While nothing remains to indicate what once transpired here, we pinpoint this location to memorialize the victims of enslavement in America.
Elijah Sinners鈥檚 Tammany Hall Hotel was one of the many taverns and hotels in the area where people met to carry on a variety of business transactions. Placing advertisements in local newspapers to arrange business meetings in public houses was a common practice in the early 19th century. In addition to the business of commerce, people would also arrange meetings for social purposes. For example, Thomas Wildey began the International Order of Odd Fellows at an arranged meeting in this location.
The most notorious purpose for arranged meetings at hotels and taverns was for the sale of enslaved people. Austin Woolfolk, for instance, used this location to build up his business until he made enough money to open a slave jail at Pratt and Cove Streets (near today鈥檚 MLK Blvd.) Eventually, the slave trading firm of Franklin & Armfield sent an agent to Baltimore, Franklin鈥檚 nephew James Franklin Purvis, to start operations here in 1831. The F&A business would become the largest traders of people in the U.S., modeling Woolfolk鈥檚 techniques--a network of agents, saturation advertising, and jails/pens as a holding area. Purvis became successful enough that he, too, was able to open a jail in Baltimore at Harford & Aisquith Streets.
While nothing remains to indicate what once transpired here, we pinpoint this location to memorialize the victims of enslavement in America.
Like all inns and taverns of the early 19th century, the Three Tuns Tavern was used as a meeting place for social and business transactions, not unlike coffee shops today. Austin Woolfolk used this location in his early days as a slave trader before he built up one of the largest slave trading businesses in the country.
While nothing remains to indicate what once transpired here, we pinpoint this location to memorialize the victims of enslavement in America.
Baltimore was one of the nation鈥檚 largest seaports by the early 19th century. In addition to receiving raw goods from the recently opened Northwest Territory (area northwest of the Ohio River) and shipping them around the world, it was also a major hub for the transport of enslaved people. Packet boats arrived regularly from the Eastern Shore with an array of products, including enslaved people to be sold to the many local traders. The enslaved would be sold from the ships or the nearby auction houses. Yates and Harrison (located on this wharf) was one of the auction houses on and near the docks that took advantage of the proximity to ships loaded with cargo. More than 20,000 people were 鈥渟old south鈥 from here.
For more information on the growth of the slave trade in Baltimore, see General Wayne Inn entry.
While nothing remains to indicate what once transpired here, we pinpoint this location to memorialize the victims of enslavement in America.
Intelligence offices were similar to employment agencies, acting as brokers between employees and employers collecting a fee from each. They also acted as brokers for enslavers who didn鈥檛 want to handle the transactions of selling people themselves. This custom of distancing oneself from the sale of a human being became more popular as the slave trade expanded through the 19th century. The General Intelligence Office operated here at Gay and Market (now Baltimore) Streets.
While nothing remains to indicate what once transpired here, we pinpoint this location to memorialize the victims of enslavement in America.
John Denning moved his operation in 1849 to a pen at this location, 18 S. Frederick Street, which he noted was the house 鈥渨ith trees in front.鈥 He always made a point in his ads that he was ready to pay 鈥渃ash for Negroes,鈥 often repeating the declaration in each ad. His previous location was on Exeter Street near Fayette Street.
While nothing remains to indicate what once transpired here, we pinpoint this location to memorialize the victims of enslavement in America.
Joseph S. Donovan鈥檚 first known business address was here on Light Street, south of Montgomery Street, where he probably began his slave trade before acquiring Austin Woolfolk鈥檚 slave pen in 1843. It was then that ship manifests indicate he was shipping people from Baltimore for sale in the New Orleans market.
According to a 1936 article in the Baltimore Sun, 鈥淛oseph S. Dovovan鈥 (sic) operated a slave market here around 1840 and the 1842 Matchett's Baltimore Directory lists a 鈥淛oseph S. Donovan鈥 at this address. Since the earliest record of him advertising 鈥渃ash for negroes鈥 or of him shipping people south wasn鈥檛 until 1843, it is unclear if his business at this address was in the slave trade.
It is conceivable, though, that he was working the slave trade earlier than the records indicate. Donovan had been managing a tavern since the 1830s, the Vauxhall Garden. As the manager, he was well aware of the business transactions of his regular customers, since one of his services was conveying messages. The business transactions taking place in taverns at this time would certainly have included trading in enslaved workers. It would not have been unusual if Donovan had been acting as agent for some of these traders.
In any case, he raised enough money to be able to purchase Woolfolk鈥檚 pen. Then, as his business grew, he relocated two more times for better access to transportation hubs, once to Camden Street near Light and, finally, to Eutaw Street at Camden.
While nothing remains to indicate what once transpired here, we pinpoint this location to memorialize the victims of enslavement in America.
After several years buying and selling human beings, Joseph S. Donovan started operating a slave pen here at 13 Camden Street in 1846. He had been operating from a slave pen he purchased from Austin Woolfolk, but decided to move closer to the transportation available in the center of Baltimore. This proximity to transportation was information he started including in his advertisements to entice prospective sellers. He moved to his fourth and final location, Eutaw and Camden Streets, to take advantage of the new B&O Railroad station.
His trading accelerated in just a few years after purchasing the Woolfolk jail in 1843. While his business is not well documented earlier, it is likely he had been building it from his first base on Light Street beginning in the 1830s.
While nothing remains to indicate what once transpired here, we pinpoint this location to memorialize the victims of enslavement in America.
This was the fourth and last base of operations for Joseph S. Donovan, which he opened here in 1858 at the SW corner of Eutaw and Camden Streets. It is likely he chose this location because, across Eutaw Street, the B&O Railroad had recently opened a new passenger terminal and headquarters. (Camden Station was begun in 1856 and completed in 1865.) Like his previous operation a few blocks east on Camden Street, this location was near a transportation hub, a fact he could use in his advertisements to entice buyers and sellers for the convenience. He started operating as a slave trader from a location on Light Street before purchasing a slave pen from Austin Woolfolk at Pratt and Cove Streets.
The location of the pen was behind where the Babe Ruth Statue now stands between Camden Station and the baseball stadium. Looking at a photo of the area taken c. 1911 (see photo), one can see in the right-foreground a walled enclosure containing a yard and two long, low buildings with small windows near the roof line. That is the location of Donovan鈥檚 pen. Since this photo was taken in the early 20th century, it is conceivable that it is the actual jail repurposed for another use, but that is conjecture.
Donovan had sold thousands of people South by the time he died at his home on this location April 16, 1861, just a few days after the outbreak of the Civil War.
His widow, Caroline Donovan, used the money she inherited from her husband鈥檚 slave trade to build a fortune that enabled her to donate heavily to the fledgling Johns Hopkins University. The 鈥淐aroline Donovan Professorship in English Literature,鈥 established in 1889, is the first endowed chair at JHU. Also, a room in McCoy Hall carries the Donovan name.
While nothing remains to indicate what once transpired here, we pinpoint this location to memorialize the victims of enslavement in America.
James Franklin Purvis arrived in Baltimore around 1831 to act as an agent for his uncle, Isaac Franklin, whose firm was the largest purveyor of human beings in the country, Franklin & Armfield of Alexandria, VA. Purvis followed the same business methods the firm copied from another Baltimore slave trader, Austin Woolfolk: network of agents, saturation advertising, and building a jail to use as a holding area for the people being bought and sold.
Like Woolfolk, he started by placing advertisements in local newspapers to arrange meetings at local hotels, like Sinners鈥 Hotel or Whitman鈥檚 Eagle Hotel, where he purchased people to then sell South. It wasn鈥檛 long before Purvis was able to acquire a property at this location to build a slave jail. He also operated from an office at 2 S. Calvert Street near Baltimore Street, possibly choosing this location to be near the docks and the large Centre Market shopping area.
While nothing remains to indicate what once transpired here, we pinpoint this location to memorialize the victims of enslavement in America.
Hope Hall Slatter, after working in the slave trade in Georgia for a number of years, moved to Baltimore in 1835 and started building up a business of selling enslaved workers to the Southern market. At this time, cotton was vital to the nation鈥檚 economy. It was just a few years before he gained enough capital to open his own slave jail at 224 W. Pratt Street in 1838. His house was located at one end of the property, while at the other end there was a two-story brick building to house the enslaved. The yard was about 40鈥 x 75鈥, containing some benches, a water nozzle, wash tubs, clothes lines, a brick fireplace, and, of course, an auction block. In addition to housing people to be sold, the jail was used as a kind of rooming house with bars on the windows. Slave traders or enslavers would stay at a hotel or inn while travelling, but they would keep their captives at a jail, such as this, overnight for a fee of 25 cents. Slatter was one of the leading traders in the area, having sold over two thousand people in less than 14 years of trading in Baltimore.
One of his last transactions, before selling his business to Bernard Campbell, was the purchase of about thirty of the seventy+ people who attempted to escape from Washington, D.C., on the schooner Pearl. Slatter and Moore managed to acquire the slaves in order to sell them in Baltimore. A number of traders then sold most of the escapees south. Two of the escapees, however, were sold north due to the intervention of their father, Paul Edmondson, who was a free man. He managed to contact abolitionists in NY, who raised the money to buy two of his children, Emily and Mary. They were sent to NY, where they attended school and were cared for by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Rev. Henry W. Beecher.
Bernard Moore Campbell and his brother Lewis purchased the jail in 1848, when Slatter moved to Alabama. The brothers previously had a modest operation located on Conway Street. Here they expanded considerably, partially owing to the use of the Slatter name.
Between the start of the Civil War in 1861 and the emancipation of slaves in the District of Columbia in 1862, more and more local enslavers began using the slave jails to keep potential runaways. By this time, housing the enslaved became the prime source of income for local slave traders. As the Campbell jail was filled with people, tensions mounted to the point of insurrection. Police were called as fighting erupted May 31, 1862. The inmates did manage to fight courageously with whatever they could get their hands on, but it wasn鈥檛 long before they were subdued. In any case, they did make their mark. Some days later, Campbell was scheduled to testify in D.C. concerning compensation for people being freed in the District of Columbia. When he appeared before the committee, it was noted that he had a welt across his forehead and a swollen, black eye.
It was a year later that slave jails were finally closed in Baltimore on July 24, 1863, shortly after the Battle of Gettysburg. It was then that Union troops marched up to the Slatter/Campbell jail and Colonel William Birney presented to the gatekeeper special order #202, 鈥渁n action by the government giving him the authority to free the slaves held in the traders鈥 pens throughout the city.鈥 The colonel and his men found 26 men, 1 boy, 29 women, and 3 infants held in the jail. Sixteen of the men had been shackled together. After they were all set free, the men enlisted in the United States Colored Troops. A large crowd of family, friends, and well-wishers greeted the prisoners as they left the jail.
While nothing remains to indicate what once transpired here, we pinpoint this location to memorialize the victims of enslavement in America.
Before trading under his own name, Jonathan Means Wilson was associated with a few other slave traders. During the early 1840s, he worked as an agent for Hope Slatter, then switched to Joseph Donovan in the later 1840s. By 1849, he started his own business on Camden Street a few doors from Light Street. Initially, he was associated here with G.H. Duke, a partnership that lasted until 1856. His new partner was his son-in-law, Moses Hindes. The operation closed at the outbreak of the Civil War.
While nothing remains to indicate what once transpired here, we pinpoint this location to memorialize the victims of enslavement in America.
Austin Woolfolk was one of the first major slave traders in Baltimore, beginning as a 19-year-old in 1816. He was instrumental in turning the trade into a business. Like most traders at that time, he started with informal transactions in taverns and hotels. Once he acquired enough people to sell South, he would march them chained together over a thousand miles to Georgia, where his uncle would sell them to local planters. Eventually, he expanded his operation with saturation advertising in newspapers and by distributing handbills throughout the region searching for people to buy. He also employed a network of agents who would scour the region for prospective 鈥渟tock.鈥 Finally, he built a residence and slave jail at Pratt & Cove Streets (near present day Martin Luther King Boulevard). By setting up his business at a fixed location, he gave his trade an air of respectability. The idea of creating a jail/pen for the purpose of collecting and holding people for sale was a new concept at the time. This idea and his business model were emulated by the largest firm of human traffickers in the country, Franklin & Armfield. Woolfolk continued his operation until retiring a very wealthy man in 1842. Joseph Donovan purchased this location and operated there from 1843 until 1846, when he moved to 13 Camden Street near the harbor.
Once his business was established, Woolfolk was able to ship the enslaved from Fells Point and the Inner Harbor to New Orleans and other southern ports, where they were sold to their new owners.聽It wasn鈥檛 long before those being 鈥渟old South鈥 became aware of the hell those two words represented, beginning immediately when their families were broken apart. Knowing what awaited them was more than some could bear. One young woman took her child鈥檚 life and then her own in the spring of 1826 while in Woolfolk鈥檚 pen. In 1821, a man slit his own throat at the wharf after learning that he had been sold to a trader.聽
From "Baltimore's Own Version of 'Amistad:' Slave Revolt" by Ralph Clayton (Full article can be found ) On one night, April 20, 1826, 31 enslaved people, bound with chains, began their fateful journey down to the wharf at the foot of Fell's Point. There, they were placed in small boats and rowed out to the schooner Decatur, at anchor a short distance offshore. Several hours later, the captain, Walter Galloway ordered the anchor pulled and the sails set for the journey down the Chesapeake. There was a common practice of allowing small parties of slaves above deck. Five days out to sea, the captain made his way above deck for inspection.聽During the tour he noticed a great deal of mud on the anchor stocks and took a seat astride the rail to scrape it away. Suddenly, from beyond his field of vision, two enslaved people, Thomas Harrod and Manuel Wilson, rushed toward him, seized his legs, and threw him overboard. After subduing the other crewmen, the newly freed people attempted to make the remaining crewman steer the ship, but they had killed the only two people who knew how to man the schooner. The vessel floated at sea for five days before being apprehended by a whaling ship.聽 In an amazing turn of events, 13 captives escaped. The others were re-captured and sold away.聽One enslaved man, William Bowser, was put on trial for the murders of Galloway and the other seaman. After his capture, he was returned to New York City to await trial. According to the New York Christian Enquirer, Austin Woolfolk attended the trial (an account he was to later deny). During the trial, William Bowser stood and looked directly at Woolfolk. He proceeded to tell the trader that he forgave him for all the injuries he had brought upon him and that he hoped to meet him in heaven. On December 15, 1826, Bowser was executed.聽 Back in Baltimore, Benjamin Lundy, editor of the abolitionist newspaper The Genius of Universal Emancipation, wrote a scathing report, attacking the character of Woolfolk. Calling him a "monster in human shape" for his conduct during the trial of Bowser, Lundy completed the column by stating, 鈥淗ereafter, let no man speak of the humanity of Woolfolk." Woolfolk was incensed and he went looking for Lundy. According to Lundy he was heading toward the post office to mail some letters when Woolfolk found him. An argument ensued, during which Woolfolk, the much stronger of the two men, knocked Lundy to the ground. Although Lundy offered no resistance he was savagely choked and beaten by Woolfolk. Only the quick actions of several bystanders saved Lundy's life.
The following month Woolfolk's trial on charges of attempted murder took place in Baltimore. During the trial he denied having been present at the trial of Bowser and brought several witnesses into the court in his defense. Nevertheless the jury found Woolfolk guilty. When Woolfolk rose to hear the sentence that Judge Brice had decided upon, many in the court were stunned to learn that it was to be a fine in the amount of only one dollar. After the trial, Austin Woolfolk continued as one of the leading traders in the history of slavery, profiting by tens of thousands of dollars* a year well into the 1830's.* Hundreds of thousands of dollars in today's currency
A Newspaper on a Mission鈥擮ne of the oldest African-American newspapers in the country; unique in that it has been in the same family for five generations.
When John H. Murphy, Sr. purchased the Afro-American Newspaper in 1897, the idea of sending a poet to cover a civil war in Spain was probably far from his mind, especially a poet as distinguished as Langston Hughes. His paper, after all, had a humble beginning. The Afro, which recently celebrated its 130th anniversary, was founded in 1892 as a church newsletter. It changed hands a few times before being purchased by Mr. Murphy in 1897. He then took this small church paper and expanded the operation to over 100 employees before his death in 1922. His son, Carl Murphy, followed his father as chairman and expanded the operation even further, increasing the circulation to 235,000 by 1945.聽 It was Carl Murphy who made the decision to hire Huges to cover the Spanish Civil War in 1937. Though an unusual choice, it was not a singular one. Mr. Hughes joined a rarified group of literary writers who reported on various conflicts, Stephen Crane and Ernest Hemingway among them. The editor-publisher, Carl Murphy, had commissioned Hughes to report on the experience of 鈥渃olored sympathizers from many lands鈥 who fought on both sides of Spain鈥檚 Civil War. He wrote about people who wanted to fight for democracy against fascism. He also wrote about the 鈥淢oors鈥 (Muslims from North Africa and Spain) who were used 鈥渁s canon fodder for Franco.鈥 This was one of the missions of the newspaper after all鈥搕o report on the lives of the ordinary 鈥渃olored鈥 person.聽 Another aspect of the paper鈥檚 mission has been to give fuller accounts of stories that historically the mainstream press has missed. The Afro was one of innumerable newspapers that covered two lynchings on the Eastern Shore of Maryland鈥揗atthew Williams in 1931 and George Armwood in 1933. Their account of the treatment of Williams, for instance, was taken from a light-skinned, African-American who was able to blend into the white crowd and witness the events. This witness reported that Williams was thrown out of the window of a hospital where he was being treated and dragged to the courthouse where he was lynched. Whereas the Baltimore Sun鈥檚 account stated that Williams was 鈥渢aken quietly鈥 from the hospital and 鈥渆scorted鈥 to the courthouse square. The Sun published an editorial in 2018 apologizing for its woeful shortcomings in the reporting of these two lynchings in Maryland. Innovative reporting and filling in the details of the lives of their readers are only two of the legacies of The AFRO. Today the 4th and 5th generations of the founder鈥檚 family continue to run an operation with offices in Baltimore and Washington, DC.
Upholstering furniture for homes, hospitals, restaurants, and Hollywood for over a hundred years.
The unassuming space on Harford Road belies the work performed there by its craftspeople. Clifton Upholstering has reupholstered everything from that old couch in the den to 16th century French chairs to period pieces for several locally filmed movies and TV shows, not to mention furnishings for innumerable restaurants and hotels in the area.
Jeremiah Fox began this upholstery business in 1915 a few miles south of its current location, initially working primarily on home furniture. Needless to say, the company has expanded considerably since then. Not many years after starting his business, Mr. Fox began working with Robert M. Baxter,Sr., who had his own carpet and drapery business. Mr. Baxter eventually bought the business and now his son, Bob, is operating it.
As the company grew, they took on more and more intricate work restoring antique furniture, such as a sofa made by a coffin maker in the 1740s. It was signed by the maker as well as at least two of the craftspeople who reupholstered it over the next two centuries. The most recent reupholstering was done by Clifton in the 1990s for the Engineers Club on Mt. Vernon Place. And, yes, it was signed by the employee who worked on it, Harvey Teets.
Working in similar grand, historic homes in Baltimore can become a lesson in local history. For instance, Agora Publishing contracted Clifton to do some work at the Tiffany Mansion across from the Engineers Club. While working there, they learned one of the family members was a Rough Rider with Teddy Roosevelt. Also, as the work progressed, a tapestry was discovered in a 4鈥 x 15鈥 shadow box that had been covered over with drywall by a previous owner.
Furniture sometimes comes to them from around the world, such as the aforementioned 16th century French chairs, which were purchased by a consignor for a wealthy client. The ten chairs, which cost $230,000 a piece, now surround a dining room table in Singapore.
Less exotic, but no less interesting, is the work done on several films, most recently for Lady in the Lake. Other work includes the TV crime dramas, Homicide: Life on the Street, and The Wire, as well as several John Waters films, such as Dirty Shame. The latter included work on a special seat for a police car. The front seat had to accommodate a character who liked to wear diapers, which meant someone with a 54鈥 waist. It was upholstered in teddy bear felt with baby blue vinyl.
The 鈥渟teady鈥 work continues to come in from local families who want a chair or couch reupholstered. Also, larger jobs are provided through their partnership with the Maryland Restaurant Association. Their work can be found all over the city in places as diverse as Ruth's Chris Steak House and Johns Hopkins Hospital.
It is never dull work. Even the mundane jobs sometimes turn into something of note, like the time they found $3,000 in cash under some couch cushions.
Leon's is Baltimore's oldest continuously operating gay bar. The bar鈥檚 current name comes from Leon Lampe, who owned the bar during the 1930s. 870 Park Avenue was never a speakeasy though Leon Lampe and his brother Sam ran several speakeasies during Prohibition. They were also into insurance fraud, racketeering, witness tampering and bootlegging. After WWII, the bar became a hangout for beatniks and artists with a mix of gay and straight patrons. Since 1957, Leon鈥檚 has operated as a gay bar.
It is rumored that in its early days as a gay bar, patrons had to say a password before they were let in the door: 鈥淎re you a friend of Dorothy?鈥 A common identifier among gay men at that time, the phrase is a reference to Dorothy Gale of the Wizard of Oz鈥攔eportedly for Dorothy's acceptance of her friends despite their unusual identities.
This location once served as home for the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Baltimore. In 1977, activists involved with the Baltimore Gay Alliance (BGA), established two years earlier in 1975, decided to split that organization into two separate entities. The BGA remained a political organization, and the GLCCB became a new support services organization. One reason for the change was the need to secure 501(c)3 nonprofit status for the GLCCB. GLCCB initially located at 2133 Maryland Avenue in a small basement suite of rooms. The offices had a room for a men's STD screening clinic, counseling services, and meeting space. Gail Vivino, who was very involved with the BGA, lived in Charles Village at the time, and she opened the basement of her home at 2745 N. Calvert Street to house the GLCCB's switchboard. The house also served as a production space for The Gay Paper, established in 1979.
In 1980, the GLCCB purchased the building at 241 West Chase Street to bring all of the organization鈥檚 activities under a single roof. Much of the fundraising in 1979 and 1980 that put together the down payment for the building was done by Harvey Schwartz, who served as the first paid employee of the organization. Early efforts to renovate the building, which had formerly been a car dealership, then a pinball warehouse, were helped along by donations of labor, materials, and cash. Lambda Rising, an LGBT bookstore owned by Deacon McCubbin, was located on the first floor of the GLCCB from 1986 until 2008.
After more than thirty-four years at 241 West Chase Street, the GLCCB moved to the Waxter Center in February 2014. It occupies a suite of offices on the third floor of the building and still maintains the programs and services it offered at its previous location.
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.
Chase Brexton Health Care was founded in 1978 as a gay men's STD screening clinic. The clinic operated as program of the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Baltimore from 1978 until 1989. In 1989, Chase Brexton became an independent healthcare provider retaining its ties to the LGBT community and greatly expanding its health care services. As an acknowledgement of their origins, the new organization took the name Chase Brexton because the GLCCB was located at the intersection of Chase and Brexton Streets. After operating many years at Cathedral and Eager Streets,聽Chase Brexton Health Services purchased the Monumental Life Building at 1111 North Charles Street in 2012 and by the end of 2013 had transformed the buildings from offices into a new health clinic. The work included repairing the limestone exterior, even keeping and repairing the signature gold lettering spelling out 鈥淢ONUMENTAL LIFE.鈥 Original marble walls and floors were restored and imitation gold leaf ceiling was refinished using the original methods. An original wood-paneled 1928 board room was fully restored after having been subdivided into offices. The move enabled Chase Brexton to continue to expand its services to the broader community while maintaining its long standing ties to the LGBT community in the Mount Vernon neighborhood. An iconic Mount Vernon Building had not only found a new owner, but found a new life and promises to serve as a great asset for years to come.
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鈥攖he center building of a set of five designed and built by Robert Cary Long, Sr., probably before 1820鈥攁nd 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鈥擫ewis 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鈥攖ruth, 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鈥攖he 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鈥檚 history entitled "A Chronicle of a Certain Episode Which Occurred at Fourteen West Hamilton Street."
Edgar Allan Poe, writer, poet, inventor of detective fiction, is probably most famous for his poem 鈥淭he Raven.鈥 He spent time in Baltimore off and on through his entire life. Though born in Boston, he first arrived in Baltimore on a family visit to his paternal grandparents when he was just five weeks old in 1809.
Poe's association with this house began around the beginning of 1833, when Maria Clemm moved her family to this modest 2 陆 story rowhouse on Amity Street (originally number 3, now 203 North Amity Street). The household consisted of Maria, her daughter Virginia Clemm, her mother Elizabeth Poe, her nephew Edgar Allan Poe, and perhaps her son Henry. The small, five-room house was situated quite differently than today, surrounded by a few scattered houses and mostly open fields. Poe likely slept on the top floor, under low, slanted ceilings, accessed by a narrow, winding staircase.
Over the next two years, Poe continued to unsuccessfully explore various careers, and wrote for various publications. Notably, he was awarded first and second place for a fiction and poetry contest, respectively, sponsored by the Baltimore Saturday Visiter. He also established contact with the Southern Literary Messenger, and submitted both fiction and editorial pieces for publication, as well as providing technical advice to the editor.
In addition to the numerous poems and short stories, he wrote for the Visiter and Messenger at 203 Amity Street. It is also presumed that he penned a poem titled 鈥淭o Elizabeth,鈥 dedicated to a cousin, and "Latin Hymn," which is a comment on the Egyptian-Ottoman War (1831-1833). The war was called for by Mohammad Ali, who demanded control of Syria from the Ottoman Empire as a reward for his assistance with other battles.
The family was forced to move from Amity Street in 1835 after the death of the grandmother, Elizabeth Poe, and the loss of her pension.
The house was scheduled for demolition in 1938 to make way for a public housing project, but was saved by the Edgar Allan Poe Society, which was established in 1923 to promote Poe鈥檚 works through readings and lectures. The Society provided tours of the house from 1950 to 1977 when operation of the museum was taken over by Baltimore City鈥檚 Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP). It is operated today by Poe Baltimore, a non-profit organization.
Mencken lived in an apartment at 704 Cathedral Street for five years with his wife, nee Sara Haardt. The third floor apartment鈥檚 east windows faced Mount Vernon Place, and the inside was decorated with a distinctly Victorian style. Marion Elizabeth Rodgers provides detailed description of the apartment in Mencken: The American Iconoclast, a thorough chronicle of the writer鈥檚 life, who is perhaps best known for his Baltimore Sun editorials and opinion pieces.
The third floor apartment was reached by climbing numerous steep stairs, as the building did not have an elevator, for which Mencken apologized to guests, promising comfortable chairs and a stocked bar once in the apartment. Inside, Sara decorated the drawing room with green chenille and mulberry silk; gilt mirrors, fancy fans, lace valentines, and glass bells hung elsewhere.
There were not many traces of Mencken in the apartment, save a lithograph of the Pabst Brewery plant operating at full swing in the dining room, which was also decorated with his 267 beer steins, a collection of ivories, and an autographed portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Hamilton Owens wondered 鈥渉ow a boisterous and rambunctious fellow like Henry could manage to be comfortable鈥 in the apartment, and many friends privately felt the lithograph of the brewery was Mencken鈥檚 one salvation. Before Sara, Mencken was known to be a notorious bachelor.
While living in the apartment, Sara鈥檚 health, which had always been poor, continued to deteriorate. Mencken recalled that when he 鈥渕arried Sara, the doctors said she could not live more than three years... actually, she lived five, so that I had two more years of happiness that I had any right to expect.鈥 Mencken continued to live at the Cathedral Street apartment in the months after Sara鈥檚 death, but returned to the family home 1524 Hollins Street early in 1936.
The Episcopalian congregation of Saint John's Church has worshiped together on the same site in Waverly since 1843. At that time the area was the small village of Huntingdon, Maryland: a collection of about seventeen large estates, and the more modest homes of a new and emerging middle class.
The village extended from Huntingdon Avenue (present day Remington) on the west to Harford Road on the east; from Huntingdon Avenue (25th Street) on the south to Boundary Avenue (42nd Street) on the north. In 1888, Baltimore City annexed the area from Baltimore County and the post office was renamed Waverly, after Sir Walter Scott's popular Waverly novels.
In November 1843, the Episcopal Bishop of Maryland, William Rollinson Whittingham, sent Reverend W. A. Hewitt to Huntingdon. Local resident Thomas Hart requested the appointment because he wanted his grandchildren baptized but did not want to travel to the parish church, Saint Paul's, in Baltimore City. The bishop happily obliged since he was eager to establish new congregations in Maryland embodying the ideals of the Oxford Movement, which sought to reinstate older Christian traditions in the Anglican Church.
The congregation at Saint John's Church held their first service the 鈥渂arracks鈥: a powder magazine and post for federal troops located a short distance southwest of the present church building. On July 10, 1844, Saint John's Church was legally incorporated as a diocesan mission church within the bounds of Saint Paul's parish and by 1845 became an independent congregation. The congregation laid the cornerstone for its first church in April 1846, and was consecrated by Bishop Whittingham on November 11, 1847. The church opened as a 鈥渇ree church鈥濃攔ejecting the then-common practice among Anglican, Catholic, and Presbyterian churches of raising money by charging parishioners "pew rents".
For the first two years the rector returned his stipend to the treasurer as his offering toward the building expenses. He also installed a furnace at his own expense, assuring the warm devotion and gratitude of his flock. However, on May 15, 1858, just eleven years after its consecration, the church caught fire and burned to the ground.
Poorer but undaunted, the congregation worked to rebuild and Bishop Whittingham laid cornerstone of the present church on September 11, 1858. The first service in this building was held on May 22, 1859, and its consecration was on All Saints' Day in 1860. The congregation prospered and the church added a Parish House (1866) and a Rectory (1868) in a matching Gothic style. In 1885, the church built an orphanage for boys but the institution closed in 1912 and the building has been demolished. An 1850s cemetery still survives on the property.
The design of the church was influenced to the principles of the Cambridge Camden Society (later known as the Ecclesiological Society) which promoted revival of the Gothic style in architecture. The church was enlarged in 1875 with the addition of transepts (creating the classic cruciform shape visible today), a baptistery (the present Lady Chapel), sacristy, enlarged sanctuary, and a bell tower and spire. The interior decoration was completed in 1895 in the same Gothic Revival style.
After several modernizations of the decor, a whitewash, and years of neglect, the restoration of much of the original decoration was undertaken from 1983 to 1985 by the Reverend R. Douglas Pitt, the eleventh rector. This work was resumed in 1994 under the Reverend Jesse L. A. Parker, twelfth rector. All of the restoration work has been accomplished by the well-known decorative artist Janet Pope, of J. Pope Studios, Baltimore, which specializes in historic decorative restoration.
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.
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.
When the first official World鈥檚 Fair in the United States 鈥 the Centennial Exhibition 鈥 closed in Philadelphia in November 1876, the Maryland delegation chose not to abandon their state exhibit hall. Instead, the wooden building (described as 鈥渁 cross between English Tudor and Swiss Chalet鈥) was disassembled piece by piece, transported to Baltimore, and then reassembled on a shady hillside in Druid Hill Park. The structure was well received in its new incarnation. 鈥淚t is the opinion of those who have seen the building at Philadelphia, and since its re-erection here,鈥 wrote a correspondent for The Sun on April 17, 1877, 鈥渢hat it is far prettier in the present situation than among so many other buildings at the centennial.鈥 The Maryland Building is one of only two buildings to survive the exhibition; the other is the Ohio Building. By recommendation of Baltimore鈥檚 Park Commission, it became a museum 鈥渙f interest and attraction to the public鈥 that housed 鈥渃uriosities that have been gradually collecting in one of the basement rooms鈥 of the adjacent Mansion House. The museum opened in April 1877 with Otto Lugger, a trained naturalist, in charge. For the next many years, Professor Lugger presided over an increasingly eclectic collection that included the basement curiosities as well as assorted donations from eager citizens and the Maryland Academy of Sciences. Thus, visitors could browse 鈥渁 handsome and increasing ornithological collection鈥 in one room, costumes and ceramics in another room, and a center hall full of fire-fighting equipment (including an elaborately decorated hand pumper donated by General George Washington to the Friendship Fire Company of Alexandria, Virginia.) When the Park Board granted use of the Maryland Building to the Natural History Society of Maryland in 1936, most of the curiosities were removed and distributed around town to the Baltimore Fire Department, the Fort McHenry Museum, and the Maryland Historical Society. In their place came exhibits dedicated to local flora, fauna, geology, and archaeology. Inside the walls of the old wooden building a new museum took shape, one that showcased rocks, minerals, and fossils; birds, butterflies, reptiles, and mammals; and, most amazingly, the thirty-foot-long reconstructed skeleton of a baby blue whale that had washed ashore in Crisfield, Maryland in 1876. In the 1970s, after a 40-year run, the Natural History Society moved out of the Maryland Building so that the operating arm of the Zoo, the Baltimore Zoological Society (BZS), could move in. By this time, the Zoo had fenced in its campus and since the Maryland Building was on the inside of the fence, it made sense for it to become part of the Zoo. A 1978 renovation outfitted the building with offices and an auditorium, allowing it to function as both BZS headquarters and a public education space. Ever since, the Maryland Building has served as a busy work space for Zoo staff. The Maryland Building underwent a second major renovation in 2009. With great care and attention paid to the structure鈥檚 historic restoration, it was given a new lease on life, and, in 2010, the project earned a prestigious Maryland Preservation Award from the Maryland Historical Trust.
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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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.
At the edge of the Disc Golf Course in Druid Hill Park where the greens give way to weeds and woods, you might notice a set of stone steps that lead nowhere. Trace their path downward through the wild overgrowth and you can pick out remnants of a stone foundation wall and a rusted iron fence. This abandoned spot used to be a popular destination. Under the vines and overgrowth are the Three Sisters Ponds, all now empty. There were originally five of these man-made basins, created in 1875 to stock trout, shad, and other local species bred in a nearby fish hatchery house. The picturesque little building, also completed in 1875, was designed by George A. Frederick, the same architect who designed Baltimore鈥檚 City Hall and several other Druid Hill Park landmarks. Early on, the building was described as 鈥渁 two-story Gothic structure of blue stone, with white marble trimmings, the main building projecting from octagonal wings on either side.鈥 By 1925, the building was abandoned and ultimately destroyed by vandals, who broke windows, stripped it of its bronze fittings, and set it on fire in 1940. The city demolished the charred ruins for safety reasons. At least one of the ponds stocked fish well into the twentieth century, but, in 1884, the center pond became a sea lion exhibit. The pond鈥檚 first occupant arrived by train from California in the middle of the night after an eight-day journey. The sea lion 鈥渟lipped out upon the bank鈥 of Pond No. 2, 鈥済ave a plunge headforemost, and was out of sight,鈥 reported the Baltimore Sun. In 1896, Captain Cassells, superintendent of Druid Hill Park, declared that the sea lions were 鈥渢he show attraction of the park, particularly to every child who comes here.鈥 To give the sleek celebrities more space, the center pond was enlarged, merging five basins into three, but it would still prove to be only a temporary home for such large animals. In 1910, the sea lions relocated to a new exhibit on the main campus of the Zoo a short distance away. Despite the loss of the sea lions, Three Sisters Ponds remained beautiful, well-tended, and popular for several more decades. The name 鈥淭hree Sisters Ponds鈥 dates to at least the 1920s. Its origin is unknown but may reference the Native American use of the term to describe three staple crops 鈥 corn, beans, and squash 鈥 traditionally grown in close proximity and for mutual benefit. One of the three became a casting pond where anglers could practice their sport inaugurated in 1928 for the Maryland Open Bait Casting Tournament. Another of the ponds, around the same time, became a favorite destination of the Baltimore Model Yacht Club. On weekends, those who sailed model yachts and those who enjoyed watching them flocked to the pond. In winter, ice skaters came. As the decades passed and recreational use of Druid Hill Park changed, Three Sisters Ponds became a quieter spot. One police officer who occasionally patrolled the park in the late 1960s and early 1970s remembered the place fondly. 鈥淭he ponds gave the occasional visitor like me a sense of privacy, escape, and personal oasis,鈥 wrote Philip B.J. Reid, who later became an FBI agent. 鈥淓ncircled by an array of multicolored plants and trees and well-manicured lawns and shrubs, and home to various species of birds and the occasional deer, the setting was beautiful, serene, and majestic.鈥 The City cut off water to the ponds in the 1960s and since then, nature has slowly reclaimed the site. A master plan for Druid Hill Park published in 1995 recommended their renovation, but nothing has happened there yet.
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A giant carrot, a house made of cheese, and barnyard chickens were among the attractions that greeted visitors to the Baltimore Zoo鈥檚 new Children鈥檚 Zoo when it opened in Druid Hill Park in 1963. 鈥淢ost children鈥檚 zoos are full of fairy tale stuff, like Humpty-Dumpty, Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack and the Beanstalk,鈥 declared Arthur Watson, the Zoo鈥檚 director. 鈥淭his one will be different. It will emphasize living things and nature.鈥 And it did, along with its share of whimsy. The Children鈥檚 Zoo was a combination petting zoo, storybook land, and barnyard intended to make every child鈥檚 鈥渇irst introduction to animals a pleasant one,鈥 said Watson. Young visitors could board Noah鈥檚 Ark (formerly a Chesapeake Bay fishing boat), climb into a tree house, ride a miniature train pulled by a replica 1863 C.P. Huntington locomotive, visit cows in a Pennsylvania Dutch milking barn, and wander in, out, and around other fantastical structures with animals everywhere. Chickens, ducks, and peacocks roamed freely while rabbits, sheep, goats, and donkeys stood within petting distance. More exotic fauna such as monkeys, parrots, and a baby tapir were also in residence but out of hand鈥檚 reach. Interest in adding a barnyard feature to Druid Hill Park 鈥渢o give city children a view of country life鈥 had been floating around since 1937 when Baltimore City Councilman Jerome Sloman first proposed the idea. It took twenty-six years, and Watson鈥檚 unrelenting advocacy, to turn idea into reality. From the moment he was hired as the Zoo鈥檚 first professional director in 1948, Watson made it his mission to increase attendance. He believed that a children鈥檚 zoo was central to this mission and he eventually secured the necessary approvals and funding for construction. In the meantime, children鈥檚 zoos had become popular all around the country. Watson and his architect, Louis Cuoma, researched similar attractions to help conceptualize their own. Referring to his competition at other major zoos, Watson announced with typical bravado, 鈥淟et them compare our new [children鈥檚 zoo] with those and they鈥檒l find that Baltimore has the best in the country.鈥 The site for the Children鈥檚 Zoo was carefully chosen to avoid tree removal and to be within walking distance of the main zoo. The milking barn was constructed on site but most of the fantastic structures and over-sized animals were created in the big, bright workshop of Adler Display Studios on Penn Street in southwest Baltimore. The zoo-within-a-zoo was enclosed to contain free-roaming children and animals, but also to allow the zoo to charge admission of fifteen cents for each child and twenty-five cents for adults. Watson rightly anticipated that ticket sales would soon cover the $250,000 cost of building the Children鈥檚 Zoo. While seemingly modest, the price of admission for a family could add up at a time when the hourly minimum wage was only $1.25. The rest of the Zoo remained free but the Children鈥檚 Zoo鈥檚 pay-to-play policy sparked debate in the City鈥檚 op-ed pages. Some felt that the policy was exclusionary while others saw a need for the Zoo to generate revenue in order to grow and improve. Curiosity apparently outpaced criticism, with more than twenty-five thousand people visiting the Children鈥檚 Zoo in its first ten days. It would continue to attract the Zoo鈥檚 youngest visitors for just over two decades, until it was replaced in the 1980s by the expansive Maryland Wilderness exhibit, an ambitious new children鈥檚 zoo with a very different look and feel.
When freshmen students arrived for the opening of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County campus in September 1966, the university had only three buildings: Lecture Hall, Gym I, and Academic I.
UMBC had to locate all of its classes and departments in one building, Academic I, making it the learning hub of the university. In the beginning, the building included five 30-seat classrooms, four science laboratories, and one electronically equipped language laboratory. Along with classrooms, the building housed various faculty offices and academic departments, all of which had to share floor space or classrooms. Even the university鈥檚 library was located in Academic I until a dedicated library building was constructed in 1968.
Academic Building I, currently known as Biological Sciences, reflects UMBC鈥檚 nontraditional approach to student learning. Following the university鈥檚 opening, newspapers and magazines noted UMBC鈥檚 鈥渄eliberate break with tradition.鈥 Faculty were characterized by their willingness to innovate and students were encouraged to work together with faculty on projects and research. Students could work at their own pace and learn through a method of trial and error.
This strategy mirrored the real-world practice of scientific work, unlike other universities鈥 classrooms where faculty closely monitored laboratory experiments to ensure that students performed experiments in an exact way. At UMBC, faculty stood back, allowing students to test out new ideas that could lead to great discoveries and new working partnerships.
As the university continued to grow, other academic buildings were constructed providing much needed space for the academic departments crowded within the Biological Sciences building. The social sciences, math, and humanities divisions left the building, while the department of Biological Sciences remained and continues to be housed there to this day.