern athletic facility, saying:
The only way to end juvenile delinquency is to get children in off the streets. We feel that this is a step in that direction.By 1960, the facility included a business bureau, cafeteria, kitchen, auditorium and minister鈥檚 study. According to the AFRO, the 鈥渟pic and span鈥 cafeteria seated one hundred diners and the 鈥渟potless鈥 kitchen, directed by Sister Stella X, was 鈥渆quipped with modern facilities and utensils.鈥 Throughout this period, members of the Nation of Islam were subject to close surveillance by the FBI. In January 1972, members of the mosque confronted two FBI agents in an apartment across the street from the mosque where they had set up for surveillance. When the agents drew their guns, the members called the police who, unaware of the identity of the two men, arrested them both. Undeterred, the mosque continued to grow during the 1960s. Elijah Muhammad鈥檚 death in 1975 marked the beginning of a new chapter with significant changes in the community鈥檚 approach to religious practice. In 1976, the mosque was renamed Masjid Muhammad. Members welcomed Muhammad Ali for a visit to the mosque in 1980 and to a second visit in 1982. In 1994, Masjid Muhammad became Masjid Al Haqq and, in 2003, members worked with the Baltimore Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation to list the building as a local historic landmark.
In 1869, the Freemasons finished a new Grand Lodge for the State of Maryland on Charles Street in downtown Baltimore, with each room more decorated than the last. Originally designed by Edmund G. Lind, who also designed the Peabody Institute in the Mount Vernon neighborhood, the Masonic Temple is a testament to architectural wonder.
The building boasts what seem like miles of marble floors, stained-glass windows, painted ceilings, and decorative columns. The building's primary 19 rooms have names that portray a litany of architectural styles and historical frameworks that were important to the Masons: Oriental Room, Marble Room, Corinthian Room, and even an Edinburgh Hall. Each is done in a different architectural style and glamor. The building, completed in 1869, caught fire on Christmas Day 1890 and again in January of 1908. Although much of the interior was destroyed, the thick walls saved the structure and the decorations were brought back each time.
The Masons completed repairs to the building in 1909 following a design by Joseph Evans Sperry, who also designed the city's landmark Bromo Seltzer Tower. The building then spent over eighty years with little outward drama until the Masons moved out to a new headquarters in 1994. The city spent the next few years devising plans to raze the structure for a parking garage. Luckily, the William C. Smith Company bought the building in 1998 and with the help of architects Murphy and Dittenhafer, completed a complete overhaul following exacting preservation standards. The building today serves as a stunning conference facility.
Built in the late 1800s, the Mayfair Theatre, originally known as the Auditorium, was once considered one of the finest showhouses in Baltimore, if not the country. Though the building's ornate white stonework fa莽ade and grand marquee readily identify it as a theatre, the building and the site have a wide and varied history. Before the Mayfair theatre was constructed, this site was the home of the Natatorium and Physical Culture Society (a spa and swimming school), a Turkish bath house, and, remarkably, an indoor ice rink (one of only six in the country at the time).
During its heyday, the theatre became well known for its many vaudeville acts and plays鈥攊ncluding Spencer's Tracey's 1929 performance in Excess Baggage鈥攁nd for what the Baltimore Sun called its "beautiful and cozy interior," which was painted in rich golds, dramatic reds, and creamy whites all lit by hundreds of lights clustered on crystal chandeliers. The walls inside the theatre were frescoed in Byzantine and Renaissance styles and the private boxes had velvet, olive-colored drapes. The theatre's reception room had luxurious red carpeting, a telephone, and a maid. During intermission, a Hungarian orchestra played in the theatre's palm garden and ice water was served to "ladies" in the audience. The theatre seated 2,000 and had 30 exits, making it easy to evacuate in case of fire.
The building's life as a concert hall and live theatre venue came to an end in 1941 when it was converted to a first-run movie house; the building's name was changed that same year. In time, the post-war exodus of residents from cities all over the country and the growth of suburban multiplexes in the 1950s relegated this grand structure to showing Grade B horror and action movies. The theatre's last movie was shown in 1986.
Unfortunately, after years of neglect, the building's roof collapsed in 1998. In the late 2000s, plans to turn the building into apartments and retail space failed to get started. Then, in September 2014, a two-alarm brought further damage to the Mayfair and gutted the adjoining New Academy Hotel. The demolition of the damaged New Academy Hotel revealed serious structural problems with the Mayfair Theatre. The city decided to tear down much of the old theatre but they kept the facade and is seeking a developer for the site who can preserve the remains of the once-great Mayfair Theatre.
William Donald Schaeffer approached Tom Kerr, head of the old Hampden Business Association, in 1972 to organize the Mayor's Christmas Parade. The parade would be Schaeffer's answer to the Hochschild-Kohn Toytown Parade which drew thousands of spectators for thirty years on Thanksgiving Day, but stopped running in 1966. Schaeffer wanted the parade to be held downtown but Kerr insisted on having it in Hampden.
Kerr hoped the parade would bring positive attention to Hampden. Mt. Vernon Mill Company closed its last remaining mill in Hampden-Woodberry that year, marking the end of the textile industry in the area. The first parade was far more modest than the department store extravagance of the Toytown parade, and Kerr was only able to secure a single Santa Claus float and six marching bands. Nonetheless, the parade drew a large crowd and was considered a success. As of 2013, Kerr has been organizing the event for forty-one years.
Every year the parade elects a Grand Marshall. Past prominent figures to hold the title include baseball legend Brooks Robinson in 1978, and more recently, John Astin, famous for his role as Gomez in The Addams Family. Schaeffer made a number of appearances as mayor and came back as Grand Marshall after becoming governor. In 1980, spectators were baffled to see his yellow Cadillac moving toward Thirty-sixth Street without him. The convertible left while he was giving a speech and he quickly darted across the street, ran through an alley, and ducked under a police barrier to cut off the ride for his own parade.
Today, the two-and-a-half mile long parade attracts nearly 25,000 spectators, 160 marching units, and a variety of eclectic floats. Although the parade has grown, it continues to be a community effort. Ninety-five percent of Hampden businesses donate money to the parade. Kerr, who is locally known as the unofficial mayor of Hampden, has recently expressed interest in stepping down from his position, but doubts he will ever be completely detached from the parade.
John McDonogh, a Baltimore-born merchant and philanthropist, was born in 1779 and died in 1850, bequeathing half of his estate to the City of Baltimore to educate children. However, since the public school system already existed in Baltimore, the mayor and city council used the funds to endow a 鈥渟chool farm鈥 for poor boys of good character. Mr. McDonogh had envisioned such a school in his handwritten will dated 1838.
In 1872, a tract of 835 acres鈥攅ssentially the same land that comprises the campus today鈥攚as purchased for $85,000 for the school鈥檚 establishment. McDonogh School was founded on November 21, 1873 with the arrival of twenty-one poor boys from Baltimore City. From the beginning, the boys followed a semi-military system, which provided leadership opportunities and ensured order. Major milestones in McDonogh鈥檚 history signaled change. The first paying students arrived in 1922 and day students in 1927. The semi-military program was dropped in 1971, and the first female students enrolled in 1975.
Today, McDonogh is a non-denominational, college preparatory, co-educational day and boarding school. The school calls many accomplished athletes alumni. They include tennis-pro and sports commentator Pam Shriver, Orioles pitcher Brian Erbe, and equestrian Olympic gold medalist Bruce Davidson.
The 1833 McKim Free School building is one of Baltimore鈥檚 most important landmarks with deep roots in the city鈥檚 history and an unsurpassed 175 year record of education and social service. Founder John McKim came to Baltimore as a young man, established his business at Baltimore and Gay Street and became a successful merchant. During the War of 1812, McKim gave $50,000 to the City of Baltimore to aid in its defense, served as a State Senator, and was twice elected to Congress. His son William McKim who led the effort to realize his father鈥檚 vision of a free school did not live to see it as he died in 1834 at the age of 35. The building鈥檚 architects have deep connections to Baltimore. Son of Baltimore Revolutionary War hero John Eager Howard, William Howard was one of the first engineers to work for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and took up architecture as an avocation. William Small designed the Barnum鈥檚 City Hotel (demolished in 1889), the Archbishop鈥檚 Residence on North Charles Street, and more schools across the city. Since 1945, the McKim Center has continued to strengthen the importance of the building to many Baltimore residents as it remains a vital institution serving children and adults in need in the Jonestown community in innumerable ways. The McKim Center has its beginnings in 1924 when the Society of Friends offered the McKim Free School as a place of worship to an Italian Presbyterian congregation. This partnership between the Friends and Presbyterians led in 1945 to the start of the McKim Community Association offering youth programs, athletic training (particularly wrestling鈥攁ppropriate for a Greek Revival building) and a bible school. McKim鈥檚 renowned athletic programs have long outgrown the building but the structure remains in use, along with the nearby 1781 Old Quaker Meeting House, as a safe place for children, managed by the philosophy of 鈥淪tructure, Discipline and Love.鈥
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Meadow Mill was built by industrialist William E. Hooper in 1877 during one of the most prosperous periods for industry in the Jones Falls Valley. Designed by architect Reuben Gladfelter, it represented the finest of Baltimore mill design. A striking belfry, landscaped paths, and tidy gardens signaled Hooper鈥檚 prominence among business leaders.
Baltimore industrialist William E. Hooper built Meadow Mill in 1877 during one of the most prosperous periods for industry in the Jones Falls Valley. Designed by architect Reuben Gladfelter, the structure represents the finest of Baltimore mill design. The striking belfry, landscaped paths, and tidy gardens all signaled Hooper鈥檚 prominence among business leaders.
Over the next century, workers at Meadow Mill manufactured twine, lamp wicks, cotton duck (a heavy canvas used primarily for ship sails), and, when during the building鈥檚 time as a London Fog factory, raincoats. When the building was new, Meadow Mill was one of four factories comprising Hooper鈥檚 Woodberry Manufacturing Company, including Mt. Washington Mill, Woodberry Mill, Clipper Mill and Park Mill. In 1899, the mill became part of the Mt. Vernon-Woodberry Cotton Duck Company, a textile empire that manufactured as much as eighty percent of the world's cotton duck.
Entire families worked long hours to make ends meet. In 1880, children under the age of fifteen made up a quarter of the mill鈥檚 workforce. After 1900, the state began to enforce child labor laws that required permits for children under fifteen years old, but children could still expect to work twelve hour shifts for little pay, and at the sacrifice of an education. In 1906, thirty-five girls with no union leader or organization walked out of Meadow Mill demanding a pay increase. Fifty bobbin boys followed the girls out on strike. In the end, the girls' received a raise from fourteen dollars to sixteen dollars a month. The boys received nothing. Their fathers, seeing their boys out of work and not making any money, scolded them and sent them back to work.
By 1915, the Mt. Vernon-Woodberry Cotton Duck Company broke apart and was reestablished as Mt. Vernon-Woodberry Mills. The new company controlled mills in Hampden-Woodberry, South Carolina and Alabama. Production boomed during World War I but, by the 1920s, the company began shifting its operations to the South where wages were low and workers less organized. Meadow Mill continued operations through the Depression then boosted production again during World War II to fill military commissions for canvas. Following the war, the company converted the mill for synthetic textile production, which required sealing the windows and installing air conditioning to regulate temperature and humidity.
In 1960, Meadow Mill was sold to Londontown Manufacturing Company, the makers of London Fog Raincoats. Company founder Israel Meyers started in the outerwear business in the 1920s and popularized military-style trench coats for civilians. London Fog went on to become the leading men's raincoat manufacturer of the 1960s and 1970s. In 1978, the Sun referred to Baltimore as the 鈥渘ation's raincoat capital,鈥 reporting that Londontown employed 1,500 people in the city including 600 at the Meadow Mill plant. Londontown also continued the textile manufacturing tradition in the building, making proprietary polyester-cotton blends.
In 1972, Hurricane Agnes hit and flooded the factory causing $148,000 in damages. The company's signature raincoats could be found floating down the torrent of the Jones Falls. In 1976, the company was bought by Interco, a conglomerate based in St. Louis. In 1988, the Baltimore Economic Development Corp. struck a deal to move the London Fog factory from Meadow Mill to the Park Circle Business Park in northwest Baltimore. The company closed the Meadow Mill factory and sold the building to developer Himmelrich Associates. The new owners adapted the building for a wide mix of uses including offices, a gym, a restaurant, and a bakery.
As for London Fog, the company struggled through the 1990s. Interco filed for bankruptcy in 1991. The company renamed London Fog Inc. and tried opening its own retail locations, which ended up angering the company's biggest customers鈥攄epartment stores. By 1995, London Fog had shuttered five of its Baltimore area factories and shifted production overseas. In 1997, London Fog announced plans to close its last U.S. factory in northwest Baltimore, citing competition from cheaper overseas labor. Two years later, London Fog filed for bankruptcy protection. Founder Israel Meyers died the same year.
The Health Education Resource Organization (HERO) was founded in 1983 by Dr. Bernie Branson at the former Medical Arts Building on Read Street. Over the next two decades, HERO grew to become Baltimore's oldest and largest HIV and AIDS service provider and the first grassroots community based organization in Baltimore to help people with HIV and AIDS.
Dr. Branson was one of a number of physicians with offices at the 1927 building. What set Branson apart was that he was gay physician who cared for a large number of gay men as patients. Between 1978 and 1982, Bran served as the medical director for venereal disease clinic for gay men that later became the Chase-Brexton Medical Clinic. After a new and horrible disease began to strike some of his patients, Branson started hosting a small support group in the waiting room of his eighth-floor office.
Two years earlier, in 1981, the Centers for Disease Control had labeled this disease 鈥淕RID鈥濃攇ay-related immune deficiency. With little known about the condition, the name contributed to the stigmatization of gay men with the condition and many health care providers refused to provide care to HIV-infected patients. By the end of 1981, there were 234 known cases across country. By 1987, there were over forty thousand people infected with HIV (the virus that causes AIDS) living in the U.S.
From its humble beginnings with a support group, a hotline, and a small grant from the Goldseker Foundation, HERO soon became a major provider of AIDS education and patient services in the state. In 1984, HERO held the first conference on AIDS in the Black community at the Baltimore Convention Center. The group's AIDS walks attracted 10,000 people at the height of their popularity, and the World Health Organization turned to HERO as a consultant as it worked to set up similar programs around the globe. The organization offered a variety of services: a buddy system that relied on support from hundreds of volunteers; a drop-in resource center; clinical, legal, educational, and counseling services; and even a place to do laundry and collect mail.
Branson left Baltimore in 1990 for a career at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. HERO had become an organization with a national and international reputation for exemplary care. Unfortunately, the organization closed in 2008 amid allegations of fiscal mismanagement, which impeded its ability to do effective fundraising. In 2009, the Medical Arts Building where HERO started was converted to apartments by builders Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse and architect Kann Partners. Despite the organization's sad demise, HERO should be remembered for the many valuable services that it offered to so many people.
The highly ornamented Mercantile Trust Building was constructed in 1885 by architectural firm Wyatt and Sperry. The architecture conveys a sense of impenetrability, characterized by its massive, heavy stonework and deep set windows and entrance. Ads at the time boasted that the building strong enough "to resist the invasion of armed force." The hardened building survived the 1904 Baltimore Fire, but sustained damage when bricks from the Continental Trust Building fell through the skylight, setting fire to the interior. Despite this, the building's survival reaffirmed what the bank had been saying all along in its ads. The Mercantile Trust was Baltimore's first "department store bank," a concept spearheaded by Enoch Pratt. In years before, customers had to go to different banks to get loans, access savings, or open a checking account. Mercantile Trust ended this by introducing Baltimore to one-stop banking. The bank was also involved in raising capital to rebuild many cities in the South during Reconstruction. Later, the bank acted as co-executor for the estate of Henry Walters and as a trustee for the endowment that established the Walters Art Collection. Mercantile Trust occupied the building for almost 100 years. The company left in 1983 and the building has been a nightclub, and more recently, the new location of the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company.
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When this article first appeared, Meyer Seed Company was over 100 years old. Unfortunately, the business closed in 2021. 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, the company鈥檚 founder, John F. Meyer, worked as a sailor, eventually becoming first officer of the schooner Katie J. Irelan. On September 22, 1897, on a voyage carrying scrap iron from Baltimore to Wilmington, North Carolina, a severe storm swamped the ship. Another ship struggling through the storm spotted the Katie J. Irelan in distress and rescued Meyer and his crewmates less than two hours before the 708-ton ship sank into the ocean. Meyer retired from sailing the next year. Later, Meyer fondly recalled the eleven years he spent on the 鈥渁dventurous yet hard life鈥 at sea before he 鈥渄rifted back to Baltimore and decided to stick to dry land.鈥 Meyer started selling seeds for the long-established Bolgiano Seed Company at the northeast corner of Pratt and Light Streets. In September 1910, he partnered with German immigrant G.W. Stisser to form the Meyer-Stisser Seed Company initially located at 32 Light Street. After the end of World War I, Stisser returned to Germany so, in 1921, Meyer bought out his interest in the business. By 1927, the business boasted a proud motto: 鈥淪terling quality, courteous treatment and punctuality.鈥 Meyer鈥檚 assistant, Webster Hurst, Sr., bought out Meyer (but kept the name) in the 1930s. Today, three successive generations of the Hurst family have continued to run the company and devote their lives to selling seeds. Apparently, the seed business is as much about cultivating people as plants. At least two of the current employees have been with the company for over thirty years. Charles Pearre, a former employee, worked for over fifty years selling and developing seeds. In addition, there are even customers who have bought Meyer Seed for multiple generations. Meyer Seed is now located in a nondescript warehouse on Caroline Street between Harbor East and Fells Point. Stepping inside, however, offers a rare sight鈥攈undreds of varieties of seeds displayed in big banks of wooden drawers and long rows of bins used by countless customers over the decades.The company鈥檚 wide variety of seeds for sale has helped Meyer Seed compete with 鈥渂ig box鈥 stores that don鈥檛 offer nearly the same range of options for gardeners. Meyer Seed has been around long enough to see some of their seeds rise and fall in popularity. After the 鈥淟ong John鈥 melon was developed in Anne Arundel, County, Meyer Seed was the first company to start selling the melon鈥檚 seeds in 1930. But, in the decades after World War II, very few farmers or gardeners planted what are now known as 鈥渉eirloom鈥 plant varieties like the Long John melon. Fortunately, in 2004, David Pendergrass of the New Hope Seed Company in Tennessee learned of the long defunct melon and obtained some starter seeds from the USDA. The plants grew and Pendergrass reintroduced the melon to the world in 2007. Whether it鈥檚 seeds for heirloom melons or cutting edge organic gardening seeds, for over one hundred years, Meyer Seed remains at the center of Baltimore鈥檚 seed world.
The Maryland Women's Hospital, now known as the Robert and Jany Meyerhoff House for the Maryland Institute College of Art, was a pioneering medical institution in the late nineteenth century that remained a landmark in Bolton Hill through the 1960s.
When the hospital first opened at John and Lafayette in the early 1880s, it was only the second women's hospital in the nation. The hospital closed in the 1960s when the institution combined with the Presbyterian Eye, Ear and Throat Charity Hospital to form the Greater Baltimore Medical Center in Towson. In 2001, MICA renovated and rehabilitated the building as a dormitory for over 200 students, along with dining facilities, art studios and more.
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.