Attman鈥檚 Delicatessen at 1019 E. Lombard Street is one of just a few delis the remain at the heart of the old Lombard Street market that once stretched from Albemarle Street to Central Avenue. Imagine New York鈥檚 famed Lower East Side, minus the tenements. Here, Russian immigrants became fish sellers offering fresh carp in white-tiled pools; poultry dealers selling live chickens, ducks, and geese from wooden cages; bakers and grocers; dry goods merchants, and shochets (a slaughterer who follows Jewish religious laws when killing animals).
Food has a long history at 1019 E. Lombard Street. After starting their business on Baltimore Street in 1915, Harry and Ida Attman purchased this building in the early 1930s. They bought it from Nathan and Elsie Weinstein, whose grocery business also dated back to 1915. Before that, around 1910, Russian-born Joseph Lusser sold fish and poultry here. His family shared the house with two other Russian Jewish families.
The opposite side of Lombard Street was occupied from the 1930s through the 1970s by the well-known Tulkoff鈥檚 horseradish plant, now located in Dundalk. Another local fixture, David Yankelove, sold chickens on the north side of the street until the 1980s. David鈥檚 father, Louis, had been a butcher here beginning in the early 1900s.
The next row down from Attman鈥檚 at 1005-1011 E. Lombard is an early block of houses with steeply pitched roofs that suggest they were built before the Civil War. The deep-back buildings are later additions, constructed to accommodate immigrant families in search of affordable housing. These houses speak volumes about commercial life on the turn-of-the century Lombard Street. From the 1910 census, we learn that 1105 housed a grocer, 1007 was an Italian-owned fruit store, 1009 featured a butter and egg business, and 1011 was a poultry dealer.
The empty space to the right of Attman鈥檚 was formerly Smelkinson鈥檚 Dairy. During the Riots of 1968 following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Smelkinson鈥檚 burned to the ground. However, most of Lombard Street survived the riots with little damage and the street remained vital until the late 1970s, when a combination of inner city decline and the rise of the suburban shopping mall caused its small family businesses to close.
The first building for the Avenue Market, originally known as the Lafayette Market, was built in 1871. In the twentieth century, the market and the Old West Baltimore neighborhood thrived as the Pennsylvania Avenue became a center of Baltimore culture. When the wooden market burned to the ground in 1953, merchants banded together to rebuild it.
The market survived as many of the neighborhood's historic buildings were abandoned, and in the 1970s, demolished in the name of urban renewal. Enthusiasm for urban renewal in the 1970s waned, and by the 1990s, the Lafayette Market was in desperate need of a makeover. It closed in 1994 for renovations and reopened in 1996 as the Avenue Market, an homage to Pennsylvania Avenue, the cultural heart of the neighborhood. The market was again renovated in 2012.
Incorporated in 1873 shortly after the end of the Civil War as the "Russian Congregation B'nai Israel of Baltimore City," B'Nai Israel was formed by Eastern European Jews living at a hub of Jewish Baltimore along the Jones Falls River. The founding members were working class Baltimoreans: shoemakers, clothiers, and the like. Despite the nod to Russia in the synagogue's name, many actually hailed from Poland. Between 1880 and 1905, Baltimore's Jewish population swelled from 10,000 to 25,000, and many German congregations moved out of east Baltimore and downtown. Examples of congregations moving west included Baltimore Hebrew (1891), Oheb Shalom (1893), Har Sinai (1894), and Chizuk Amuno (1895).
B'Nai Israel took advantage of the exodus, and laid down $12,000 in 1895 to buy the synagogue it now occupies from the Chizuk Amuno congregation. While many East Baltimore congregations closed or left the city following World War II, B'Nai Israel remained, perhaps part of a Talmudic obligation to protect at least one shul in every city. After years of decline, fortunes turned in the late 1970s when the congregation began to grow and restoration work on the synagogue began.
The building dates to the late nineteenth century, before the advent of modern architecture trends in American synagogues. Its large central window, stained glass, and interior sanctuary are heavily influenced by Eastern Mediterranean and Byzantine architecture. The sanctuary's original ceiling, with frescoes akin to those in European churches, remains intact, as does a tremendous hand-carved ark in the central sanctuary.
On February 6, 1968, the city paid $1,850 to buy four vacant, vandalized rowhouses on Emory Street鈥攁n unusual birthday celebration for famed Baltimore native Babe Ruth. Exactly seventy-three years earlier, George Herman 鈥淏abe鈥 Ruth, Jr. was born at 216 Emory Street to George Ruth, Sr. and Katherine Schamberger. Katherine's parents leased the three-story rowhouse but George and Katherine didn't stay there long, moving first to Goodyear Street and then into an apartment above George's saloon on West Camden Street. In 1902, when Ruth was just seven years old, he was sent to St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys, a reformatory located at the southwestern edge of the city on Wilkens Avenue. Ruth went on to baseball fame, playing for the Orioles, the Boston Red Sox, and the New York Yankees and earning the nickname the "Sultan of Swat," before his retirement in 1935. His family's old house on Emory Street followed a more humble course. In 1960, some locals proposed disassembling 216 Emory Street and relocating it to Memory Stadium. "Sooner or later, the urban rebuilders are likely to call Emory street run-down or the area useful for nonresidential construction and that will be the end of Pius Schamberger's house," the Sun speculated in 1961. The newspaper had good reason for their prediction; Saint Mary's School, where Ruth first learned to play baseball, was torn earlier that same year. In 1967, the building's owner recieved a court order to repair or raze the building. But when the owner scheduled the demolition for December 10, local residents protested and the city stepped in. On November 18, Mayor McKeldin put a stop to the demolition, saying "To allow such a building to pass from the Baltimore scene is to allow an important part of our past to go unrecognized." Next February, the Mayor's Committee for the Preservation of Babe Ruth's Birthplace purchased the block with donations from committee members and the membership of Junior Orioles. While some members of committee worried about the location in a "run-down area" and proposed relocating the building to Memorial Stadium, preserving the building in place eventually won out. In July 1974, the "Babe Ruth Shrine" opened as a national museum with exhibits on the life and times of Babe Ruth. After Oriole Park at Camden Yards opened in 1992, museum attendance soared to over sixty thousand people every year. In 2015, the museum undertook a major restoration to create a new entrance on the Dover Street side block, improve bathrooms, and add an elevator making the museum more accessible to all visitors.
In 1879, Charles T. Bagby and A. D. Rivers founded the Bagby and Rivers Furniture Company, the predecessor to the Bagby Furniture Company. Bagby and Rivers manufactured furniture and in their 1882 furniture catalog, the company advertises mainly cabinetry.By the turn of the century, Charles T. Bagby was the sole owner of the company which was rebranded the 鈥淏agby Furniture Company.鈥 Charles T. Bagby ran Bagby Furniture until the 1930s, when he sold the company to his distant cousin William Hugh Bagby.
William Hugh Bagby was a man full of ambition. Before becoming president of the Bagby Furniture Company, William Hugh Bagby had actually worked for the company as a salesman. From the position of salesman, William Hugh Bagby began his own business before buying out the Bagby Furniture Company. Under the management of William Hugh Bagby, the company switched from furniture manufacturing to selling wholesale furniture in the forties. William Hugh Bagby passed away in 1988 and his son William Hugh Bagby Jr. became the company president.William Hugh Bagby Jr ran the company until 1990, when Bagby Furniture permanently closed. The furniture company could not compete with the lower prices manufacturers were offering customers if customers purchased furniture directly from the manufacturer.
After the Bagby Company closed their doors, a variety of development plans came up for the property. In 1993, a Baltimore Sun article stated that the Henrietta Corporation intended to build a luxury apartment complex on the property. In 2017, the Atlas Restaurant Group redeveloped the Bagby property into a collection of four Italian restaurants including Tagliata, Italian Disco, the Elk Room, and Monarque. The Bagby building which used to produce furniture, now serves as entertainment for patrons who want dinner and a show.
The iconic Baltimore & Ohio Warehouse at Camden Yards is an icon of Baltimore's industrial heritage and a unique example of creativity in historic preservation and adaptive reuse. Construction on the warehouse started in 1899. Architect E. Francis Baldwin likely served as the architect having designed warehouses for the B&O at Locust Point in 1879-80 and at Henderson's Wharf in Fell's Point in 1898. When a five-story addition was completed next to Camden Station in 1905, the narrow fifty-one-foot wide warehouse squeezed into the busy railyard by stretching four full blocks along South Eutaw Street. The company boasted that the facility could hold one thousand carloads of freight at once.
The warehouse remained in use through the 1960s but was largely abandoned by the 1970s, in favor of new single-story facilities. By the 1980s, the structure was threatened with demolition to make way for a new stadium. 糖心影视 and Maryland State Senator Jack Lapides led an effort to fight for the preservation of the warehouse and the rehabilitation of Camden Station. Leadership from the Maryland Stadium Authority responded and, with support from the Baltimore Orioles, architects Helmuth, Obata & Kassabaum and RTKL Associates transformed the vacant warehouse into the star attraction of the new stadium complex.
Oriole Park at Camden Yards opened on April 6, 1992 and the ballpark has remained a much-loved landmark ever since. The warehouse is now home to team offices and a private club for the Orioles. In 1993, the building even caught a long ball鈥攁 445-foot shot by Ken Griffey, Jr. on July 12, 1993 during the 1993 All Star Game Home Run Derby鈥攎arked with a small bronze plaque matched by those on Eutaw Street for the occasions when a player has hit a ball out of the park.
The origins of the Baltimore & Potomac Tunnel begin in 1858, when Charles County planters pushed for the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad to connect their farms to markets in Baltimore. Progress remained slow until 1867, when the Pennsylvania Railroad Company bought the business.
In July 1872, the completion of the Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel (below Winchester and Wilson Streets) enabled the B&P Railroad to start service between Baltimore and Washington, DC.
In 1983, the MARC train joined the list of commuter trains that have used those same tracks, ensuring the continued popularity of the station for travelers today. In 2014, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) and Amtrak are currently conducting an engineering and environmental study reviewing a range of options to modify or replace the existing tunnel.
The original portion of this building was constructed in Greek revival style, in 1843, for a sea captain and his family. The captain and his wife placed it into trust for their daughter, who willed it to the Baltimore Humane Impartial Society to be used as an old folks鈥 home, but the Society sold the property to an individual instead. It remained a private residence until it was donated to The Little Flower Corporation, in 1920. The neighborhood was predominantly Polish during this time and the house was remodeled and accommodations were furnished for the care of Polish children. The first floor had lounging rooms and a dining room, the second floor was a day nursery and library, and the top floor was converted into dormitories for girls.
The American Indian Study Center acquired the property from The Little Flower in 1972. In its original location, at 211 S. Broadway, the Center offered a library on Indian cultures and social counseling services. It hosted monthly meetings open to anyone interested in 鈥淚ndian culture.鈥 鈥淐ulture class鈥 included workshops on traditional arts, crafts, histories, ways of knowing, and being. With the move to 113 S. Broadway, the Center also opened a restaurant and offered housing for a time. The American Indian Study Center, which changed its name to the Baltimore American Indian Center in 1980, has offered an array of social and cultural programs in the decades since.
In 1999, Maryland State Bond Bill was passed to assist the Center in a capital project to construct the 鈥渕ultipurpose room,鈥 a gymnasium-like addition to the original structure, completed in 2008. In 2004, longtime friend to the Center, Stanley Markowitz, was awarded an Open Society Institute Baltimore fellowship to work with community members to begin envisioning what would become the Baltimore American Indian Center Heritage Museum. Additional federal funding was acquired to rehabilitate the first floor of the original part of the building, to house the new museum. Frieda Minner (Lumbee) was instrumental in the development of the museum and a gift shop, facilitating much of what was truly a community effort. Men of the Center鈥檚 Native American Senior Citizens program did the finishing work on the first floor. The Museum officially opened in 2011. In 2018, the Baltimore American Indian Center celebrated 50 years of existence and it is still open today.
The Baltimore American Indian Center purchased the building at 118 S. Broadway in 1983, with assistance from the Religious Society of Friends. The front part of the first floor was a museum and gift shop, and the back room was used for dance class. Rooms on the upper floors served as workshop space and lodging for cultural consultants. The Center sold the property in 2002.
In 1961, the cornerstone of the Baltimore Civic Center (as it was then called) was laid, enclosing a time capsule with notes from President John F. Kennedy, Maryland Governor Millard Tawes, and Baltimore Mayor Harold Grady. Located on the site of the former Old Congress Hall where the Continental Congress met in 1776, the arena opened a year later to great acclaim as part of a concerted effort to revitalize downtown Baltimore. Through ups and downs and a number of renovations, the arena has become woven into the fabric of the city.
In its early years, Baltimore鈥檚 professional hockey team (the Baltimore Clippers) played here, as did the Baltimore Bullets, the city鈥檚 former basketball team. In 1966, Dr. Martin Luther King delivered a speech called "Race and the Church" at the arena as part of a gathering of Methodist clergy, and in 1989 the arena hosted the U.S. National Figure Skating Championships. And then there are the concerts. On Sunday, September 13, 1964 the Beatles played back-to-back shows at the arena to throbbing young Baltimoreans, and the arena is reportedly one of the only indoor venues in the U.S. still standing where the Fab Four played. In the 1970s, Led Zeppelin played the arena and shot a few scenes for their movie 鈥淭he Song Remains the Same鈥 backstage. Also in the 1970s, the Grateful Dead performed many shows here, including a performance where they played the song 鈥淭he Other One鈥 for a reportedly record forty minutes.
Finally in 1977, Elvis Presley performed at the arena just weeks before he died. The tickets for the show sold out in 2 陆 hours, and although there were no untoward incidents reported while The King was onstage, he did apparently lose his lunch in a corridor in the back.
One of the largest businesses on the West Side in the early twentieth century the Baltimore Bargain House鈥攁 mail-order wholesale business that employed over a thousand people and earned profits in the millions that grew to become the fourth largest wholesalers in the county. Driven by the devotion of Jewish Lithuanian immigrant Jacob Epstein, the Baltimore Bargain House became a hub for Southern Jewish merchants and a local business community. When firm's grand showroom at West Baltimore and North Liberty Streets opened in 1911, a crowd of 500 local businessmen, the Mayor of Baltimore, and the Governor of Maryland all attended the dedication. After spending years himself as an itinerant peddler, traveling throughout Western Maryland, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania, Jacob Epstein first opened a small wholesale store in Baltimore in 1881. Epstein focused his attention on the American South, working specifically with Jewish peddlers and merchants. In the early 1900s, Epstein treated hundreds of merchants to annual visits to Baltimore to restock and view new merchandise. Arriving from North Carolina, Tennessee, and across the South, these merchants helped grow a successful and extensive business in Baltimore. Between 1881 and 1929 the Baltimore Bargain House was one of the most significant businesses in Baltimore, with gross sales over $34 million in 1921 alone, comparable to over $410 million today. To operate the Baltimore Bargain House, Epstein also built a local community of employees, which included over 1,600 people. The workforce was relatively diverse, comprising of immigrants from various countries as well as industry experts from across the nation. Many workers remained employed at the Baltimore Bargain House for decades. Although remarkable for his considerable business acumen and the success of the Baltimore Bargain House, the business' founder, Jacob Epstein was also well known for his extensive charitable donations to local Jewish groups and to institutions like the Baltimore Museum of Art.
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Founded in 1839, City College is the third oldest public high school in the United States. Through an act of the Baltimore City Council in 1866, the school became known as "The Baltimore City College." It relocated a number of times in buildings downtown during its early years and moved to its current building at 33rd St. and The Alameda in 1928.
At a cost of nearly $3 million raised largely by the alumni association, the Gothic stone building that now houses City College was designed by the architecture firm of Buckler and Fenhagen. This same firm, which is the precursor to the current Baltimore firm of Ayers Saint Gross, also designed the mausoleum at Green Mount Cemetery where Bromo Seltzer founder Isaac Emerson is buried, Shriver Hall at Hopkins University, and many public schools throughout Maryland.
Originally all male and all white, City College began admitting African Americans in 1954 after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case. The school began admitting women (against the wishes of a majority on the alumni board at the time) in 1978 after undergoing a massive restoration project. In 2003 on the building's 75th anniversary, the City College Alumni Association successfully had it added to the National Register of Historic Places and led an effort to keep cellular telephone transmitters from being installed on the building's tower. In 2007, the alumni successfully had it added to Baltimore's own historic landmark list, and won a historic preservation award from 糖心影视 for their multi-year effort.
Although it imitates the arrangement of the U.S. Capitol with a central dome and symmetrical wings, the Baltimore City Hall is covered in French architectural elements, including banded rustication, arched windows, and a crowning Mansard roof. How did this come about?
Between 1861 and 1865, the U.S. Civil War stopped most building projects. By the time the war ended, tastes had changed. Although the Italianate style remained popular (especially in conservative Baltimore), the antebellum Greek and Gothic Revival styles faded away. Indeed, this whole era in American architecture bears a European name: 鈥淰ictorian,鈥 for the queen of Great Britain between 1837 and 1901. Victorian buildings showed off the new products of the industrial revolution then creating out a wealth of new building products: cheaper bricks and cut stone, encaustic tiles and terracotta, various forms of structural iron.
The Victorian style from France is named for the Second Empire of the Emperor Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, who styled himself Napoleon III. It was this Napoleon who extended the Louvre and laid out the boulevards and sewers that made Paris the most modern city in the world in the late nineteenth century. The Second Empire style became very popular for government buildings after the Civil War; it was sometimes called the 鈥淕eneral Grant鈥 style after the eighteenth President. In Baltimore, George A. Frederick鈥檚 design, completed in 1875, employed a good deal of cast iron, including the 227-foot tall dome designed by Wendel Bollman and cast by Bartlett, Robbins, and Company.
About seventy-five years after their construction, Victorian buildings inevitably came to be seen as downright ugly. In Baltimore, the construction of the Abel Wolman Municipal Building overshadowed City Hall, blocking any views from the north. In the 1970s, city officials seriously discussed demolishing City Hall. But wiser heads prevailed, and a prize-winning renovation equipped City Hall for continued use as the center of Baltimore鈥檚 government.
The Baltimore County Almshouse officially opened in 1874 as a public home for the county's indigent, elderly, and infirm residents. Since its closure, the Almshouse has housed the Historical Society of Baltimore County (founded in 1959), and a variety of County government offices and other nonprofits.
The Baltimore County Almshouse officially opened in 1874 as a public home for the county's indigent, elderly, and infirm residents. The Almshouse and its predecessors were the ancestors of today鈥檚 nursing homes, mental health hospitals, homeless shelters, and other social services and health care facilities. After Baltimore City and County separated in 1851, the County took over one of two original almshouses that had served Baltimore: Calverton, founded in 1819. The County sold the aging Calverton facility in the 1870s and built a new almshouse farther north. Originally called the Upland Home, the third and final almshouse is now known simply as "the Almshouse."
The project of building the Almshouse began in 1871 when County Commissioners purchased property in the village of Texas, Maryland, from Dr. John Galloway. Galloway also served as one of the Almshouse's early physicians. Builders Codling and Lishear, following designs by local architect James Harrison, used locally quarried limestone to erect the four-story edifice. In 1872, the Sun reported how the main home was "constructed of the best material and in the most substantial manner" and claimed the building would "be a credit to the county." After a total outlay of nearly $60,000, seventy-four "inmates," as residents were known, moved in on January 8, 1874.
Housing for inmates at the Almshouse was rigidly segregated by race and gender. The County built the "Pest House" (short for pestilence), a small structure down the hill from the main home, to quarantine residents with contagious diseases. Far more often, the Pest House served as segregated housing for African American men. In the main building, white men and women lived in the front wing (on separate floors) and African American women lived in the back wing. The Almshouse superintendent reserved the first floor for himself and his family, along with any resident physicians and other privileged employees.
The Almshouse property included a farm of well over 100 acres and able-bodied residents were expected to work as farmhands or within the home in cooking, sewing, laundry or childcare, to help provide for their own upkeep. While the farm was generally described as productive in various reports over the years, the County still spent thousands of dollars annually on items like coal, bread, beef, fertilizer, medicine and salaries. Records from the late nineteenth century show expenditures totaling $7,200 in 1869, $12,520 in 1883 and $11,345 in 1886, for example. Salary expenditures went mainly to the twelve superintendents who oversaw the Almshouse from 1874 to 1958, with varying degrees of success (at least according to accounts in the press, which sometimes carried a whiff of partisan bias). The last two superintendents, who served from 1907 to 1959, were father and son, John P. and William Chilcoat. On balance, the Chilcoats seemed to earn more praise than their predecessors for their care of residents and effective oversight of the farm. William Chilcoat, for instance, was credited with lobbying successfully to secure County funds in 1938 to add more meat and eggs and otherwise upgrade the residents' diet.
The vast majority of inmates are now only knowable through the basic details recorded in the Almshouse ledger books, held in the collections of the Historical Society of Baltimore County. The ledgers recorded residents' age, sex, race, and place of birth. Unsurprisingly, the impoverished Almshouse population included many African Americans and immigrants over the years. A 1946 census of the eighty-nine residents, for example, noted fifteen African Americans and fifteen foreign-born whites, mainly from Germany, Poland, Russia and Ireland. Most of the American-born residents in 1946 came from Maryland, but eighteen were natives of other US states. Some residents registered under partial or false names鈥攁 "Daniel Boone" entered on October 1, 1891, and the facility admitted a "Napolean Bonaparte" on June 12, 1899鈥攔eflecting the distressed circumstances that sent them to the Almshouse. Some unfortunates came to the Almshouse only in death, to be buried in unmarked graves in the potter鈥檚 field on the grounds. We do know a bit more about some individuals. In 1943, the Towson Jeffersonian profiled Fannie Williams, a 104-year-old African American woman and the oldest occupant of the Almshouse. Williams had lived there for forty-one years, "earning her keep" by helping the superintendent鈥檚 wife with cleaning and, after she became wheelchair-bound, mending clothes for other residents. Before entering the Almshouse, Williams had worked as a domestic servant in Baltimore County homes. Other residents occasionally landed in the newspapers under more unfortunate circumstances, like Anthony Rose, an elderly white resident who fell down the Almshouse鈥檚 elevator shaft and died in 1909.
In the early decades, the facility had a persistent problem with overcrowding, especially during the cold winter months. From 1874 to 1914, more than 10,000 people passed through the Almshouse鈥檚 doors as 鈥渋nmates,鈥 committed to public care for reasons ranging from disabilities to dementia to diseases like measles and tuberculosis. Over time, however, public and private alternatives emerged for those who did not have families able or willing to house and care for them. The founding of the State Lunacy Commission in the early 1890s marked growing concern over the treatment of the mentally ill and disabled. Those considered "insane," who in an earlier era might have lived in an almshouse, were increasingly placed in "asylums." As retirement communities and nursing homes became more common over the twentieth century, the need for almshouses declined further. In 1958, Baltimore County officials closed the historic facility, citing costs.
Since its closure, the Almshouse has housed the Historical Society of Baltimore County (founded in 1959), and a variety of County government offices and other nonprofits. In 1980, the Almshouse was added to the County Landmarks List. Today, the Historical Society maintains its collections and offices, runs a research center for the public, and holds events in this historic structure. The surrounding community of Cockeysville enjoys the open spaces and greenery of the sprawling former grounds, now County Home Park.
A survivor that has endured decades of abandonment, the 1914 Lebow Building is an impressive example of early twentieth century industrial architecture that is just starting a new future as the Baltimore Design School. While it takes its popular name from the Lebow Brothers Clothing factory that occupied the building from the 1950s through 1985, the Lebow Building actually shares a common history with the Copycat Building next door and the artist-owned Cork Factory 鈥 all three were built by Baltimore's Crown Cork & Seal Company.
Founded by prolific inventor William Painter in 1892, the Crown Cork & Seal Company centralized their operations on the 1500 block of Guilford Avenue in a new Romensque six-story warehouse in May 1897. William Painter died in 1906 but the business continued to grow and the Lebow Building was built in 1914 to serve as a machine shop. The design by architect Otto G. Simonson featured vast expanses of glass 鈥 windows made up nearly 75% of the exterior facade 鈥 and a unique ventilation system. Simonson had arrived in Baltimore in 1904 to work as the superintendent for the construction of the U.S. Custom House located at South Gay and East Lombard Streets. Born in Dresden, Germany, Simonson immigrated to Hartford, Connecticut at age 21 and worked for many years in the office of supervising architect of U.S. Treasury Department in the early 1880s, eventually becoming the superintendent of construction of public buildings.
The builder, Herbert West, had supervised the construction of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York before moving his architectural career to Baltimore in the aftermath of the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 to focus on developing fireproof buildings. West became a leader in the local architectural community and helped to develop city building codes as president of the Building Congress and Exchange of Baltimore.
By the 1920s, the Crown Cork & Seal Company provided a full half of the world's supply of bottle caps. Between two and three hundred people worked at the machine shop and employees benefited from amenities including an outdoor rooftop recreation area for ladies and a separate area for men in the building's courtyard. In 1930, however, the company began to consolidate operations at their 35-acre factory complex in Highlandtown.
In 1950, the machine shop was leased to Lebow Brothers Clothing Company 鈥 a preeminent manufacturer of men's clothing at the time and especially well-known for their coats and suits. In 1982, private developer Abraham Zion purchased both the company and the building. However, Lebow Clothing ceased manufacturing and the building was shuttered in 1985.
In 2013, the abandoned building was transformed into the Baltimore Design School. The school focuses on creating a collaborative and progressive educational environment. The former loading dock is now an outdoor performance space for fashion shows. Salvaged equipment from the clothing factory is exhibited in the former freight elevator to honor the building鈥檚 previous life. The project met the Secretary of Interior Standards for historic preservation and received state and federal tax credits and is a LEED Silver certified green building.
First established in 1847 by a group of prominent businessmen, the Eutaw Savings Bank spent its first decade operating out of the Eutaw House Hotel located on the same site as the Hippodrome Theater. In 1856, the Eutaw Savings Bank purchased a lot across the street on the corner of Eutaw and Fayette Street from the estate of Michael F. Keyser, a director of the Eutaw Savings Bank who died in 1855. The bank demolished the grand old mansion that occupied the corner to make way for a "more modern and beautiful edifice" designed by Baltimore architect Joseph F. Kemp in an Italian Renaissance Revival style and built at a cost of around $22,000.
The Building Committee of the Board of Directors for the bank praised their own work with the statement that, "for neatness, convenience, and durability, it is at its cost unequaled by any other banking house in our city." Within a few years, the reportedly "popular and thriving" bank had outgrown their building and decided to purchase a lot directly across Eutaw Street. Their new brownstone bank, later adapted for use as part of the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center in 2004, opened in 1889.
The Baltimore Equitable Society (still operating in Baltimore City under the name Baltimore Equitable Insurance) purchased the building in 1889 and maintained offices in the building for over 114 years, until 2003. Founded in 1794 as the first fire insurance company in Baltimore, the "Baltimore Equitable Society for Insuring of Houses from Loss By Fire" was modeled after The Philadelphia Contributorship, a fire insurance company founded by Benjamin Franklin, among others. The Baltimore Equitable Society remains the oldest corporation in Maryland, and the nation's fourth oldest fire insurance company.
The Baltimore Equitable Society endured many challenges over the decades, from the War of 1812, the Civil War, economic depressions and other calamities. The Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 resulted in a loss of $1.5 million but the firm still paid all of its policyholders' claims in full, with an officer of the bank later explaining, "we were hit hard, but are still strong." When the Great Depression caused other banks and insurance companies to close down, the Baltimore Equitable Society actually thrived, increasing assets by 23% and even opened a Fire Museum in the second floor of its building. After the 1968 riots that led to the loss of buildings due to fire, some insurance companies refused to cover homes and businesses in the City of Baltimore. However, the Society continued insuring properties within the City regardless of the perceived increased risk.
Although the Baltimore Equitable Society left the building in 2003, it remains a handsome reminder of Baltimore's early financial history on the West Side. Looking at the first floor windows, you can still read the words "Baltimore" and "Insurance" painted in gold on its lower panes, the remnants of a "Baltimore Equitable Insurance" sign and inside the decorative wood work and grand tall windows remain in excellent shape.
On March 23, 1868, the S.S. Baltimore arrived in Locust Point, ushering in a wave of future Americans with origins across Europe. Their journeys are remembered in this community through the Baltimore Immigrant Museum and the Baltimore Immigration Memorial.
Between the early 1800s and 1914, nearly two million people arrived in Baltimore via boat. From the time of the Civil War to the onset of World War I, Locust Point was the second largest point of entry for European immigrants after Ellis Island in New York. This was mostly due to location; at Locust Point people could arrive by sea and venture across America by rail, thanks to the country鈥檚 first railroad, the B&O.
Germans made up the greatest number of immigrants during that period. Thanks to the North German Lloyd Steamship Company - One Ticket Program, one ticket offered passage on a steamship in Bremen, Germany, across the Atlantic, through customs at Locust Point, and then potentially onto a B&O Railroad car to anywhere the B&O went in America. Baltimore had the fourth largest German immigrant population in the mid-1850s. The three cities with more German immigrants were all end point of the B&O: Milwaukee (the actual endpoint was nearby Chicago), St. Louis, and Cincinnati. Baltimore also became home to significant numbers of immigrants from Lithuania, Poland, and Bohemia.
Some famous Baltimoreans whose relatives immigrated through Locust Point include: Frank Zappa (his father and all grandparents were born in Italy); Cass Elliot of the Mamas and the Papas (all four of her grandparents were Russian-Jewish immigrants); radio personality Ira Glass and composer Phillip Glass (of Latvian-Jewish descent); David Hasselhoff (his great-great-grandmother immigrated from Germany to Baltimore in 1865); Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (her mother immigrated from Italy); and baseball legend Babe Ruth (his grandparents were born in Germany).
Today鈥檚 immigrants to Baltimore hail mostly from Central America and Africa.
The Baltimore Immigration Memorial asks visitors to consider the many individuals who came to the United States looking for opportunity. Designed by local artist Alex Castro, the memorial sits at the edge of Hull Street, overlooking the harbor. It consists of large concrete discs once used to support vats containing Proctor & Gamble products like Tide and Ivory Soap. Concrete balls and cones are interspersed throughout, giving the waterfront park movement.
In 2006, Castro described his vision for the memorial in an article from The Sun: "This is not a museum鈥t's a place to orient oneself to the many places in Baltimore that speak to immigration history and a place to collect oneself, in a quiet way. It's a place to begin to tell the story of where the ships docked, how people took trains to the Midwest, what the city looked like from the water ..."
鈥淯ltimately, it's a place about aspiration,鈥 he added. "We're all human. That's the one thing we share. We all have aspirations that pull us along."
More than a century before UMBC situated itself on Hilltop Circle another educational institution formed here; its mission was to advance the reformation of a poor lot of "indigent boys" from Baltimore.
The Baltimore Manual Labor School for indigent boys, also known as the Arbutus Farm School, was established in 1841. The school emerged from of a larger social movement developing in urban Victorian society at the time. Amidst the energetic fervor of the Second Great Awakening, white, middle-class Americans began actively participating in a reform movement to change the lives of the poor, inner-city population. Industrialization in the early nineteenth century brought extreme population growth to urban centers. In Baltimore, the population grew six fold between the years of 1820 and 1860. Specialized private and federal institutions formed to battle a rise in young people living in poverty. They began working to relocate children from what they saw as unpromising home environments to more positive atmospheres. The school provided a, 鈥淔ree Boarding School for indigent boys, mostly sons of poor widows who are unable to feed, clothe, and train their boys during the years that they should be acquiring an education, to enable each to attain a position of self support.鈥 The School opened its doors in 1841 with fifteen 鈥渄estitute and orphaned boy[s].鈥 By 1843, the Baltimore Manual Labor School had taken into its care a total of forty-two children. By applying the boys to a rigorous program centered primarily on physical labor, the school intended to mold the character of these young men, while at the same time supplying them with applicable work skills, effectively generating productive members of society. In 1893, directors of the Baltimore Manual Labor School wrote:
鈥渢he best occupation we can train our boys up to, is that of a farmer. It is perhaps almost the only calling which is not overcrowded, and the one most likely to produce an honorable and independent livelihood for the boys who have no capital, but health and energy.鈥The types of farm work included tending to the orchards, vegetable gardens, green houses and livestock. The boys attended educational classes including writing, reading and math. They also attended the Catonsville Methodist Church on Sundays and engaged in daily religious exercises. However, education and religion took a backseat to manual labor which required of a six hour daily shift from each child, even for young boys. The school admitted boys as young as five. In 1922, Spring Grove Hospital purchased the land following a devastating fire in 1916. The Stabler family owned the property and helped to run the school. Family patriarch Edmund Stabler held the position of superintendent from 1884 to 1904. Interestingly, the hospital used the farmland for a patient agricultural rehabilitation program. The state incorporated this and adjacent tracts of land in the early 1960鈥檚 in order to create UMBC. The Stabler home was used by Dr. Albin O. Kuhn, UMBC鈥檚 first Chancellor, during the construction of the campus and the Albin O. Kuhn Library now occupies the site where the home stood.
In the late 1970s, Mayor William Donald Schaefer proposed the creation of a museum to tell the story of Baltimore industry across two centuries of American history. Even before they the new museum found a building, Baltimore City officials organized an exhibit at the Baltimore Convention Center, and put up a display about the museum-to-be during the Baltimore City Fair. Roger B. White, a young city employee hired under the Comprehensive Employment Training Act, led the search to find an appropriate location, acquire collections, and recruit private donors. White found a Platt & Company oyster cannery building on the 1400 block of Key Highway and began the process of turning the old factory into a museum. Once one of eighty canneries operating around Baltimore鈥檚 harbor, Platt & Company on Key Highway was one of the last canneries left. The museum developed exhibits on three major periods of Baltimore鈥檚 industrial growth: 1790-1830, 1870-1900, and 1920 up through the 1970s. White acquired equipment from the American Brewery and furnishings from the local Read鈥檚 Drug Store chain. In November 1981, after years of preparation, the doors opened to the public at the renovated oyster cannery reborn as the Baltimore Museum of Industry. By December, Baltimore City had awarded the museum $25,000 to pay for the cost of school field trips and, in 1984, the city decided to purchase the site. The museum originally leased the building for around $25,000 a year but, after the property sold to Baltimore City, the rent climbed to $85,000. The museum organized a corporate membership drive in order to cover the rising rent. At the same time, the museum sought to triple the amount of space in the facility while adding a pier and waterfront improvements. In 1996, with only half of the renovation complete, Alonzo Decker Jr., former Black & Decker chief executive, donated $1 million to the fund. With this single donation, the museum surpassed its' $3.5 million goal and finished the renovation. For his gift, the Museum inscribed Decker鈥檚 name on the wall of the main gallery. Today, the museum thrives as an immersive experience of permanent and temporary exhibits that detail and demonstrate the industrial history of Baltimore. The exhibits include machinery from a cannery, garment loft, machine shop, pharmacy and print shop and the collections include around a million artifacts. With a pier and waterfront area, the museum often hosts weddings and corporate events as well.
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The聽Baltimore Black Musicians Union opened a meeting hall and boarding house at 620-622 Dolphin Street around the 1940s. Due to the discrimination of Baltimore's downtown hotels at that time, traveling black musicians would stay overnight in the rooms located in part of the building. Both locals and traveling musicians also used the building for meetings and socializing. Even in the late 1970s, the building continued to be used for music education. Former neighborhood resident Catherine Bailey recalled in a recent post on the Baltimore Old Photos Facebook Group:
鈥淚 used to have marching band practice in the basement as a little girl. We were the pride of Baltimore!鈥The building聽later operated as the meeting hall for the Elks聽fraternal organization and as Mrs.聽Joanne鈥檚聽After Hours club.
Baltimore welcomed public mass transit in 1859 as the city ballooned to 170,000 people and the need for affordable transportation swelled. As transit technology raced ahead from horse drawn carts to steam, cable and eventually electric powered cars, Baltimore's system expanded to seemingly every corner of the city. After World War II, however, streetcars in Baltimore (and across the country) went downhill fast as automobile companies bought and retired street car lines and returning soldiers and their families moved to federally subsidized homes in the suburbs and out of reach of the streetcar systems. By 1963, Baltimore had run its last streetcar. Only a few years later, members of the National Railroad Historical Society's Baltimore Chapter founded the Baltimore Streetcar Museum in 1966. They located a permanent home along Falls Road at a former Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad station and moved the collections there from Lake Roland Park in 1970. Volunteers worked hours to install track and overhead wire so that visitors can again ride along a stretch of Falls Road. With a unique track gauge (5 ft. 4 1/2 in.) and historic cars, the ride is more than a fair likeness to what a passenger would have experienced in 1885 as Baltimore launched the first electric streetcar system in the country from downtown to a bustling mill village in Baltimore County called Hampden.
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In 1985, WJZ-TV local news cameras captured the view of the Inner Harbor from above as they documented the quickly changing landscape from the back seat of a helicopter. An aerial vantage point was nearly a necessity to take in the wide range of recently completed development projects and recently announced new building sites. In 1984, developers and city officials had announced twenty projects to build new buildings or reuse existing buildings around Charles Center and the Inner Harbor.
That same year, Charles Center and the Inner Harbor won an "Honor Award" from the American Institute of Architects (AIA) recognizing the conversion of the former industrial landscape into a destination for tourists and locals as "one of the supreme achievements of large-scale urban design and development in U.S. history."
Built primarily between 1806 and 1821, the Baltimore Basilica was the first Cathedral erected in the United States. Bishop John Carroll, America's first bishop and a cousin of Charles Carroll of Declaration of Independence signing fame, led the effort to build a cathedral in Baltimore based on "American" principles of architecture (read: not European and especially not Gothic). Bishop Carroll was lucky to connect with young architect named Benjamin Henry Latrobe, who volunteered his architectural services for the new cathedral and would later achieve the moniker "Father of American Architecture." With inspiration from the newly completed skylight in the U.S. Capitol following the vision of Thomas Jefferson, Latrobe designed what many consider to be one of the finest examples of nineteenth century architecture in the world. Latrobe and Carroll were able to complete much of the architectural original plans, but the church didn't have enough money to complete the portico by the dedication in 1821. Twenty years later, Latrobe's son, lawyer and inventor John H.B. Latrobe (who lived on Mulberry Street across from the Basilica) submitted plans for the portico's foundation but it wasn't until the 1860s that architect Eben Faxon carried out the work of completing the portico entrance. This internationally significant building has played a central role in the history of Baltimore and the Catholic Church. Along the way, it has gained recognition as a Minor Basilica (1937), national historic landmark (1972), Baltimore City historic landmark (1975), and a national shrine (1993). Most recently, the Archdiocese of Baltimore, the Basilica of the Assumption Historic Trust, and John G. Waite Associates Architects oversaw a major restoration and rehabilitation project covering nearly every square inch of the building, both inside and out. The work included the reintroduction of clear lights in the nave, restoration of the skylight, and the creation of a chapel in the undercroft.
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Few places demonstrate the radical transformation of the Baltimore waterfront from the early nineteenth century through the present as vividly as the site of the Battery Babock, a short distance south of where Fort Look-Out once stood in Riverside Park. The area of the battery is marked by a small memorial鈥攁 6-pounder cannon mounted on a granite base erected during the centennial celebrations in 1914. The canon sits between the Gould Street Generating Station built in 1907 and the elevated roadway of I-95, cutting the area off from the Pataspco which served as the route of the British attack nearly 200 years ago.
In May 1813, Maj. General Samuel Smith, who commanded the defenses of Baltimore and went on to serve as a U.S. Senator and Baltimore Mayor, declared it 鈥渁bsolutely necessary to erect a small Battery鈥 along the edge of the Patapsco Ferry Branch. The United States government, however, proved unwilling to pay for the new installation. The City of Baltimore then moved to pay for Captain Samuel Babcock of the U.S. Engineers to design the battery and direct twenty or thirty men in digging the foundation.
Battery Babcock, also known as the Six Gun Battery or the Sailor鈥檚 Battery, was made of sod and laid out in an arc facing towards the water. Construction was complete by summer 1813 and a company of U.S. Sea Fencibles under Capt. William H. Addison garrisoned at the site. By the fall 1814, the battery was manned by seventy-five sailors from the U.S. Chesapeake Flotilla, a collection of barges and gunboats organized by privateer Captain Joshua Barney who had been forced to scuttle their fleet just a few weeks before. Sailing Master John Adams Webster (1786-1877), who commanded the battery at the time and subsequently left an account in 1853, opens a window onto the night when Battery Babcock, together with Forts Covington and Fort McHenry, repulsed a British barge offensive on Baltimore:
鈥溾ay and night we were on the alert, until hope was nearly extinct, when on the night of the 13th, about eleven o鈥檆lock, the bomb vessels appeared to renew their fire with redoubled energy. It was raining quite fast, and cold for the season. The rapid discharge of the bombs from the enemy鈥檚 shipping excited great vigilance among my officers and men. I had the cannon double shotted with 18-pound balls and grape shot and took a blanket and laid on the breastworks, as I was much exhausted. About midnight I could hear a splashing in the water. The attention of the others was aroused and we were convinced it was the noise of the muffled oars of the British barges. Very soon afterwards we could discern small gleaming lights in different places. I felt sure then that it was the barges, which at that time were not more than two hundred yards off鈥︹
Canons along the Patapsco opened fire and caught the British flotilla in a cross-fire, destroying two of the barges. Captain Charles Napier, RN who commanded the British flotilla soon called for a retreat.
Construction on the Battle Monument began on September 12, 1815, a year to the day after Baltimore soundly defeated the British in the War of 1812, and the monument endures as a commemoration of the attack by land at North Point and by sea at Fort McHenry. In addition to serving as the official emblem for the City of Baltimore on the city flag, the work is extraordinary in the history of American monument building for a number of reasons. Architecturally, it is considered to be the first Egyptian structure in the United States with a base, designed by French-born architect Maximilian Godefroy, to look like an Egyptian sarcophagus. The base sits on 18 layers of marble, symbolizing the 18 states that then belonged to the Union. The main column is of Roman design and depicts a fasces: a bundle of rods held together with bands in a symbol of unity. In an age when the United States had few public monuments at and when war memorials focused on generals and commanders, the Battle Monument stood out for its focus on the common soldier recognizing all 39 of the fallen soldiers, regardless of their rank, in a ribbon of names spiraling up the central shaft. Italian sculptor Antonio Capellano created Lady Baltimore 鈥 one of the oldest monumental sculptures in the country. She wears a crown of victory on her head and holds a laurel wreath in her raised hand as a symbol of victory over the British. In her lowered hand, she holds a ship's rudder as a testament to Baltimore's nautical role in the war. Both arms are now prosthetics after having been blown off in storms. Both also were created by well-known Baltimore artists. The raised hand with the wreath is the work of Hans Schuler, and the lowered hand with the rudder is by Rueben Kramer. The same year that the monument was adopted as Baltimore's emblem, it also helped give rise to the city's nickname as "The Monumental City." In 1827, President Adams visited Baltimore and stayed at a nearby hotel. The Battle Monument had been completed and work was underway for the nation's first public monument to President Washington in "Howards Woods," soon to become the Mt. Vernon neighborhood. At a dinner with dignitaries and veterans from the war, President Adams gave the final toast of the evening: "Baltimore, the Monumental City: may the days of her safety be as prosperous and happy as the days of her danger have been trying and triumphant!" Baltimore's new monuments made an impression on the President, and enough to spark a name that has lasted nearly 200 years.
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Two Art Deco columns, flanking the entrance of the 25th Street Safeway parking lot, serve as the only concrete evidence of the central decision-making site during Baltimore鈥檚 era of school desegregation. From 1931 to 1987, a complex of two skywalk-linked buildings at 3 and 33 E 25th Street served as BCPSS headquarters: a 1931 Art Deco administration building, and a repurposed brick schoolhouse dating to the 1890s.
When the headquarters moved to North Avenue in 1987, the 25th Street complex began to deteriorate, quickly becoming a blight on the Old Goucher neighborhood. Some saw potential for redevelopment, and proposals for a bookstore and small business incubator emerged. A plan to renovate the complex as senior apartments, called 鈥淟ovegrove Court,鈥 gained the most traction. This was on track until the spring of 1994, when Safeway proposed building a store on the block, putting six adjacent rowhouses, the neighboring Chesapeake Cadillac Company showroom, and the 25th Street school complex under threat of demolition. Some people鈥攊ncluding rowhouse owners, the developers of Lovegrove Court, and a local group that had long planned to open a supermarket just blocks away鈥攚ere not thrilled by what they saw as sneaky dealings between Safeway and the city.
Advocates for historical preservation including Donna Beth Joy Shapiro, vice president of 糖心影视 at the time, attempted to save the historical buildings, or at least their facades. However, Old Goucher鈥檚 legitimate need for a full-service supermarket won out, the buildings were demolished, and the two Art Deco columns were the only elements preserved from the 25th Street school complex. The Safeway was completed in 1997.
These two preserved columns from 鈥25th Street,鈥 as the school administration complex was commonly referred to, give us a chance to re-examine some defining themes of Baltimore鈥檚 fraught era of school desegregation. In 1954, Thurgood Marshall successfully argued Brown v. Board of Education in the US Supreme Court, outlawing racially segregated public schools. Shortly after, Baltimore鈥檚 school board, convening at 25th Street, instituted a 鈥渇ree choice鈥 enrollment policy, lifting all formal racial barriers to school choice but making no effort to actively integrate. As a result of this unusual policy, which had widespread support from both Black and white people, Baltimore did not initially experience the unrest that marked the school desegregation processes of other cities.
By the late 鈥60s Baltimore鈥檚 schools were still heavily segregated, and the federal government demanded that a robust integration plan be drafted and implemented. Dr. Roland N. Patterson, Baltimore鈥檚 first Black permanent superintendent, was hired in 1971 to take on this monumental task using tactics like districting and busing. Baltimore, accustomed to free choice and racially polarized after the 鈥68 riots, was fully unprepared for such a challenge.
Patterson tried to preserve as much free choice as possible, but the integration measures he did institute were met with furious opposition. In May of 1974, students from the historically white Patterson High picketed 25th St, demanding that no changes be made to their school. When a plan was implemented for the 1975-76 school year, redistributing students all across the city in accordance with federal standards, students quickly transferred away from their assigned schools in droves and fed-up parents dropped their kids off at whichever school they preferred. Patterson, his support swiftly declining, was ousted in 1975 by a coalition of school board members led by Mayor William Donald Schaefer.
In 1987, the same year the headquarters moved from 25th Street to North Avenue, the federal government informed BCPSS that no evidence of the de jure segregation system could be found in schools鈥攖he system鈥檚 existing segregation was a result of demographics rather than policy.
For years, the Bell Foundry operated as a cooperatively run arts space that took its name and its building from the historic McShane Bell Foundry. But, since December 2016, the building has stood vacant. After the "Ghost Ship" warehouse fire in Oakland, California, the city cracked down on code violations in local DIY art spaces and evicted the tenants at the Bell Foundry.
Henry McShane started the McShane Bell Foundry at Holliday and Centre Streets in 1856. By the late nineteenth century, when the business expanded to Guilford Avenue (then known as North Street) the firm had already produced tens of thousands of bells and chimes, shipping them out to churches and public buildings across the country.
In 1935, the Henry McShane Manufacturing Company sold the foundry to William Parker, whose son continues to operate the business today. The McShane Bell Foundry moved in 1979 to Glen Burnie, Maryland, where their total production is over 300,000 bells made for cathedrals, churches, municipal buildings, and schools in communities around the world鈥攊ncluding the 7,000-pound bell that hangs in the dome of Baltimore's City Hall. The firm is the only large Western-style bell maker in the United States and one of a handful of bell manufacturers around the world.
The entrance to the former foundry is now on Calvert Street. For years, the Bell Foundry was a thriving art space including the building and the adjacent grounds, where there is a community garden and a communal skate park. The basement was used for shows and rehearsal space. The Castle Print Shop was located upstairs along with rehearsal space for the Baltimore Rock Opera Society. Outcry over the evictions in December 2016 prompted the creation of the Safe Art Space Task Force to address the broader issue of safety in underground art spaces. Unfortunately, no immediate repairs were available for the Bell Foundry and, in April 2017, the building's owners put it up for sale.
Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church is Maryland鈥檚 mother church of the AME Church. It is one of the foundational churches in the AME Connection. After meeting on Saratoga Street for almost 100 years, Bethel AME moved to 1300 Druid Hill Avenue in 1911.
In April 1815, preachers Daniel Coker, Henry Harden, and Richard Williams led about two hundred members of the Lovely Lane and Strawberry Alley Meeting Houses and the African Church on Sharp Street to separate from the Methodist Episcopal Church. Calling themselves 鈥淭he African Methodist Bethel Society,鈥 the group arranged to occupy the former German Lutheran Church on Fish Street (now Saratoga), and created a rent-to-own agreement with its owner. The brick church was built in 1762 and enlarged in 1785. It had three stories in front and two in the rear, with a pulpit, pews and galleries inside. Bethel Church was founded there on April 23 or June 3, 1815. The African Bethel School operated in the church basement to educate Black children. The school hosted exhibitions to celebrate Bethel鈥檚 milestones, such as its founding anniversary, and demonstrate its students鈥 talents.
Coker and the church trustees registered incorporation papers for the 鈥淎frican Methodist Bethel Church or Society in the City of Baltimore鈥 at the Baltimore court house on April 8, 1816. The next day, six delegates traveled from Baltimore to Philadelphia. The assembled delegations established the African Methodist Episcopal Church and ordained Richard Allen to be its first bishop.
Bethel became the owner of its church building on March 7, 1838. The building, however, required work. The church and its land flooded when Jones Falls did 鈥 hence 鈥淔ish Street鈥 鈥 which caused damage and inconvenience. A flood in June 1838 destroyed Bethel鈥檚 school library, which held a thousand books. In addition, the congregation outgrew the building by the early 1840s. Construction on a new church began in August 1847. The Romanesque style church was consecrated on July 9, 1848.
In 1909, the Baltimore City Council condemned the church in order to widen Saratoga Street. The Bethel congregation had to find a new home and purchased the church formerly used by St. Peter鈥檚 Protestant Episcopal Church at Druid Hill Avenue and Lanvale Street. Built in 1868, the church was in the middle of thriving West Baltimore. The move placed Bethel closer to its congregants 鈥 half of the city鈥檚 Black population lived in the neighborhood by 1904 鈥 and among two other relocated Black churches, Sharp Street Memorial and Union Baptist. The opening services took place on January 8, 1911.
Over its history, Bethel has led action to address causes affecting Black Baltimoreans through mutual support, education, benevolent societies, and organizing. Bethel鈥檚 members assisted people escaping slavery, an effort that took place within a larger network of African Methodists. During the Civil War, Bethel hosted special lectures for the US Colored Troops and held fundraisers to support soldiers and their families. At the start of World War I, the congregation expanded to 1,500 members as a result of Black migration from rural areas into the city. Members were active in the Civil Rights Movement and other political causes, including the denouncement of the Vietnam War. In the 1970s, church members established a women鈥檚 counseling center and supported Black liberation in South Africa. Contemporary lay ministries using Bethel Church as a base have addressed the needs of women, the homeless, senior citizens, pregnant teenagers, and drug and alcohol addicts.
Today, Bethel A.M.E remains a bastion in Baltimore鈥檚 African American community dedicated to community enrichment and spiritual guidance.
The Billie Holiday Monument on Pennsylvania Avenue commemorates the life and legacy of the famed "Lady Day" who was born as Eleanora Fagan in Baltimore on April 7, 1915. Billie Holiday's childhood was difficult. Both of her parents were teenagers when she was born. In 1925, a ten-year-old Holiday was raped by an older neighbor and was sent to The House of the Good Shepherd, a Catholic penal institution (sometimes known as a "reform school") for Black girls. Holiday was held there for two years. After her release in 1927, she moved to New York City with her mother. As a teenager, Billie began singing for tips in bars and brothels but soon found opportunities to sing with accomplished jazz musicians including Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, and Count Basie. She returned to Baltimore as a touring musician playing at clubs and restaurants along Pennsylvania Avenue. Unfortunately, after struggles with addiction and a sustained campaign of harassment by law enforcement, Holiday died on July 17, 1959 at age 44 and was buried in an unmarked grave at St. Raymond's Cemetery in New York City. Planning for a statue in Baltimore began around 1971 as part of the urban renewal redevelopment of Pennsylvania Avenue and the surrounding Upton neighborhood. The original plans included both a statue and a drug treatment center in Holiday's honor but while plans for the center were dropped the Upton Planning Council continued to push for the sculpture. In 1977, Baltimore commissioned thirty-seven-year-old Black sculptor James Earl Reid to design the monument. A North Carolina native, Reid recieved a master鈥檚 degree in sculpture from the University of Maryland College Park in 1970 and stayed at the school as a professor. Unfortunately, by 1983, rising costs of materials due to inflation led to a legal dispute between Reid and the city over payment and delays. The $113,000 eight-foot six-inch high bronze sculpture was unveiled on top of a cement pedestal in 1985 but Reid skipped the ceremony. Reid's original vision was finally realized in July 2009 when the city found $76,000 to replace the simple pedastal with 20,000-pound solid granite base with incised text and sculptural panels. Inspired by one of Holliday's most famous performances, the haunting anti-lynching song "Strange Fruit," one of the two panels depicts a lynching. The other, inspired by the song "God Bless the Child," includes the image of a black child with an umbilical cord still attached in a visual reference to the rope used in the hanging. At the re-dedication in 2009, Reid celebrated the completion of the work and the life of Billie Holliday explaining, "She gave such a rich credibility to the experiences of black people and the black artist."
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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.