Tiny Bedford Square in Guilford, at the intersection of St. Paul and North Charles streets, hosts a life size bronze bust of Sim贸n Bolivar. Also referred to as the 鈥淕eorge Washington of South America,鈥 the Venezuelan-born Bolivar was the military and political leader of the revolutions against Spanish colonial rule across the continent in the early 19th century. The bust sits on a limestone pedestal, with the words 鈥淪im贸n Bolivar, 1783-1830, Liberator of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia鈥 carved on the front. On the back it reads, 鈥淧resented to the Citizens of Baltimore by the Government of Venezuela, April 19, 1961.鈥
Guilford is a neighborhood known for its large houses and tree lined, curving streets, not for its political monuments. Built by the Roland Park Company, the houses are stone and brick in Neoclassical and Colonial Revival styles. The noted American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. designed its streets and parks. It opened in 1913, and, like the nearby neighborhoods of Roland Park and Homeland, included a racial covenant preventing African Americans from owning homes within its borders, which was overturned in 1948.
The Bolivar bust was created by the Austrian-American sculptor Felix de Weldon. He is best known for his work on the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Virginia, which shows soldiers raising the American flag at Iwo Jima in 1945. Throughout the 20th century Venezuela gave statues and busts of Bolivar to a number of American cities, including New York, Washington D.C., New Orleans, Bolivar (West Virginia), and Bolivar (Missouri).
In April 1959 President Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke at the reception of a bronze equestrian statue of Bolivar in Washington D.C., making reference to the recent democratic election of President R贸mulo Betancourt after over a decade of military dictatorship. He declared, 鈥淭he Venezuelan people have steadfastly maintained their faith in the ultimate realization of Bolivar鈥檚 democratic ideals. It is therefore fitting that this ceremony should follow closely upon the inauguration of President Betancourt, chosen by his countrymen in an election so conducted as to typify the true meaning of democracy.鈥
The symbolic value of these gifts held extra resonance during the Cold War. The United States was concerned with suppressing communist movements in Latin America, especially after the 1959 Cuban revolution established the first communist state in the region. Oil companies were anxious for influence and continued access to oil rich Latin American nations like Venezuela. By 1961 relations between the United States and Latin America were at a low point and discontent, inequality, and violence was growing. In response, the newly inaugurated President John F. Kennedy proposed the 鈥淎lliance for Progress,鈥 a ten-year, multibillion-dollar aid program for the region.
A few months after the proposal, and just two days after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, a small ceremony took place in Bedford Square to unveil this bust. Baltimore Mayor J. Harold Grady accepted the gift from the Venezuelan ambassador on a windy and rainy April 19th, Venezuelan Independence Day. Dr. Frank Marino, president of the Park Board (the predecessor to The Department of Parks and Recreation) seemed to reference the tensions with Cuba at the time, saying 鈥淚t is very appropriate that the Ambassador鈥檚 remarks should come at this time in our history.鈥 Chosen because it had space for the statue, for a few minutes in 1961 little Bedford Park in Baltimore reflected the drama of the greatest geopolitical forces of the time.
鈥淏oss鈥 John S. (Frank) Kelly, the leader of the West Baltimore Democratic Club, controlled all things political in West Baltimore in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He moved into the house in the 1860s and lived here for the rest of his life. Kelly ran the political machine of West Baltimore that elected several mayors, senators, judges, and state representatives. He was also the inspiration of Dashiell Hammett鈥檚 character Shad O鈥橰ory in the novel (and later movie) The Glass Key.
The Boss Kelly House at 1106 West Saratoga Street is part of a row of houses that were built between 1830 and 1845. Architecturally, the building is a prime example of the cumulative development of row house design in Baltimore, and is featured in the 1981 book, Those Old Placid Rows, by Natalie Shivers. The house and the others in the row are unusual, possibly unique in Baltimore, for their single second-story tripartite windows and gabled roofs. This row has been attributed to the work of architect Robert Cary Long, Jr., whose father designed a similar row in the unit block of Mulberry Street in Mt. Vernon.
*In 2021, Baltimore City razed this row of homes, including the Boss Kelly house.
The Brewers Exchange, a gorgeous, three story terra cotta Renaissance Revival building designed by noted local architect Joseph Evans Sperry (who designed the Bromo Seltzer Tower, as well as many other Baltimore buildings) that stands at the corner of Park Avenue and Fayette Streets, was built in 1895 by the ale and beer brewers guild of Baltimore and constructed to serve as a forum for negotiating securities and commodities associated with the local brewing industry.
This handsome building, which features a host of elaborate decorative touches, including two-story half-round Ionic pilasters, cartouches, pediments, window surrounds, and a garland frieze. stands as a monument to the efforts of local Maryland brewers, many of whom were German immigrants who brought brewing techniques and technology with them across the Atlantic and whose hard work established Baltimore as the national center for their trade. Though the exchange only occupied this building for a decade, the still visible "BH" etched in the building's fa莽ade serves as a solid reminder of the prominent role brewing had in the economy and culture of Baltimore in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Broadway Market, the first city market in Baltimore, was located near the Fells Point docks in order to take advantage of all the goods arriving regularly from the Eastern Shore and elsewhere. Like all public markets, it served as a major gathering place for shoppers, which meant a number of hotels, taverns, and other businesses filled the surrounding area.
As time passed, the events of history shaped life at the market. During the War of 1812, the British focused on the city due to the privateers out of Baltimore that had been harassing their ships. They also would blockade the transport of food and goods moving through the harbor. This caused periodic food shortages, compounded by the fact that farmers stopped coming to market out of fear of losing their horses to defense efforts.
After the war, as more and more locally enslaved people were being 鈥渟old south鈥 and slave markets grew, the market began to see auctions of people. An auctioneer would be attracted to markets because it was easy to draw a crowd of people that would add to the excitement of a sale. At least one auctioneer, Nicholas Strike, held court-ordered auctions here to sell enslaved people. This type of auction could be held anywhere, like courthouse steps, jails, or auction houses, but a market area always guaranteed a crowd.
While few remember the slogan of the Emerson Bromo-Seltzer Company鈥"If you keep late hours for Society's sake Bromo-Seltzer will cure that headache"鈥攖he iconic Bromo-Seltzer Tower has been a Baltimore landmark since its construction in 1911.
While few remember the slogan of the Emerson Bromo-Seltzer Company鈥"If you keep late hours for Society's sake Bromo-Seltzer will cure that headache"鈥攖he iconic Bromo-Seltzer Tower has been a Baltimore landmark since its construction in 1911. At fifteen stories, the tower made the Bromo-Seltzer factory the tallest building in the city. The tower boasted a four-dial gravity clock that was the largest in the world (bigger, even, than London's Big Ben) and an illuminated, rotating 51-foot blue steel bottle. The iconic design immediately secured the tower's spot as a favorite of city residents and visitors alike. Ship captains traveling up the bay reportedly used the bottle as a beacon to guide them toward the Light Street docks and the removal of the blue bottle in 1936 is still a sore point with many Baltimoreans. The tower was built by Captain Isaac Emerson, a chemist, and inventor of the headache remedy and alleged hangover cure, Bromo-Seltzer. Emerson was a wealthy and well-regarded Baltimorean, known as a generous philanthropist and world traveler. He had been a lieutenant in the Navy during the Spanish-American war and a post-war visit to Florence's tower on the Palazzo Vecchio provided the inspiration for the design of this tower created by local architect Joseph Evans Sperry. Though the factory was torn down in 1969, the 289-foot tower survived several threats of demolition and in 2007 philanthropists Eddie and Sylvia Brown worked with Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts to transform the structure into 33 artists' studios. The tower is open once a month for public tours and while much has changed visitors can still ride the 1911 Otis elevator to the clock room on the 15th floor and view the still-functioning clock works.
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Dedicated on December 4, 1870, Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church stands as a monument both to George Brown, whose wife Isabella McLanahan Brown supported the construction of the church in his memory, and the generations of Baltimoreans who have worshipped, performed music, and more in this treasured architectural landmark. While many early congregations left Bolton Hill, Brown Memorial has endured and invested in the preservation of the historic church with a $1.8 million restoration from 2001 to 2003.
George Brown was the son of investment firm founder Alexander Brown, a businessman and civic leader who according to an 1873 account by local historian George Washington Howard, "regarded religion as preeminent above all other things and loved his church with all the ardor of his noble nature." After his death in 1859, his wife Isabella McLanahan Brown made a gift of $150,000 to construct and furnish the Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church.
The architects were Nathaniel Henry Hutton and John Murdoch, who were among the 18 charter members of the Baltimore Chapter of the AIA. They created a Gothic Revival masterpiece with numerous stained glass windows by artist Louis Comfort Tiffany. Murdoch was both a neighbor to the church, living at 1527 Bolton Street, and his funeral was held at the church after his death in 1923.
A family-owned business has been around since 1868, Budeke鈥檚 paint products have been delivered via police car, motorcycle, bicycle, and roller skates, not to mention more conventional commercial trucks. The long-time Broadway location in Fells Point was gutted by fire in September 2018.
Budeke's Paint operated in the same storefront on Broadway from 1870 up until 2018. Unfortunately, in the early morning hours of September 7, 2018 a fire broke out on the first floor and grew into a four-alarm blaze that destroyed the stock, a collection of documents and ephemera, and the building鈥檚 interior. Fortunately, the fire caused no injuries and the business has continued operations at its Timonium location. During Budeke鈥檚 long history, its paint has been used by institutions as diverse as Johns Hopkins Hospital, Bethlehem Steel, McCormick & Co, and the U.S. Coast Guard. Local governments, including Baltimore City and County, have used Budeke鈥檚 products in municipal buildings including City Hall. George H. Budeke was born in 1846 in Hamilton, North Carolina, to a family of German immigrants. He moved to Baltimore in 1859, a year after his father鈥檚 death, and became an errand-boy at a dry goods store before moving on to manage two paint stores. Budeke founded his company in 1868 just three years after the end of the Civil War. The business has stayed in the family through five generations. Upon the death of George H., the business passed to his son, George M. Budeke, in 1909. It then passed to a son-in-law, George Gardner, who took over in 1956. Gardner passed the business on to his own son-in-law, Louis V. Koerber, in 1969. Finally, the current owner, L. Bryan Koerber, took over the business from his own father in 1996. While most customers buy pre-mixed paint today, Budeke's originally sold the essential ingredients separately鈥攖urpentine, white or red lead, and a variety of earthen pigments鈥攖hat contractors used to mix their own paints. Different ratios of the components determined whether painters used the mixture as primer or a top coat. Budeke obtained its stock regionally, including from a number of small pigment grinders who turned raw minerals into various colors out of their shops on Russell Street (near where the Horseshoe Casino now stands). In those days, lead was commonly used as the hiding agent in paint to ensure the pigment covered over the surface that was being painted, but fell out of use due to its toxicity. Lead paint was eventually banned in the United States in the 1970s and replaced with product that uses titanium dioxide instead. The fire at the original location of Budeke鈥檚 destroyed more than a few of old buildings. It also wiped out much of the history of the business. A room on the second floor of its Fells Point shop was a little museum containing artifacts relating to its decades of operation. One noteworthy item on display was a bill from September 10, 1888, for an order by Baltimore鈥檚 health department, which consisted of a long list of items totaling $11.92. The corresponding cancelled check for this order, dated September 17, 1888, was found during renovations of City Hall in the 1970s. The contractor who was charged with disposing of old files reviewed some of what he had and realized the businesses still existed and might want the old paperwork. After presenting the old check to the shop on Broadway, Budeke's staff gave the contractor a gallon of paint for his trouble.
Built between 1856 and 1857 at a cost of $600,000, Camden Station is a grand reminder of the long history of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in Baltimore. Designed by Niernsee and Neilson with contributions by architect Joseph F. Kemp, the station served as a passenger and freight station through the 1980s.
One of Camden Station's most notable passengers was President Abraham Lincoln who travelled through the station in February 1861, on his way to his inauguration in Washington, D.C., again in 1863 on his way to Gettysburg, in 1864 to make a speech in Baltimore, and finally in 1865 when his funeral train from Washington, DC to Springfield, Illinois made its first stop in Baltimore.
The B&O Railroad left Camden Station in 1971 and sold the building to the Maryland Stadium Authority. Fortunately, the Maryland Stadium Authority integrated the building into the design for Camden Yards stadium and commissioned local architecture firm of Cho, Wilks, and Benn to restore the facade to its 1867 appearance. The Sports Legends Museum at Camden Yards occupied the building from 2005 up until October 2015 when the museum closed after failing to reach a lease agreement with the Maryland Stadium Authority.
Canterbury Hall Apartments, also known as Canterbury Hall, sits at 100 W. 39th Street, and is part of the Tuscany-Canterbury Historic District. It was the first apartment building in Tuscany-Canterbury. Its architecture is in the late Tudor Gothic style. George Morris, a well-known real estate developer who sold racially-restricted houses in the 1910s and 1920s, and later was criticized for his anti-Jewish business policies, built the apartment house. Canterbury Hall is not to be confused with a building of the same name in Washington, D.C. Canterbury Hall was first conceived of as 鈥淗addon Hall.鈥 The landwas sold by the University Parkway Company to a developer, the Fireproof Apartment Company, prior to its construction. The outside consists of brick with accents of stucco, and a half-timbered English style with oak beams. With fifteen apartments spread across three stories, each apartment has gas fireplaces, hardwood floors, glass doorknobs, and other amenities like porches. Each apartment is separated by fireproof walls that are eighteen-inches thick. At the time that the apartment house was built, Canterbury Hall only rented to white people. Canterbury Hall was designed by renowned architects, Clyde Nelson Friz and Edward Hughes Glidden, as part of their Glidden & Friz partnership. The apartment building opened in 1912, the same year that Tudor Arms Apartments (under the name of Tudor Hall) opened on University Parkway. Unlike Tudor Arms, Canterbury Hall has no elevator. Over the years, the apartment house became the home of professional chemists, history and English teachers, Goucher College alumni, U.S. military captains (like Henry C. Evans), medical researchers (Paul Galpin Shipley), naval commanders (Frederick J. Bell), engineers, inventors, school commissioners, tutors, and bank executives. Even members of the Glidden family, such as Glidden himself, lived there. It was also a place for cocktail parties, informal luncheons, and weddings. Although there have been renovations and changes over the years, Canterbury Hall remains intact to this day, serving as a residence for some, and a beautiful, grand, and historic landmark for others.
The Canton Branch is one of four branch libraries, all designed by local architect Charles L. Carson, built by the Enoch Pratt Free Library in 1886. It stands alone, however, as the first to open and the only one of the original branch locations still in use as a library.
The branch library wasn't the first reading room to open in Canton. In 1879, Rev. J. Wynne Jones, a recent graduate from the Princeton seminary and pastor at Abbott Presbyterian Church, established the Workingmen's Institute at the corner of Ellwood Avenue and Elliott Street. The Institute maintained an impressive library: fifteen hundred books and over one hundred subscriptions to magazines and newspapers. As a trustee of the Workingmen's Institute, Enoch Pratt, according to later biographers, "realized the wonderful good that the small library was doing in this community and was convinced that such a service might be established for the benefit of every community. Enlarging upon this idea, Pratt planned with the city for a library system."
On February 15, 1886, two hundred and fifty people, including Enoch Pratt himself, crowded into the library reading room to hear Rev. Jones share the history of the Workingmen's Institute and the importance of the library to Canton Resident. Jones enjoyed the honor of being the first to borrow a book鈥攁 collection of poems by Sidney Lanier鈥攆rom the nearly nine thousand books found on the library shelves. In 1923, a large addition replaced the small backyard and flower garden behind the building. Near busy factories and blocks of handsome rowhouses, the Canton Branch had, in 1924, the highest circulation of any of the city's libraries.
Unfortunately, by the 1970s, the building's red brick exterior was painted white with gray trim and was surrounded by a bleak chain-link fence. As the library's centennial approached, Tom Canoles and members of the Canton Improvement Association organized to preserve the building. They received grants from the Maryland Historical Trust and Baltimore City, along with donations from waterfront developers, to restore the original brick, install a handsome wrought iron fence, and improve access with a new ramp and lift.
The Friends of the Canton Library, formed in February 1993, has continued to support and enhance the facilities and services of the library over the past fifteen years. The Friends helped organize a 125th birthday celebration for the branch in 2011 and raised $275,000 for a four-year, $2.9 million restoration completed just in time for the building's 130th anniversary in 2016. The group continues to organize regular programming on the people and history of Canton.
with research support from Baltimore City Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation
Founded in 1847, the Canton Methodist Episcopal Church was the first church established in Canton. The Canton Company donated land for the congregation鈥檚 first and second church buildings, because the company strongly encouraged the establishment of religious institutions in their company town.
This church was important in the lives of the company鈥檚 employees, and the civic and social health of the community. The Gothic Revival style building is the congregation鈥檚 second church building, designed by renowned Baltimore architect Charles L. Carson and built by prominent Baltimore builder Benjamin F. Bennett in 1883/1884. The church was named the Canton Methodist Episcopal Church, and by the late twentieth century, it was known as the Canton United Methodist Church.
This 2 陆 story Gothic Revival building recently suffered from a fire but still retains arched stained glass windows, a slate roof, decorative brickwork, dormer windows, and buttresses.
The sepia-toned Canton railroad transfer bridge rises out of the harbor near the Canton Waterfront Park like an industrial Arc de Triomphe. It is one of three such structures鈥攔emnants of an early chapter in Baltimore鈥檚 industrial maritime and railroad histories鈥攖hat remain in the city (the other two transfer bridges are in Locust Point and can only be seen from the water.).
Built sometime in the 1910s for the Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington Railroad (which, in 1902, had merged with the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad), the Canton railroad transfer bridge stands 38 feet high, 53 feet wide, and 14 feet deep. This steel bridge allowed for the transport of railroad cars across the harbor on 鈥渃arfloats鈥 between Canton, Locust Point, and the Inner Harbor.
After the formation of the Canton Company of Baltimore in 1828, the company purchased 3,000 acres of the O鈥橠onnell estate to build houses, iron works, and railroads. Along the waterfront, the company leased out property for breweries, canneries, shipbuilders, and other industrial concerns. The area that is now the Canton Waterfront Park was leased to the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad as a railyard, a place for trains to unload their goods and take on new cargo. Because Baltimore prohibited locomotives from passing through downtown, trains would stop on the outskirts of the city, where the train cars would be uncoupled and hitched up to horses who would pull the cars through town one at a time. This process was slow and expensive. A quicker solution for transferring train cargo was transporting railcars across the harbor via the railroad transfer bridge.
Harbor tides prevented barges from pulling up directly to the pier because the water levels could change dramatically. The railroad transfer bridge worked akin to a gangplank on a ferry and served as the intermediary between shore and barge. Railroad cars were rolled onto the transfer bridge and then onto a barge fitted with railroad tracks, decoupled, and floated across the harbor to Locust Point where the cargo was unloaded. Oftentimes, the process was reversed, so the rail cars could rejoin their engines.
Although no longer in use, the Canton railroad transfer bridge stands as a testament to innovation in engineering and Baltimore鈥檚 industrial heritage.
The story of the Emerson Mansion began in 1895 when Captain Isaac Emerson commissioned the building as a home for his family. Captain Emerson lived at this location up to 1911 when he and his wife divorced. Emerson remarried just two months later and started work on the Emersonian, a large apartment building built with the intent to block his ex-wife鈥檚 view of Druid Lake. The Baltimore Sun later reported on the legend in August 11, 1985 noting that Emerson, "moved into one of the uppermost apartments so he would always be looking down on her." The structure has served a wide range of uses in the century since Captain Emerson moved out. Maryland's Juvenile Services Division had offices in the building, as did The Mercantile Club, a private social club for businessmen. Since 1994, the property has been owned by James Crockett.
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In 1934, Carl Sandburg wrote to Sally Bruce Kinsolving, "The years go by and I don't forget ever the long evening of song with you... at your house and faces and stories and moments out of that visit to Baltimore. I'm hoping to drop in again soon."
On the night of Sandburg's February 1924 visit, like many other nights, the Kinsolving home, Old St. Paul's Rectory, became a sanctuary for poets and poetry lovers alike. As co-founder of the Maryland Poetry Society, Mrs. Kinsolving frequently welcomed a variety of acclaimed poets into her home, allowing members of the society to meet their literary idols. Carl Sandburg, a three-time Pulitzer-prize winner, poet, biographer, historian, journalist, novelist and musicologist, was just one of Mrs. Kinsolving's illustrious guests. Although he visited Baltimore only once or twice, Sandburg and Mrs. Kinsolving maintained a lifelong relationship through correspondence, encouraging each other in their work and exchanging poems and folk songs.
Old St. Paul's Church built the Georgian-style rectory, where Sandburg and the Kinsolvings spent the evening, as a home for the rector in 1791. Once standing at the northern edge of the city with a spectacular view of the harbor, the Old St. Paul's Church and Rectory is a testament to the growth of Baltimore鈥攏ow located within the heart of central Baltimore, surrounded by contemporary development and its view of the harbor obscured long ago.
Described by H.L. Mencken as "indubitably American in every pulse-beat," Sandburg was born in Illinois in 1878. He quit school at age thirteen, and then worked a variety of odd jobs ranging from a farmhand to a traveling salesman to a milkman to a barber. He traversed the United States as a hobo and served as a soldier in the Spanish-American War in 1898. Through these experiences, Sandburg truly saw the United States, later capturing it both in his own writing and by anthologizing the folk songs he encountered. Sandburg's love of America did not blind him to its problems and he fought passionately against a variety of social injustices.
Sandburg was never a Baltimorean, but was inextricably tied to Chicago, working at the Chicago Daily News and praising the developing industrial city in his work鈥攏otably in Chicago Poems. However, his friends in Baltimore were never far from his mind, and their letters never far from his mail box, proving what he'd once written to Mrs. Kinsolving, that "the prairies and Chesapeake Bay are neighbors now."
Step inside this grand residence and find 18-foot ceilings, a spiral staircase, and ornate chandeliers. Few Americans could have afforded the Carroll Mansion in the early 1800s when Charles Carroll, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, bought this Lombard Street house for his daughter and son-in-law. Carroll, however, was in no way an ordinary citizen. In addition to being the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence and the first Catholic senator, Carroll was fabulously wealthy. He was instrumental in founding the B&O Railroad, the First and Second National Banks, and gave lavishly to build the Baltimore Basilica and Georgetown University. Before his death in 1832 in the Mansion, Carroll entertained frequently for people who came to learn about the Revolution first-hand. John H.B. Latrobe, son of the famous early American architect Benjamin Latrobe, called it "the finest house in Baltimore at the time." The building has a history as varied as its most prominent occupant. It has been a saloon, a house for Jewish immigrants, a sweatshop, a school, and a recreation center. The City first boarded it up in 1954, then restored it and operated as a history museum until 1997, when it was again boarded up. In 2002, the non-profit organization Carroll Museums, Inc. reopened the Mansion and has been restoring it since. It is currently open for tours and to rent for events.
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Carroll Park is Baltimore's third oldest city park and was originally part of the enormous Mount Clare plantation owned by Charles Carroll, Barrister in the mid-eighteenth century. The park was the site of Camp Carroll during the Civil War and, in the 30 years prior to becoming a park, the area surrounding Mt. Clare was leased from the Carrolls and became Southwestern Schuetzen Park鈥攁 private recreation area used by Baltimore's German immigrant community.
In 1890, the City purchased 20 acres of the former estate to create Carroll Park and in 1906 engaged the Olmsted Brothers to develop a master plan. The famous firm鈥檚 recommendations respected the historic character of the west side, including the Mt. Clare mansion, while providing for sports facilities on the east, in keeping with the trend toward more active recreation for urban dwellers.
The Carroll Park Golf Course, on a separate parcel farther west, became the focus of Civil Rights protests over segregation and was integrated in 1951; it features a 9-hole executive course. The Gwynns Falls Trail passes through the edge of the golf course and the park.
On July 4, 1828, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the last living signer of the Declaration of Independence and a director of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, laid the cornerstone for the Carrollton Viaduct and remarked, "I consider this among the most important acts of my life, second only to my signing the Declaration of Independence."
Completed in 1829, the railroad named the 300-foot stone structure for Charles Carroll of Carrollton. This bridge over the Gwynns Falls was the first major stream crossing as the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad headed west from its Pratt Street terminus. Worried about competition from canals, Baltimore's business leaders cast their lot with a new untested technology, railroads. Horses initially pulled the loads, but the B&O successfully introduced steam-powered locomotives and became known as "the Railroad University of the United States"
By 1880, the railroad helped make Baltimore a major livestock and coal terminal and the second largest port for grain in the nation. Carrollton Viaduct has endured and is now the world's oldest active railroad bridge.
The first headmaster of the Calvert School, Virgil Hillyer, built Castalia between 1928 and 1929, naming it after the spring at the foot of Mount Parnassas in Italy that is said to have been the inspiration for the muses. The prominent Baltimore architect Francis Hall Fowler was the architect of this Italian villa-inspired house. In 2006, the Calvert School acquired the building and proposed to demolish it for an outdoor amphitheater.
The Tuscany Canterbury Neighborhood Association led the effort to save the building, with 糖心影视 filing a successful nomination for the building to be added to the city鈥檚 historic landmark list in 2008. The building is now on the landmark list and the Calvert School has begun plans to preserve it for a school-related use.
A fire erupted on the morning of February 7, 1904, in the dry goods firm of John E. Hurst & Co., on what is now Redwood Street. The blaze spread wildly out of control, consuming central Baltimore. In a panic and with few options, city engineers recommended demolishing buildings in the path of the fire to create an artificial firebreak. One building on the fire's path was Thomas O'Neill's department store at Lexington and Charles Streets. The Baltimore Sun reported how O'Neill, a devout Catholic, went to a Carmelite Convent on Biddle Street to pray for the safety of his building. He then rushed back to his store to stop the firefighters from setting the charges. Fortunately, the wind shifted so the fire and firefighters spared O'Neill's store from destruction. Thomas O'Neill was convinced that God had answered his prayers. When he died in 1919, he left two-thirds of his estate to the construction of a new cathedral in Baltimore. The Archdiocese of Baltimore selected the prominent architecture firm Maginnis, Walsh, and Kennedy to design the cathedral on a twenty-five acre lot in Homewood. The firm specialized in architecture for the Catholic Church. Their work in Baltimore included the main administration building for Saint Mary's Seminary and University, which is in the Beaux-Arts style. In 1948, Charles Donagh Maginnis, an Irish immigrant, received the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal for outstanding service to the profession, the institute's highest award. The architects were asked to come up with three designs: traditional, modified and modern. The Archdiocese chose the modified design which combined the traditional Gothic style with modern Art Deco elements. Workers broke ground in 1954, and completed the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen in 1959. The massive cathedral is 163 feet tall and can seat up to 1,900 people. The cathedral is outfitted with two organs created by the M.P. Moeller Company of Hagerstown, Maryland. Today, the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen serves as the cathedral church of the Primary See, the first archdiocese of the United States and, together with the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, serves as one of two main centers of Catholic liturgical life in Baltimore. It is the third largest cathedral in the U.S. and has hosted several dignitaries over the years, including Pope John Paul II.
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The stylish Catholic Center building at the southwest corner of Mulberry and Cathedral Streets has been an important administrative office for the Baltimore Archdiocese for fifty years. The eight-story structure was designed by architect John F. Eyring with details, including granite and limestone clad walls and bronzed window trim, selected to complement the Central branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library on the opposite side of Mulberry Street.
The site, formerly occupied by the old Calvert Hall College High School, attracted numerous onlookers during construction not for the modern architecture of the building but the unusual tower crane employed by general contractor Kirby & McGuire. Invented in Germany in 1949, self-erecting tower cranes were still remained an unusual sight in Baltimore when the Copenhagen-built crane went to work in the early 1960s.
The three-million-dollar, eight-story structure was completed in early 1965 and, on November 7, dedicated by Bishop T. Austin Murphy. The cornerstone of the building held copies of the Catholic Review from the day of the building's completion. The new office hosted Catholic priests, church hierarchy, lay men and women who had previously worked at offices and churches scattered across the city.
Since it opened, the building has been used for exhibitions, meetings, and many other religious and community events up through the present. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Movement Against Destruction, a coalition of Black and white community groups fighting against the construction of the East-West Expressway, met weekly on Monday evenings at the Catholic Center to share information and plan protests. While the city eventually built a portion of the proposed highway (now officially known as I-170 and unofficially as the "Highway to Nowhere"), the coalition successfully stopped the demolition of hundreds of homes in the west Baltimore neighborhood of Rosemont and in southeast Baltimore.
The houses at 612 and 614 South Wolfe Street are two of the smallest and oldest wooden homes remaining in Fell鈥檚 Point. Ann Bond Fell Giles, widow of Edward Fell, inherited both properties following the death of her first husband. She remarried and had several more children. Upon her death, the properties ended up in the hands of her youngest daughter Susannah Giles Moore and her husband Phillip Moore. It stayed in their hands until Phillip died insolvent in 1833 or 1834. The houses were built somewhere between February 1798 and 1801, though likely closer to the later date. 612 was connected to another property at 610 South Wolfe Street in its earliest days, and both were rented to Edward Callow in 1801. 614 South Wolfe Street was also rented out by the owners to Patrick Morrison. Between 1842 and 1854, the buildings became homes to African American ship caulkers Richard Jones, Henry Scott, and John Whittington. The shipbuilding industry in Fell鈥檚 Point depended on free and enslaved black labor. Caulking, the process by which a ship is waterproofed and sealed, was dominated by black workers including Frederick Douglass who worked as a caulker in Baltimore in the 1830s.. For a time, the Black Caulker Association held a near monopoly over Baltimore's caulking industry. The Black Caulker Association lost power in the mid-nineteenth century as European immigrants arrived competing for work. The houses on Wolfe Street were named the Caulker Houses in honor of the caulkers who lived there. The houses are also known as the 鈥淭wo Sisters Houses鈥 after sisters Mary Leeke Rowe Dashiell and Eleanor Marine Dashiell, descendants of the Leeke, Marine, and Dashiell families. They owned the houses prior to the acquisition by the Society for the Preservation of Federal Hill and Fell鈥檚 Point.
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Just a few blocks away from the Peabody, stretching along Calvert Street between Madison and Monument Streets, stands another massive Italian palace, built for another educational institution.
The patron here was the Society of Jesus, a Catholic religious order. Visitors can see arched windows with elaborate moldings and a heavy Italianate cornice unifying the northern half, containing St. Ignatius Church (designed by Louis L. Long and completed in 1856) with the southern (designed by O鈥機onnor and Delaney of New York and finished in 1899). Besides the parish church, this huge red brick palace housed Loyola College and Loyola High School until they split into two separate institutions and moved away in 1922.
Since the mid-1970s, the long vacant southern section has been imaginatively re-used for two theaters designed by James Grieves and the firm of Ziger, Hoopes, and Snead for the Center Stage repertory theater.
"My library shall be for all, rich and poor without distinction of race or color, who, when properly accredited, can take out the books if they will handle them carefully and return them."These were the words of Enoch Pratt in 1882 when he gave a gift of over $1 million to Baltimore City to create a central library and four branches. By 1894, the Pratt Library had the fourth largest collection in the country and one of the most active circulations. With assistance from Andrew Carnegie, the library system and its branches grew tremendously in the early 1900s, expanding to over 20 neighborhood branches. In 1927, the citizens of Baltimore voted to spend $3 million in city funds to build a new Central Library building. The construction of the current central library building on Cathedral Street began in 1931 and was completed in 1933. Architect Clyde N. Friz hoped to avoid the old-fashioned institutional character of the past in his design and instead to give the library "a dignity characterized by friendliness rather than aloofness," as Pratt Director Joseph Wheeler stated. The new building allowed the library to form specialized departments, such as "education, philosophy, and religion," "industry and technology," as well as the "popular library," now known as the fiction section. Although allowing for expansion, the design of the new building retained one of Pratt's steadfast requirements: that there be no stairs leading into the main entrance. This seemingly odd requirement, and one that certainly went against the grain of architectural design for grand civic institutions at the time, was based Pratt's philosophy that the library should be open to all people. Pratt saw grand stairs as an impediment, especially to a growing segment of the reading population: women who may be pushing babies in strollers. Far before the advent of the Americans with Disabilities Act and its accessibility requirements for public buildings, the main entrance to the library pointedly tell the story of Pratt's vision and commitment to inclusivity. Watch our on the building!
While nothing remains to indicate what once transpired here, we pinpoint this location to memorialize the victims of enslavement in America.
Centre Market, aka Marsh Market, was the thriving heart of early Baltimore commerce, primarily due to its proximity to the docks and the cargo arriving regularly. Vendors filled the space along Market Place from Baltimore Street to Pratt Street at the harbor鈥檚 edge, offering everything from produce to livestock. Separate areas were devoted to particular products. For example, the area where Port Discovery is today was the fish market. Just north of that was where horses were sold. This horse market area was also where enslaved people were sold. Auctioneers would often hold court ordered sales here of people who may have been designated as unclaimed runaway slaves.
Due to the large number of shoppers attracted to the market, many other businesses grew up nearby, such as taverns and inns. There were also several estate auctioneers who operated nearby. Just like today, estate auctions included everything from furniture to linens. Prior to the Civil War, however, these auctions often included the sale of people. As the demand for enslaved labor increased in the 19th century, several slave traders also operated in the area west of this market area. They would meet at the nearby hotels and taverns, such as Garland Burnett鈥檚 Tavern, Mrs. Green鈥檚 Tavern (Sign of the Green Tree), and Sinners鈥檚 Hotel on Water Street. Eventually, a few slave jails were operated in the area by James Purvis and John Denning.
A major reconstruction of the market took place in 1851, which included a large, two-story building that took up an entire city block built over the market area. It was initially known as Maryland Institute Hall because it housed the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts, which is now known as Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). The second floor housed the school classrooms, offices, and classrooms, as well as an assembly hall large enough to accommodate crowds attending two presidential nominating conventions and a speech by Abraham Lincoln. This entire area was destroyed by the Great Baltimore Fire in 1904.
The Centre Theatre opened on a February evening in 1939 with a Hollywood-style opening as "a thousand invited guest walked through the glare of spotlights while newsreel photographs turned their cranks and candid camera fans sniped from the sidelines." Crowds poured in to the theatre and turned to the circular proscenium covered with gold leaf and illuminated by hundreds of lights for a preview showing of "Tail Spin."
The $400,000 building (a transformation of an earlier auto dealership) was not just a theatre but included a whole complex with the WFBR radio station and studios, a branch bank office for the Equitable Trust Company, and a garage. Owner Morris A. Mechanic was born in Poland on December 21, 1904 and emigrated to Baltimore with his parents as a child. In 1929, Mechanic worked as the principal at a Hebrew School on West North Avenue and owned a chocolate shop downtown, when he decided to purchase the New Theatre as a real estate investment. The New Theatre's "box-office bonanza" success during a showing of "Sunny Side Up" encouraged him to stick with the theatre business for the rest of his life, owning dozens of theaters over the years before his death of a heart attack in July 1966.
The interior of the Centre Theatre featured a mural symbolizing entertainment and captioned, "Man works by day; night is for romance." by R. McGill Mackall, a MICA-trained Baltimore native who painted 53 large public murals in the city over his career. The design by Philadelphia architect Armand Carroll, described by the Sun as "conservatively modern" with decoration "intended to soothe rather than startle the spectator," won an award for "architectural attainment" from the Baltimore Association of Commerce as the best "Retail Commercial Building" built in 1939. When the theatre opened, Mechanic had an office on the second floor with a window "fitted with special glass... invisible from the theatre, the window permits anyone in the office to see the picture on the screen."
Morris Mechanic closed the theatre, later known as the Film Centre Theatre, on April 16, 1959, after the Equitable Trust Company announced plans to enlarge the complex and move their operations department into the building early in 1960. The bank planned to add a third story and "special dust-free areas... to create the exact atmospheric conditions required for the most efficient use of highly sensitive automated electronic equipment." One example offered for this new equipment included a $55,000 sorting machine that sorted checks and other documents at a rate of 1,000 a minute guided by "magnetic ink" rather than "the familiar punch card holes." The radio station and the bank remained through the 1990s before the theater was turned into a church. Unfortunately, without the resources for essential maintenance the building deteriorated significantly and was mostly abandoned for a decade.
In 2011, Jubilee Baltimore acquired the building at auction for $93,000 and started working to redevelop the sadly neglected site. In partnership with Johns Hopkins University and Maryland Institution College of Art (MICA), along with support from the American Communities Trust and TRF, Jubilee Baltimore restored the exterior back to its original appearance, lit up the marquee, and transformed the interior into offices and community space for film screenings, music, classrooms, galleries, and more. The Centre Theater reopened to the public in 2015.
With a gleaming black marble fa莽ade reading "Charles Fish and Sons Company" and Victorian brick arches above, the architecture of this building clearly points to a varied history. The surprising story of the building begins before the start of the American Civil War with the foundation of the nation's first dental school by local doctors Horace Hayden and Chapin Harris. The School of Medicine at the University of Maryland in Baltimore had rejected their efforts to start a dental school within their institution, perhaps agreeing with the many who saw early dentists as "Ignorant, incapable men whose knowledge was composed of a few secrets which they had purchased at fabulous prices from other charlatans." In 1840, Hayden and Harris turned to the Maryland State Legislature to obtain a charter for an independent dental college鈥攖he Baltimore College of Dental Surgery.
Popular from the start, over the next forty years the college outgrew four locations finally moving to the corner of Eutaw and Franklin Streets in 1881. The new building stood as a testament to the growth of the science of dentistry and the professionalization of dentists. The Baltimore College of Dentistry occupied this building until 1915, when it became part of the University of Maryland and moved operations to the main campus a few blocks south.
In 1942, Charles Fish and his family moved their furniture and clothing business to 429 Eutaw Street and etched his name on the lustrous art deco storefront. A Jewish Russian immigrant, Fish arrived in the United States as a teenager in 1909 and lived in Virginia for years before moving to Baltimore. As early as 1945, Fish and Sons were noted for their nondiscriminatory policies, which earned them a spot on the Afro-American Newspaper's list of "orchids"鈥-businesses that welcomed all shoppers, regardless of color. Unlike many of their neighbors, who held fast to "final sale" and "no returns" policies for African Americans in pre-civil rights Baltimore (and thus were listed as "onions" on the Afro-American's pages), Fish and Sons proudly served and hired all Americans, regardless of color. Fish and Sons continued to operate their business at the corner until 1980.
The Charles Theatre began not as a movie house but as a street car barn and powerhouse designed by architect Jackson C. Gott and built in 1892. The building then became a popular dance club hosting national acts such as Tommy Dorsey and the Glenn Miller Orchestra. The Times Theatre opened in the building in 1939 taking its name from its role as the city鈥檚 first 鈥渁ll newsreel movie house.鈥 In 1959, the owners renamed the business the Charles Theatre. During the theatre鈥檚 early history it showed art house films and frequently screened early works by John Waters. The theatre was managed by Pat Moran, who went on to become a notable casting director, and the projectionist was Garey Lambert, a gay rights activist who John Waters called 鈥渢he Harvey Milk of Baltimore.鈥 In 1999, the theatre was expanded adding four additional screens with modern auditorium style seating and large concession area.
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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.
All that remains of the Chesapeake Paperboard Co. complex today is the water tower. The site is now known as McHenry Row, a 90,000 square foot mixed use development project that contains 250 luxury apartments, offices, and street level shops at the end of Woodall Avenue.
From 1910 until the company's closure in the mid-1990s, Chesapeake Paperboard was the sole recycler of paper waste from Baltimore City's curbside recycling program, processing over 15,000 tons of paper waste annually. The company processed this paper waste into pulp, then into paperboard which it would then export to other manufacturers. Paperboard is the harder, less flexible cousin to regular printer paper. Lightweight and strong, paperboard can most easily be found in consumer product packaging. One of the most recognizable examples of paperboard are breakfast cereal boxes.
The Chesapeake Paperboard Company was acquired in 2005 by Green Bay Packaging and moved operations to Hunt Valley. Today, the Baltimore Division of Green Bay Packaging produces plain brown and color printed cardboard boxes for companies in Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Virginia. The Baltimore Division is certified by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) and the Maryland Green Registry.
As with so many changes in technology, there are both pros and cons to recycling modernization. The loss of this local industry impacts job opportunities here in South Baltimore, but an upgraded recycling infrastructure means a cleaner, greener world for all. The give and take of advancing technology, changing consumer tastes and policy and regulation is rarely as simple as it looks at first glance.
In 1936, Sidney Friedman was riding a train to Baltimore and carrying a charcoal grill. Earlier that week, Friedman had dined at Ray's Steak House in Chicago and ate his very first charcoal-grilled steak. He'd never had anything like it. He asked the chefs how they made the steaks and immediately set out to get a grill of his own. When Sidney got back, he fired up the grill and started running the restaurants most iconic advertisement: "Cut your steak with a fork, else tear up the check and walk out."
The Chesapeake Restaurant had its beginnings in a deli established by Sidney's father, Morris Friedman, who immigrated to Baltimore in 1898. In 1913, he opened a gourmet deli under his name, and in 1933, after the end of Prohibition, he remodeled the deli and turned it into the Chesapeake Restaurant. The restaurant was in a prime location, only a couple blocks from Penn Station. It quickly became the go-to place for upscale Maryland seafood.
When Sidney took over and introduced the charcoal-grilled steaks a few years later, the popularity of the Chesapeake Restaurant continued to grow. According to him, the Chesapeake Restaurant was the first restaurant in Baltimore to serve a Caesar salad. In the 1950's, Sidney's younger brother Phillip took over after graduating from Cornell's School of Hotel Administration. In 1961, Phillip bought the Hasslinger's seafood restaurant next door, and the Chesapeake expanded from 29 seats to 300.
The Chesapeake Restaurant became one of the most expensive and exclusive restaurants in the city. It attracted all sorts of Baltimore celebrities, from newscasters to athletes. The massive restaurant featured a number of special lounges, including a room built as a shrine to Babe Ruth packed with memorabilia. The restaurant suffered a devastating fire in 1974 and continued operations until it went bankrupt in 1983. The family managed to purchase the restaurant back later that year, but could only stay afloat for another two years. The restaurant was sold at a foreclosure auction to Robert Sapero, and for the first time in 50 years, was no longer in the Friedman family's name.
Sapero's attempts to reboot the Chesapeake Restaurant failed and the building remained abandoned after 1989. Ultimately, Station North Development Partners LLC bought the building and a new restaurant opened there in 2013. The building is now occupied by the Pen & Quill Restaurant.