East Baltimore Church of God began in 1955, under the leadership of a Lumbee woman, Rev. Lounita Hammonds. It was originally known as the 鈥淯pper Room鈥 Church because services were held above Gordon Cleaners, located at the corner of Baltimore and Wolfe streets. Sometime after establishing the church, Rev. Hammonds felt called 鈥渉ome,鈥 to North Carolina, to begin another work. In her absence, the church closed, and its members relocated to other area churches. Soon after, 鈥渁 group of Native Americans had a desire to have a church with which they could identify; thus the current East Baltimore Church of God came into existence.鈥
It was Rev. Haywood Johnson (Lumbee) who assembled what would grow into the current congregation. In 1961, Rev. Johnson and a small group of parishioners purchased a storefront building that had originally been a restaurant, spanning 1714 鈥 1716 E. Baltimore Street. The church history cites growth in the congregation as the reason for a move to its next location, 2043 E. Baltimore Street, in 1972. Rev. Johnson and the trustees of the church sold 1714 鈥 16 to the City and it was razed during Urban Renewal.
In 2003, East Baltimore Church of God moved to its current location, 800 S. Oldham Street. The church is active unto this day and many American Indian people continue to attend. It is pastored by Rev. Robert E. Dodson Jr., who trained under Rev. Redell Hammonds (Lumbee), the son of Rev. Lounita and Hartman Hammonds (Lumbee).
The history of delicatessens in East Baltimore is not limited to Lombard Street. In the thoughtfully restored 800 block of East Baltimore Street, Harry Goodman established one of the city鈥檚 earliest delicatessens at 825 E. Baltimore Street around 1905 and Herman Buderak followed with a delicatessen at #813 around 1910. In 1915, Jacob H. Sussman, a 23-year-old immigrant from Minsk, moved to 905 E. Baltimore where he operated the New York Import Company.
It is at 923 E. Baltimore where Sussman and Carl Lev went into business together in 1926 as importers, wholesalers, and retailers of 鈥渁ppetizing delicatessen and all kinds of herring, smoked fish, and imported candies.鈥 In the buildings between Sussman鈥檚 two businesses, two of Baltimore鈥檚 oldest delicatessens operated before 1910: Harry Caplan鈥檚 at 915 and Frank Hurwitz鈥檚 at 919. Caplan moved his deli several times before settling near Mikro Kodesh Synagogue in the 1920s.
Completed in 1912, the Eastern Avenue Sewage Pumping Station opened as a critical engine of Baltimore鈥檚 then brand-new sewer system. City engineers built the station to house enormous steam-driven Corliss pumps capable of pumping up to 27,500,000 gallons of sewage a day. The utility of the building did not prohibit a bit of style. The engineers graced the structure with copper roof, gables, and a cupola, turning it into a handsome monument to the growth and development of the city celebrated by proud civic leaders. In 1960, the city replaced the aging steam-driven pumps with electric turbines. The building continues to operate as a pumping station up through the present.
The Baltimore Public Works Museum occupied the building from 1982 up until the museum closed in 2010. The museum gave visitors a behind the scenes look at how a large city provides public works utilities to its citizens. The museum modeled phone lines, street lights, drains and pipes, and sewage disposal.
On July 11, 2015 the Eastern Female High School on Aisquith Street caught fire鈥攋ust the latest challenge for this 1869 school-house turned apartment building that has stood empty since it closed in 2001. Designed by architect R. Snowden Andrews, the Italianate-style, red-brick and white-trim structure is the city鈥檚 oldest surviving purpose-built public school building. It stands as a memorial to the post-Civil War expansion of secondary education opportunities in Baltimore. The Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation list the building as a Baltimore City Landmark in 1976 and a 2002 Baltimore Sun editorial declared one of Baltimore鈥檚 鈥渁rchitectural gems鈥. The building was renovated and converted into apartments in the 1970s and Baltimore City transferred the building to Sojourner-Douglass College in 2004. Unfortunately, Sojourner-Douglass College was unable to develop the building and after the 2015 fire Eastern Female High School聽continues to stand boarded up and vacant.
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Edgar Allan Poe, writer, poet, inventor of detective fiction, is probably most famous for his poem 鈥淭he Raven.鈥 He spent time in Baltimore off and on through his entire life. Though born in Boston, he first arrived in Baltimore on a family visit to his paternal grandparents when he was just five weeks old in 1809.
Poe's association with this house began around the beginning of 1833, when Maria Clemm moved her family to this modest 2 陆 story rowhouse on Amity Street (originally number 3, now 203 North Amity Street). The household consisted of Maria, her daughter Virginia Clemm, her mother Elizabeth Poe, her nephew Edgar Allan Poe, and perhaps her son Henry. The small, five-room house was situated quite differently than today, surrounded by a few scattered houses and mostly open fields. Poe likely slept on the top floor, under low, slanted ceilings, accessed by a narrow, winding staircase.
Over the next two years, Poe continued to unsuccessfully explore various careers, and wrote for various publications. Notably, he was awarded first and second place for a fiction and poetry contest, respectively, sponsored by the Baltimore Saturday Visiter. He also established contact with the Southern Literary Messenger, and submitted both fiction and editorial pieces for publication, as well as providing technical advice to the editor.
In addition to the numerous poems and short stories, he wrote for the Visiter and Messenger at 203 Amity Street. It is also presumed that he penned a poem titled 鈥淭o Elizabeth,鈥 dedicated to a cousin, and "Latin Hymn," which is a comment on the Egyptian-Ottoman War (1831-1833). The war was called for by Mohammad Ali, who demanded control of Syria from the Ottoman Empire as a reward for his assistance with other battles.
The family was forced to move from Amity Street in 1835 after the death of the grandmother, Elizabeth Poe, and the loss of her pension.
The house was scheduled for demolition in 1938 to make way for a public housing project, but was saved by the Edgar Allan Poe Society, which was established in 1923 to promote Poe鈥檚 works through readings and lectures. The Society provided tours of the house from 1950 to 1977 when operation of the museum was taken over by Baltimore City鈥檚 Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP). It is operated today by Poe Baltimore, a non-profit organization.
The Edgar Allan Poe statue sitting in the Gordon Plaza at University of Baltimore has a colorful past. The statue was commissioned in 1911 by the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association of Baltimore and was the last work of renowned American sculptor Moses Jacob Ezekiel. Born in Richmond, Virgina, Ezekiel was a decorated Confederate soldier who moved to Europe in 1869 and, in 1910, was knighted by King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy for his artistic accomplishments.
The Women's Literary Club established the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association in 1907 and hoped the statue would be completed for the centennial of Poe's birth in 1909, but a lack of funds, a series of mishaps, and poor timing delayed the statue's arrival in Baltimore until 1921. Ezekial completed the first model in 1913 but a fire at a custom house destroyed the sculpture en route to a foundry in Berlin; the second model, completed in 1915, was destroyed in Ezekiel's studio by an earthquake; and the third model, completed in 1916, was due to be shipped across the Atlantic, but was delayed another five years due to World War I. By the time the statue arrived in Baltimore, Ezekiel had already been dead for four years.
After the statue's arrival in Wyman Park during the summer of 1921, more complications arose. The inscription, a quote from Poe's famous poem "The Raven," had two typos and read: "Dreamng(sic) dreams no mortals(sic) ever dared to dream before." In 1930, Edmond Fontaine, incensed over the typo on the word "mortal," came to the park in the middle of the night and chiseled away the incorrect "s." The police arrested Fontaine for his vigilantism but he was never prosecuted.
Over the years the Poe statue suffered from neglect, vandalism, and weather damage. In 1983, the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore recommended the statue be moved to the Gordon Plaza at the University of Baltimore where it still stands today. The statue has become a mascot of sorts for the university, and during the NFL playoffs it can be seen bathed in a purple light in support of the Baltimore Ravens, a team named after Poe's famous poem.
Since 1951, the Edmondson Village Branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library at the corner of Edmondson Avenue and Woodridge Road has served as a treasured community institution for nearby residents and readers. The building's Colonial Revival architecture reflects the design of the adjacent Edmondson Village Shopping Center whose developers, Jacob and Joseph Meyerhoff, originally donated the space for the library. The first proposal to build a library in the area came a different developer, James E. Keelty, who erected thousands of the rowhouses in the area between the 1920s and the 1940s. In 1927, James Keelty offered to donate the lot at the northwest corner of Edmondson Avenue and Edgewood Street to build a new branch library. He even planned to "erect a library building on the lot and give the city its own time in which to pay for the structure." His generosity won support from the area's City Council member, Thomas M.L. Musgrave, who remarked:
People living in the Ten Hills, Rognel Heights and Hunting Ridge sections have been trying to get a branch of the Pratt Library for some time, and it now looks like all they need is the cooperation of the city and the library trustees to supply it immediately.But the gift came with one big condition. Keelty also wanted the city's permission to put up a new building at the southwest corner for "moving pictures, stores and bowling alleys" at a time when residents in Baltimore's segregated white residential neighborhoods fiercely opposed most commercial development. Likely responding to this opposition, Mayor Broening vetoed the proposal in July 1928 and the library was never built. Fortunately, local residents, led by members of the Edmondson suburban group of the Women鈥檚 Civic League, stepped up to the challenge of creating a library for their community. In 1943, local residents from Ten Hills and Edmondson Village came together to start a lending library they called the Neighborhood Library Group. The effort grew quickly and the organizers asked the developers of Edmondson Village Shopping Center to donate a space for the community. The Enoch Pratt Free Library took charge of the small 鈥渓ibrary station鈥 and, with strong support from neighborhood residents, opened a small Colonial Revival branch library in 1951. Renovated between 2008 and 2010, the library remains a beloved and vital destination for readers and other library users today.
Well known for its sports programs, Edmondson-Westside High School is a landmark near the western edge of the city. Originally known as Edmonson Avenue High School, when construction began on the school on Athol Avenue it was the city's first new high school since Forest Park opened in 1924.
The school expanded in the early 1980s with a move into the former Hecht Company store on Edmondson Avenue. Hecht's opened in 1955 but closed a little more than twenty years later after Hoschild Kohn's and other retail stores had left for shopping areas in the western suburbs.
Past the brick rowhomes that have come to define Baltimore, Emmanuel Episcopal Church, established in 1854, sits on the corner of Read and Cathedral Streets. At street level, only the abrupt appearance of rubble stone from brick indicates that there is a new building at all. That is, until the lucky passerby looks up. Towers soar above a progress of granite to white limestone, punctuated by lancet windows and tempered with light refracted through stained glass windows.
A striking example of Gothic architecture in Baltimore, the church was designed by Niernsee & Neilson (the same partnership behind the Green Mount Cemetery Chapel and Clifton Mansion.) The towers and archways invoke a time long past, of feudalistic morality and rigid social structures of the separation of the few from the struggles of the many... and yet, it was these very towers that looked down upon one of the twentieth century's most controversial and feminist writers, Edna St. Vincent Millay.
The first woman in history to receive a Pulitzer Prize for poetry, Edna St. Vincent Millay, or "Vincent" as she preferred to be called, is remembered by scholar Robert Gale as the "poetic voice of eternal youth, feminine revolt and liberation, and potent sensitivity and suggestiveness." Born in 1892 and raised by an independent mother in New England, she published her first poem, Renascence, in 1912. Continuing on to Vassar College in 1913, she pursued acting and writing, flouting the rules and societal prescripts by smoking, drinking, and dating freely among the all-female population. After graduation, she moved to Greenwich Village in New York City, where she was surrounded by artists, actors, and other bon vivants. She promptly became a name in the bohemian village. It was in this time that she penned her most famous quatrain: "First Fig" from A Few Figs from Thistles (1920):
"My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends 鈥
It gives a lovely light!"
She spent the next two years in Europe writing for Vanity Fair, producing upon her return the work that would win her the Pulitzer, The Harp Weaver and Other Poems (1923). In this and her other works, in a time when women still were fighting for the right to vote in much of the United States, Millay championed the plight of women and the oppression of traditional gender roles. She loved freely, marrying Eugen Boissevain in 1923 on the understanding that she would not be faithful, and let him manage her tours.
It was in 1925 on one of her tours that Mrs. Sally Bruce Kingsolver asked her to read at the Emmanuel Episcopal Church for the Poetry Society of Maryland. What poems she read is not recorded but she surely read with the passion of one who rubbed so far against the grain. She was the absolute embodiment of the hedonism of the 1920s, as she did what she wanted, defied convention at every turn, and presented herself to life with a passion that swept up those around her.
Originally the summer home of industrialist and abolitionist Elisha Tyson in the early 1800s, 732 Pacific Street is a classic Federal style house built with native granite two feet thick. Among many other accomplishments, Tyson helped finance the very profitable Falls Road Turnpike in 1805 and reportedly established safe houses for runaway slaves along the route.
The building on Pacific Street was later owned by the Mount Vernon Mill Company and used as a superintendent鈥檚 house for the mill complex. Robyn Lyles and Mark Thistle (also a 糖心影视 board member) purchased the house in 2005 and finished renovations in 2009. The rehab project included archeology work by the University of Maryland, painstakingly saving windows including the original antique glass, and disassembling and reassembling the porch to save the original materials. 13,000 hours of work later, the finished product is a masterpiece of historic preservation.
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In April 1942, less than six months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, a group of Elkridge residents established a new volunteer fire department. The new fire department was one of many initiatives in U.S. cities and towns encouraged by the Office of Civilian Defense at the outset of World War II. Elkridge residents worried that their town鈥檚 location between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, as well as the town鈥檚 proximity to several wartime industrial sites, made them a possible target for an aerial bombardment. The founding of the department was a grassroots effort from the beginning. A group of local women led the initial fundraising campaign. The B&O Railroad Company donated the fire bell. Using second-hand parts and donated equipment, volunteers took a dilapidated 1934 Brockway Ford (dilapidated from years sitting idle in a cow pasture) and transformed it into a fully operational fire truck for just $500. Operating out of a one-bay garage in a former Ford Automobile dealership, the first few road tests for the new truck did not go smoothly. A tire blew out on the first trip and the engine dropped a rod on its second trip. Nonetheless, the volunteers managed to get the truck fully operational just seven months after the formation of the department. The volunteers named the truck 鈥淒aisy.鈥 The Federal Civilian Defense Organization officially recognized the department as part of national preparedness and declared Daisy the 鈥渂est homemade fire truck in America.鈥 The volunteers鈥 efforts were even dramatized and broadcast live on a national NBC radio show. It was a challenge to fully staff the department during World War II because so many local men were fighting overseas. To compensate, the department struck a deal with the local high school. The school agreed to allow the older boys who maintained at least a C grade average to skip class in order to help fight fires. While only men and boys were allowed to fight fires, women volunteered as dispatchers during the department鈥檚 first few years. Women volunteered on the ambulance from the beginning and, in the early 1970s, the department changed policies to allow women to enlist as firefighters as well. The original building underwent several renovations over the last seventy-five years. The fire hall on Old Washington Road was renovated and expanded in 1948. Today, the Elkridge V.F.D. operates out of a new, larger location, built to accommodate the growing needs of the community. Built in 2014, the new facility on Rowanberry Drive encompasses more than thirty-five thousand square feet, houses twenty-three firefighters鈥攂oth paid and volunteer鈥攁nd cost more than sixteen million dollars. The department鈥檚 original building is currently being repurposed as a community center.
Close beside the Gwynns Falls is Ellicott Driveway, completed by the city in 1917 as the kind of stream valley parkway envisioned by the Olmsted Brothers landscape architectural firm in 1904.
Ellicott Driveway was built on top of the millrace that once carried water to Three Mills operated by the Ellicott Brothers near Frederick Road. In the 1800s, twenty-six gristmills along the Gwynns Falls and others on the Jones Falls and Patapsco River contributed to Baltimore's first economic boom. Besides their Ellicott City mills, the Ellicotts built the Three Mills complex in this area and were partners in the five Calverton Mills upstream at Leon Day Park. The Ellicotts also helped build the Frederick Turnpike so wagons could carry their products to ships at their Inner Harbor wharf. The Ellicott Driveway was completed by the city in 1917 as the kind of stream valley parkway envisioned by the Olmsted Brothers landscape architectural firm in 1904. The diversion dam for the millrace created a dramatic waterfall: "Baltimore's Niagara Falls." In 1930, the Municipal Art Society of Baltimore praised the route, writing:
"so gracefully following the curves of the stream in Gwynn's Falls park [Ellicott Driveway]... adapts itself to the contours of the terrain and... takes full advantage of natural beauty."Today, the route is closed to cars and trucks and reserves its natural beauty for bicycles and pedestrians along the Gwynns Falls Trail.
Emory Grove, located in Glyndon, has provided its summer residents with spiritual inspiration and respite from Baltimore City's summer heat for over 145 years. Originally founded in 1868 as a Methodist camp meeting site during the religious reawakening that swept the nation in the aftermath of the Civil War, the Grove now welcomes campers of any denomination. The camp鈥檚 47 rustic cottages only recently saw the installation of flush toilets and electric lights but the lush setting in a cool wooded 62-acres has made it an idyllic retreat for generations of Marylanders.
The Emory Grove Hotel, built in 1887, is a stately Victorian structure on the National Register of Historic Places. At the center of the Grove is an open-air tabernacle that is the heart of the community. Religious services are held weekly along with sing-alongs and dance recitals.
Built in 1910 of brick with stone trim in Tudor style, Fire Engine House No. 36 celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2010. Designed by architects Ellicott & Emmart and built by the Fidelity Construction Co., Engine House No. 36 reflected Baltimore's investment in modern fire-fighting facilities and technology in the aftermath of the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904. Ellicott & Emmart worked on a number of public buildings around this same period including Primary School No. 37 (located at E. Biddle St. and N. Patterson Park Ave.) and the Forest Park Branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library (1912).
Founded in 1799, Oldtown鈥檚 Independent Fire Company maintained their Independent No. 6 engine house at Gay and Ensor Streets for over fifty years. In 1853, the company tore down their original engine house and replaced it with the present home of the Baltimore City Fire Museum with its distinctive six story bell and clock tower. Designed by Baltimore architects Reasin and Weatherald, the firehouse is unique in Baltimore鈥檚 architecture. The 103-foot Italianate-Gothic tower was copied from Giotto鈥檚 campanile in Florence, Italy and features a cast iron 鈥渟keleton鈥濃攁n early example of this material in use for structural purposes. The newly formed Baltimore City Fire Department purchased the building in 1859 for $8,000, when it became known as Engine House No. 6. The firehouse鈥檚 apparatus was a steam engine weighing 8,600 pounds named, appropriately, the 鈥淒eluge.鈥 In 1893, all members of the City鈥檚 fire department were paid, which ended the grade of 鈥渃allman.鈥 This silenced firehouse bells, which were used to summon the callmen. Many bells were given to churches, but Engine 6 hung on to its bell and it became a source of pride to Oldtown鈥檚 citizens. Oldtown, on the east side of the Jones Falls, did not see damage from the Great Fire of 1904. Firemen pumped water from the Jones Falls to quell the advance of the flames鈥攁 move which saved east side landmarks such as the Phoenix Shot Tower. Engine House No. 6 also served as emergency hospital as the Sun reported at the time, 鈥淭he upper floor of the engine house resembled an army field hospital in war time, with its scores of brawny men with seared and blackened faces and their tattered remnants of blue uniforms.鈥 In 1970, the tower was restored and the station remained in active service until 1976, when the Oldtown Memorial Fire Station (now the Thomas J. Burke Fire Station) became the home of Engine 6. In 1979, the old station became the home of the Baltimore Fire Museum and the Box 414 Association.
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Enoch Pratt was a wealthy Baltimore merchant and major benefactor of many Baltimore institutions, including the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore, the Sheppard Pratt Hospital, and of course the Enoch Pratt Free Library. He began to build a mansion for himself and his wife at Monument Street and Park Avenue in 1844. Coincidentally, this is the same year that the Maryland Historical Society was founded, an institution that years later would acquire the building for its collections.
Enoch Pratt was a prosperous hardware merchant, railway and steamship owner, and banker, and originally his new house was three-stories with a basement. In 1868, notable Baltimore architect Edmund G. Lind added a fourth floor, probably in order to keep Pratt in step with the "Mansard" roof trend in Victorian architecture. A new marble portico also was added at the time. The portico had been commissioned by the Clerk of the United States House of Representatives for a mansion in Washington that he ultimately could not afford to build, and Pratt gladly took it off the designers' hands and attached it to his Monument Street residence.
Pratt died in 1896 without any children. He was survived by his wife, who remained in the house until her death in 1911. Soon thereafter, Mary Ann (Washington) Keyser purchased the building for use by the Maryland Historical Society, which has owned the building since 1919.
Behind an unassuming brick wall on North Avenue near Pennsylvania Avenue is an historic cemetery that many people drive by, but few know anything about.
The Etting Family Cemetery is the oldest existing Jewish cemetery in Baltimore. Solomon Etting (1764-1847) came to Baltimore from York, Pennsylvania in 1790. Solomon was active in defending the city in the War of 1812. He made his fortune in hardware, shipping, and banking, and was one of the founders of the B&O Railroad.
The first burial in what became the family cemetery was in 1799 when Solomon鈥檚 infant daughter Rebecca died. After this, the cemetery steadily filled to 25 graves. Among them is that of Zalman Rehine (c. 1756-1842). Rehine was reputed to be the first rabbi to come to America. The last internment was that of Solomon鈥檚 daughter Richea Gratz Etting (1792-1881).
Over time, the cemetery has seen changes, including the replacement of marble tombstones (sometimes twice) as their inscriptions have been worn away. Today, the Hebrew Burial and Social Services Society remain the caretakers of the cemetery.
The Eubie Blake Blake Cultural Center has owned and operated from a historic building at 847 N. Howard Street since 2000, but the history of the organization dates back to to the 1960s.
In the late 1960s, a group of Baltimoreans organized the Neighborhood Parents Club (NPC) to call attention to the importance of cultural arts and formed an after school arts program at Dunbar High School. The group won the support of the Baltimore City Model Cities Agency for their program as a demonstration project and soon expanded their initial grassroots effort into six cultural arts centers located around the city. Model Cities merged with Baltimore鈥檚 Community Action Agency in mid-1970s to become the Urban Services Agency, which continued the city鈥檚 support of the program that included centers for performing arts (dance, theater, band, voice, and instrument) and for visual arts (painting, drawing, photography, and sculpture).
In 1978, a seventh center was opened, establishing Gallery 409 (at 409 N Charles Street) as the Urban Services Agency鈥檚 premier cultural arts center. Around the same time, a group of people in Baltimore began working with musician Eubie Blake鈥檚 family in an attempt to bring significant pieces of Eubie Blake鈥檚 personal collections back to his home in Baltimore.
Born in Baltimore in 1883, Eubie Blake grew up to become one of the most important figures in early twentieth century African American music, and one whose longevity made him a storehouse of the history of ragtime and early jazz music and culture. Blake began playing piano professionally when he was 16; he wrote his first composition, "Sounds of Africa," (later retitled "Charleston Rag") around the same time. His career did not really take off until he met Noble Sissle in 1915. Together, Blake and Sissle wrote many hits. Blake also collaborated with Andy Razaf (on "Memories of You"), Henry Creamer, and other writers, composing more than 350 songs. In the early 1980s, Marion Blake agreed to donate their collection to the Maryland Historical Society with plans to house a portion of the collection at Gallery 409. In honor of the donation, the Urban Services gallery was renamed as the Eubie Blake Cultural Arts Center in 1983.
In 1993, a tragic fire destroyed the Gallery 409 facility, but a group of supporters organized to establish the new Eubie Blake National Jazz Institute and Cultural Center, Inc., and moved into a building at 34 Market Place at the Brokerage (now the Power Plant Live!). Finally, in 2000, Baltimore City donated the building on Howard Street to the Eubie Blake Cultural Center enabling the Center to take back a portion of the Blake collection from the Maryland Historical Society and resume their role as an important center for cultural arts in Baltimore.
The Eutaw Chapel is a largely forgotten landmark hidden in the woods above Hall's Springs in Herring Run Park. The former church dates to 1861 when the small stone building was built on a property donated by Horatio Whitridge, Esq. Located three miles outside the city, the chapel stood between Hall's Spring and the Columbian Cotton Factory. The name came from "Eutaw Farm"鈥攁 property owned and developed by William Smith in the late 1700s and Benedict William Hall in the early 1800s.
Like the nearby Ivy Mill, a former gristmill purchased by Morgan State University when they moved to northeast Baltimore in 1917, the building is made of Baltimore Gneiss. Baltimore Gneiss is a gray-green rock formed along the Herring Run over a billion years ago, making it the oldest material within city boundaries. The strength of the rock has kept the building standing despite years of neglect that have left the structure in terrible condition. Recent plans for Herring Run Park include the proposal to stabilize and reuse the structure as a public park pavilion.
An icon on Eutaw Place, the former Temple Oheb Shalom is a reminder of the vibrant Jewish community that thrived in the late nineteenth century in what were then Baltimore's expanding northwest suburbs. Built in 1892, architect Joseph Evans Sperry modeled the Eutaw Place Temple after the Great Synagogue of Florence, Italy. Since 1960, the building is home to the Prince Hall Grand Lodge that has boasted such notable members as Thurgood Marshall and Eubie Blake.
A small group of twenty-one young German Jews established the Oheb Shalom congregation in 1853 to provide an alternative to the Orthodox Baltimore Hebrew Congregation (1830) and the Reform Har Sinai (1846). The congregation moved to Eutaw Place in 1892 and remained through their 1960 when they moved into a midcentury modern synagogue on Park Heights Avenue in Pikesville and completed the move to in 1960. Temple Oheb Shalom has played a significant role in American Jewish life through the history of the rabbis and cantors who have led the congregation, most notably Rabbi Benjamin Szold who led Oheb Shalom through 1892 and whose daughter, Henrietta Szold, was the founder of Hadassah.
In 1960, Temple Oheb Shalom left Eutaw Place for Pikesville and the Prince Hall Grand Lodge, under the leadership of Samuel T. Daniels, purchased the building. Among the members of The Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Maryland are Baltimore-born Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and James Hubert "Eubie" Blake, one of the most significant figures in early-20th-century African American music. In 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. visited the lodge to campaign on behalf of President Lyndon B. Johnson.
With 48 rooms, a soaring portico, and a Tiffany designed glass canopy, Evergreen House stands out as one of Baltimore's best Gilded Age mansions. The house was originally built in 1857 by the Broadbent Family. John Work Garrett, president of the B&O Railroad and a burgeoning railroad tycoon, purchased the mansion 19 years later (in 1878) for his son T. Harrison Garrett. (Incidentally, five years before this, John Work Garrett purchased the Garrett Jacobs Mansion on Mount Vernon Place for his other son, Robert). The Mansion was expanded in the 1880s and again in the 1920s by two generations of Garrett family members.
Evergreen House has over 50,000 items from the Garretts, including drawings by Degas and Picasso and the world's largest collection of Tiffany glass pieces. The building's rare book library was designed by noted Baltimore architect Lawrence Hall Fowler, and contains 8,000 volumes that include original works by Shakespeare and Audubon, as well as the signatures of every signer of the Declaration of Independence. The mansion even has its own theater, which is elaborately decorated by the Russian designer Leon Baskt and is the only known theater to retain original sets by him. In 1942, the mansion and surrounding 26 acres of landscaped lawns and gardens were deeded to The Johns Hopkins University, under whose care they remain today.
Constructed across from the venerable Ford's Theater in 1911, the Empire Theatre (as the Everyman was first called) was designed in the Beaux Arts style by Baltimore architects William McElfatrick and Otto Simonson. Although its advertising slogan was appealing, "Better Burlesque," and it boasted its own soda fountain and billiard parlor, the theatre never caught on with burlesque or a few years later, with vaudeville.
By 1915 it had switched to a single screen movie theatre with seats for over 1500. Movies did not fare well either, and after a brief stint back as a burlesque theatre, the building was shuttered in 1927. In 1937 it reopened, but as a parking garage. For some reason, this use also did not stick, and in 1947 the building was rebuilt back into a theatre. With architects Lucius White and John Zinc in the lead, the new theatre was fully modern, with Art Moderne styling, amoeba-shaped wall decorations, and even a concession stand selling new fangled orange-coated ice cream treats called Dreamsicles. The Town Theatre, as it was then renamed, opened with a premier showing of "It's a Wonderful Life," complete with Jimmy Stewart in the audience.
It was during this period that a real life drama took place in 1953 when the FBI received a tip that a wanted criminal, John Elgin Johnson, was at the theatre. He was in a phone booth when the FBI approached and he opened fire, wounding agents J. Brady Murphy and Raymond J. Fox. Additional agents returned fire, killing Mr. Johnson. Agent Murphy later died from his wounds.
From the 1960s into the 1970s, the Town was Baltimore's only "Cinerama," a film technique where multiple film strips are shown on a single projector. This run didn't last either, and the theatre closed again in 1990, about a week before the Hippodrome a block away also went dark.
The building was given to the Everyman Theatre in 2006, which was then in search of a new home. After raising considerable capital for a major renovation, the restoration included both the historic exterior and a wholly new interior to accommodate modern performance requirements. The theatre now has 250 seats and a host of other spaces: a scene shop, dressing rooms, a green room, a rehearsal hall, classrooms, offices, costume shop, and a prop shop. The company's first performance in the new space was in January 2013.
In August 1933, F. Scott Fitzgerald moved with his family to 1307 Park Avenue. Fitzgerald had been forced out of his previous home in Towson due to a house fire attributed to his mentally ill wife, Zelda. Their rowhouse, a ten minute walk from the monument of Fitzgerald's famous distant-cousin, Francis Scott Key, quickly became a place of turmoil, and was the last place where he and Zelda lived together.
Fitzgerald couldn't get back on his feet at his new home. His first published novel in ten years, "Tender Is the Night," tanked after its April 1934 release, selling only 13,000 copies to mixed reviews, and left Fitzgerald under immense financial strain. Everyone in the house was affected. Zelda and Fitzgerald's daughter, Francis Scott "Scottie" Fitzgerald, acted as a go-between for their landlord, forced to constantly ask her father for rent money.
Zelda, who spent her weekdays hospitalized at Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital in Towson, had a brief period of wellness during the first few months at 1307 Park Avenue and was allowed to go home and take painting classes at the Maryland Institute College of Art. However, her mental illness soon worsened and she was moved to the expensive Craig House sanitarium in New York, only to return to Sheppard Pratt in May 1934 in worse shape than ever.
While Zelda was in the hospital, Fitzgerald's dependency on alcohol grew. Writer H.L. Mencken, a friend of Fitzgerald who lived nearby in Mt. Vernon at the time, wrote in his journal in 1934: "The case of F. Scott Fitzgerald has become distressing. He is a boozing in a wild manner and has become a nuisance."
Along with crippling alcoholism, Fitzgerald suffered insomnia and night terrors. He also became increasingly political, reading Marx and befriending Marxist literary critic, V.F. Calverton, who frequented the Fitzgerald home and who Zelda referred to as the "community communist."
After a turbulent two years, Fitzgerald and Scottie moved out of their rowhouse at 1307 Park Avenue into the Cambridge Arms Apartments across from Johns Hopkins University where Fitzgerald's career continued to worsen. His controversial three-part essay in Esquire, known as "The Crack Up," sullied his reputation in the eyes of his editor and agent.
In April 1936, Fitzgerald transferred Zelda to Highland Hospital in North Carolina and gave up his Cambridge Arms apartment the following summer due to rent trouble. After a brief stint at the Stafford Hotel in Mt. Vernon, he moved to Hollywood to write movies and became further estranged from his wife; she living in mental hospitals on the East Coast, and he living with his lover Sheilah Graham, a gossip columnist, in Hollywood.
Fitzgerald's Bolton Hill home at 1307 Park Avenue is now dedicated with a blue plaque in his honor, and remains a private residence.
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Faidley鈥檚 is as much about the people as the seafood. Whether gathered around the store鈥檚 raw bar at one of the stand-up tables near the busy line of workers making crab cakes, customers are often feel like they鈥檙e simply sharing a meal with old friends. Faidley鈥檚 started out at Lexington Market in 1886 when John and Flossie Faidley combined their seafood stall with the adjoining business to form Smith & Faidley鈥檚 seafood. John鈥檚 son, Edward took over the business before World War II, and, 1948, John W. Faidley, Jr. joined him and changed the name of the company to John W. Faidley鈥檚 seafood. A major fire at Lexington Market that same year forced the business to move to the Lexington Market garage but Faidley鈥檚 was one of the first establishments to return to the new Lexington Marker in 1952. The idea of selling prepared foods at the stall originated around this time, reportedly after customers smelled a fish sandwich John, Jr. was making for himself鈥攁nd asked if they could buy one. In 1966, the Liquor Board gave Faidley鈥檚 a liquor license making it the first bar in the long history of Lexington Market. John W. Faidley applied for the license after he and his regular customer agreed that 鈥渋t just isn鈥檛 right鈥 to eat crabcakes and steam crabs with no beer to drink. Over the past twenty years, Faidley鈥檚 has won international renown for its crab cakes. The current recipe was created in 1987 by Nancy Faidley Devine, John鈥檚 daughter. That was the same year she resumed working at the 鈥渇amily firm鈥 where her husband Bill Devine had worked since he finished a term of military service in 1964. Not long after, food critics started making their way to Lexington Market and featuring Faidley鈥檚 in national publications including the New York Times, Bon Appetit, Gourmet, and USA Today. Baltimore Magazine gave Faidley鈥檚 the 鈥淏est Crab Cake鈥 award so many times the magazine had to retire the category. Faidley鈥檚 even worked with Old Bay to prepare crab cakes for astronauts on the space shuttle. Unfortunately, NASA officials cancelled their order at the last minute over worries that oil might escape from the crab cake under zero gravity conditions. The future of Faidley鈥檚 Seafood looks just as promising as the past. Damye Devine Hahn, Nancy and Bill鈥檚 daughter, is now an integral part of the business and is keeping up Faidley鈥檚 fresh seafood and out-of-this-world crab cakes.
In 1956, the oldest congregation in Baltimore City founded by Lumbee Indians (presently known as South Broadway Baptist Church) rented the storefront at 1918 E. Fairmount Avenue and adopted the name 鈥淔airmount Avenue Missionary Baptist Church鈥 under the ministry of Rev. Geneva Locklear (Lumbee), and her husband, Smitty (also Lumbee). The church remained at 1918 E. Fairmount until 1967. The entire area bounded by E. Fayette, N. Wolfe, E. Baltimore, and N. Washington streets has since been razed and redeveloped.
In 1912, The Baltimore Sun heralded the forthcoming construction of the Broadway commercial and recreation pier. Citing the success of similar piers in New York and Boston, the Sun declared that piers for recreation 鈥渇urnish a place for mothers and children to get a breath of fresh air [and] for young people to enjoy themselves in innocent, wholesome amusement. In summer a recreation pier is a godsend to the poor housed in ill-ventilated, closely-packed rooms. The Broadway pier will fill a genuine need.鈥
The pier opened in 1914 as a multipurpose building for both industry and leisure. It became a focal point of the Fells Point community. The Bay Belle steamer ran from the pier to the Eastern Shore for summer outings. There were Christmas Eve dances that filled the hall with 400 persons, roller skating, and organized games for young people. Lessons in English were often held at the pier to serve the local immigrant community who hailed from Poland, Ukraine, and Bohemia.
In 1931, the USS Constitution was towed up the Chesapeake from the Charlestown Navy Yard in Massachusetts and berthed at the Rec Pier. Less than an hour after she had docked, a small crowd of 100 people gathered to see her.
The pier was extended by 90 feet in 1948 to make a home for the Harbor Police. It underwent another renovation in 1991. Over ten thousand engraved bricks, purchased by Baltimoreans for $50 each in a Buy-A-Brick campaign grace the surrounding walkways.
The pier became a national star in its own right, when it was chosen to be the site of Baltimore police headquarters in the television show, Homicide: Life on the Street (1993-1999). After the show ended, the building sat vacant until 2017 with the opening of the Sagamore Pendry, a luxury hotel owned by Under Armour CEO, Kevin Plank.
With thick buttresses, parapets, a crenelated roof-line, and a steel roof, the enormous 5th Regiment Armory has served as an imposing landmark between Bolton Hill and Mount Vernon since 1901. The building was designed by architects Wyatt and Nolting (who also designed the Pikesville Armory and Liriodendron Mansion in Bel Air among other notable buildings). In 1912, conventioneers to the Democratic National Convention packed the huge drill hall to nominate soon-to-be president Woodrow Wilson. Unfortunately, in 1933, a severe fire destroyed the roof and gutted the interior but the state soon rebuilt the structure and has continued to use the building up through the present. In addition to its role in training the Maryland National Guard, the armory has housed a military museum since 1982. The Maryland Museum of Military History contains artifacts and stories from not just the state鈥檚 National Guard, but from all Marylanders who served in the military. Over the last several years, the museum has opened new exhibits focusing on military history of today and yesterday. One of the new exhibits features the armed services from the 1991 Persian Gulf War to the present while another dives into the role of Marylanders in the War of 1812.
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The Fire Museum of Maryland is one of the largest fire museums in America. Located in Lutherville, just north of Baltimore City, the Museum is a leading institution in preserving, restoring, and interpreting the history of the urban fire service in the United States.
The Fire Museum of Maryland is one of the largest fire museums in America. Located in Lutherville, just north of Baltimore City, the Museum is a leading institution in preserving, restoring, and interpreting the history of the urban fire service in the United States.
The Fire Museum of Maryland grew from a private collection of fire engines, apparatus and fire related materials that had been amassed over more than forty years by the Stephen G. Heaver family.
Founded in 1971, the museum houses a world-class collection with more than forty pieces of fire fighting apparatus dating from 1806 to 1957. The collection also includes over 1,700 smaller artifacts, an extensive working telegraph system, and a large archive and library with over 13,000 documents, catalogues, photographs, negatives and books.
In 1761, a group of Scots-Irish "Dissenters" (opponents of the Church of England) came to Baltimore Towne from Pennsylvania to escape the French and Indian War. They founded the First Presbyterian Church, appropriately named as it really was the first, and remains the oldest, Presbyterian church in the city. The founding minister, Rev. Patrick Allison (1740 鈥 1802), was a Chaplain to the Continental Congress and was a personal friend of George Washington.
After locating in several places downtown, the congregation moved to Mount Vernon and built the current church between 1854 and 1859. With its New Brunswick freestone exterior and 273-foot tall steeple (still the tallest in the city), this Gothic Revival church dominates Midtown Baltimore.
Construction started in 1854 under the supervision of architect Nathan G. Starkweather, a native of Oxford, England, and finished by his assistant Edmund G. Lind. Famed bridge engineer Wendell Bollman and the Patapsco Bridge and Iron Works of Baltimore produced the structural cast iron used throughout the church including the spire, which was not added until 1873.
The church is a notable example of Gothic Revival architecture and a landmark in the City of Baltimore. The interior boasts a triple-vaulted sanctuary with massive plaster pendants and is considered one of the finest Victorian plaster interiors in the country. To pile on to this beauty, the church has many windows from Tiffany Studios, as well as a host of other companies from England, Italy, New York and Boston. In 2009, the church embarked on an extensive restoration plan under the guidance of Murphy and Dittenhafer architects.
In 1973, the First Presbyterian Church united with the Franklin Street Presbyterian Church to form The First and Franklin Street Presbyterian Church, and in 2012 the congregation voted to change it to the simpler First & Franklin Presbyterian Church.
The First Unitarian Church of Baltimore has stood at the corner of Charles and Franklin Streets for over two centuries. Inside the 1818 landmark, visitors can find beautiful Tiffany glass and original furnishings designed by the architect and crafted by noted Baltimore artisans. Beyond the building鈥檚 remarkable architecture, the congregation has served as the spiritual home to many local civic leaders, such as Enoch Pratt and George Peabody. Recognizing the significance of the building as the oldest purpose-built Unitarian church in North America, First Unitarian Church was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1972. The history of the church began in 1817, when Baltimore had sixty thousand inhabitants and Mount Vernon Place was the undeveloped edge of the city. A group of leading citizens met in the home of merchant and city councilman Henry Payson on February 10, 1817, and, according to church histories, committed 鈥渢o form a religious society and build a church for Christians who are Unitarian and cherish liberal sentiments on the subject of religion.鈥 The original name selected for the church, The First Independent Church of Baltimore, reflected the independence of thought and action that became the hallmark of this group of freethinkers and those who succeeded them through subsequent generations. The church was later renamed First Unitarian in 1912. Designed by Maximilian Godefroy, the French architect of Saint Mary鈥檚 Chapel and the Battle Monument, the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore is recognized as the finest American example of French Romantic Classicism. Dedicated on October 29, 1818, the church was a daring modern design when it was constructed. It utilizes the basic shapes of the cube and the sphere with a minimum of detail on the flat planes to emphasize the geometry of the structure. The chancel features a pulpit, designed by Godefroy and executed by William Camp, and two sets of sedilia. One set of two chairs and a loveseat was designed by Godefroy and is original to the church; the other set was designed by Tiffany and added in the 1890s. In the late nineteenth century, the church undertook a major reconstruction of the interior of the sanctuary to improve the acoustics of the space. Joseph Evans Sperry designed a barrel-vaulted ceiling with supporting arches. The reconstruction also added a large Tiffany mosaic, seven Tiffany windows, and a magnificent Henry Niemann organ. The Tiffany mosaic of the Last Supper, designed by Tiffany artist Frederick Wilson, is composed of 64,800 pieces of favrile glass. The Niemann organ and the church鈥檚 Enoch Pratt Parish Hall (built in 1879 at 514 N. Charles Street), were both gifts of Enoch Pratt, a member and leader of the church for sixty-five years. The First Unitarian Church of Baltimore is important to Unitarian Universalists throughout the country because of a landmark sermon delivered by the Rev. Dr. William Ellery Channing on May 5, 1819, at the ordination of the church鈥檚 first minister, Jared Sparks. The sermon, which defined the essence of Unitarianism in the United States and led to the formation of the denomination in 1825, came to be known as the Baltimore Sermon. Channing emphasized freedom, reason, and tolerance and taught that the way we live is more important than the words and symbols we use to describe our faith, a truth that has inspired a commitment to social justice along with theological diversity. This spirit helped shape the work of the congregation and its members over the decades. In 1874, the congregation organized Baltimore鈥檚 first vocational school for teenagers. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the First Unitarian Church sponsored an Industrial School for Girls, a Boy鈥檚 Guild, and Channing House, a settlement house for South Baltimore. Church members have contributed to the city through public service and philanthropy in many ways up through the present day.