In contrast to the high-end shopping at Stewart's or Hochschild-Kohn's on Howard Street, West Lexington Street offered goods of all kinds at affordable prices thanks to a row of five-and-tens from Read's Drug Store down to Kresge's on the other side of Park Avenue.
McCrory's at 227-229 West Lexington stands out with a colorful early twentieth century tile facade built over a structure that likely dates back to late nineteenth century. John Graham McCrorey started the chain in Scottsdale, Pennsylvania in 1882 and soon expanded with locations across the country. Noting McCrorey's reputation as a smart and thrifty businessman, in 1887 The New York Times reported that he had legally changed his name, dropping the e, because he did not want to pay the cost of the extra gilt letter on his many store signs. McCrory's on Lexington Street opened in the late 1920s and was one of over 1,300 McCrory's outlets operating around the country by the 1950s.
The more modest Kirby-Woolworth Building east of McCrory's began as two buildings put up by two close competitiors - Frederick M. Kirby and the H.G. Woolworth & Co. In retrospect, the reunion of the two buildings feels inevitable as Kirby and Woolworth pioneered the five-and-ten cent store business together in the 1870s and early 1880s, opening a store together in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania in 1884 before parting ways in 1887. The two buildings came up side by side on Lexington Street in 1907 and likely combined into a single structure after the merger of H.G. Woolworth & Company and F. M. Kirby & Company in 1912.
Schulte United Five and Dime offers a unique fa莽ade with shining gold eagles and incised lettering along the top of the building. The building began as the Eisenberg Underselling Store, later known as the Eisenberg Company, with the determined motto that they offered "prices that are irreproachable everywhere." By 1928, 600 employees worked for the Eisenberg Company at several locations throughout the city. Within a few years, however, Schulte United 鈥 established by David A. Schulte, a "tobacco store potentate," who decided to enter the five-and-dime business in 1928 with the ambitious goal of investing $35,000,000 in 1,000 stores around the country 鈥 purchased the store on Lexington Street.
In this small brick house on East Pratt Street, Mary Young Pickersgill designed and fabricated the Star-Spangled Banner. Pickersgill was assisted by her mother, niece and a Black indentured servent, Grace Wisher. Grace had been indentured as an apprentice in 1809, when she was about 10 years old, by her mother, Jenny Wisher, who was a free African American. What happened to Grace after her indenture remains unknown, but what is known, is that Grace Wisher鈥檚 contribution to the creation of the Star-Spangled Banner flag deserves to be highlighted as part of its history.
This fifteen star, fifteen stripe flag flew over the ramparts of Fort McHenry while it was attacked by the British during the War of 1812. The mammoth flag, thirty by forty-two feet, withstood the British secret weapon of rockets, and was "still there" in the "dawn's early light" of September 14, 1814. From an American sloop within the enemy fleet, Francis Scott Key, inspired by the sight of this flag as it withstood heavy bombardment from the British, wrote the poem that today is known as the National Anthem of the United States of America.
This National Historic Landmark, now called the Flag House or Star-Spangled Banner House, was built in 1793. Mary Pickersgill lived here from 1807 until her death in 1857. The City of Baltimore purchased the building in 1929 and maintains it as a museum. In addition to maintaining the house, the City built a public museum with artifacts from the War of 1812 that connects physically and thematically with the Flag House, including Mary's $405.90 invoice for her work. The Smithsonian Institution continues to protect and exhibit Mary's flag, which was the world's largest when it was completed.
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Albemarle Square is a new residential development that makes up virtually all the housing in the Jonestown neighborhood today. Albemarle Square opened in 2006 on the footprint of the old Flag House Courts public housing project.
The history behind Albemarle Square is a story of urban change and revitalization. Upwardly mobile Jewish immigrants began to move out of the neighborhood in the 1920s. From the 1930s to the 1950s, the area housed a diverse population of the working poor: black and white, Italians, Jews, and others. Declared 鈥渂lighted鈥 by city officials, the neighborhood鈥檚 sagging old row houses were torn down and replaced by Flag House Courts in 1955. The public housing project鈥檚 mix of three massive high-rise apartment buildings and 15 low-rise buildings lasted until 2001, its final years plagued by crime and neglect.
Realizing that 鈥渨arehousing鈥 the poor in vast concrete structures was a failed solution to poverty, city officials demolished Flag House Courts and designed Albemarle Square as an innovative mixed-income development with architecture that echoes the row houses of old. The residents of the development now include both homeowners and tenants.
The former Fleet-McGinley Company building at the northwest corner of Water and South Streets was built in 1908鈥攐ne of scores of new warehouses and factories built around downtown as the city rebuilt from the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904. The five-story brick and reinforced concrete warehouse was designed by the prominent Baltimore architectural firm of Baldwin & Pennington for the Johns Hopkins Hospital trustees at a cost of $70,000. One of the building's earliest and most prominent tenants was the Fleet-McGinley Printing Company, established in 1884 as a partnership between Charles T. Fleet and J. Edward McGinley. In 1914, Fleet-McGinley boasted that their building was "the best equipped printing office in Baltimore" boasting "the most modern appliances and equipment" along with "skilled and competent artisans." In the aftermath of the recent catastrophe, the printer paid special attention to fire-proofing, describing their "fire-proof vaults for the storage of plates, engravings and designs, which make the destruction by fire of such valuable property practically impossible." In 1926, the Manufacturers' Record, a trade publication printed by the firm since the 1880s, purchased Fleet-McGinley and moved their operations from South Street to the Candler Building on East Lombard Street. In 1965, the business (still located in the Candler Building) was renamed the Blanchard Press of Maryland. The building on South Street later served as offices for insurance agents Hopper, Polk & Purnell, Inc., as well as Levy Sons Company, manufacturer of women's underwear. In early 2015, Goodwill Industries of the Chesapeake purchased the building from the International Youth Foundation who had occupied the structure for over fifteen years.
Crittenton Home was originally the home of David Carroll, owner of the Mount Vernon Mill Company. The building got its name after being absorbed by the Florence Crittenton Mission in 1925.
Crittenton Home was originally the home of David Carroll, owner of the Mount Vernon Mill Company. The building got its name after being absorbed by the Florence Crittenton Mission in 1925.
The Mission was started in 1882 by wealthy New Yorker and Protestant evangelist Charles Crittenton who made his fortune in pharmaceuticals. After losing his four year old daughter Florence to Scarlet Fever, Crittenton dedicated himself to philanthropy, using his wealth to open sanctuaries for unwed mothers. He traveled across the country proselytizing and offering five-hundred dollars to each town willing to open a Home. In 1898, President McKinley signed a special act of Congress which granted a national charter to the Florence Crittenton Mission, making it the first charitable organization to receive a national charter from the United States. At its peak, the Mission had over seventy-five Homes internationally.
The mansion that became the Crittenton Home was likely constructed in 1845 during the development of Stone Hill, a company housing development for workers of the Mount Vernon mills. Positioned high on a hill, the mansion provided an impressive view over Stone Hill and the mills.Carroll could comfortably oversee his industrial domain from the comfort of his grand home, while employees catching glimpses of the house from their homes and workplace below could not shake the feeling that the boss was always watching.
Carroll died in 1881. Afterward other executives of the Mount Vernon Mill Company likely inhabited the mansion. (His son, Albert Carroll, had Evergreen on the Hill, a Greek Revival Mansion now used by the SPCA). After a devastating 1923 labor strike, the mill company moved its operations south in search of cheaper labor and in 1925, the mansion was sold to the Florence Crittenton Mission. The purchase was a response to overcrowding at Baltimore's first Crittenton Home located in Little Italy.
By the 1950s and '60s many Florence Crittenton Homes had become places where embarrassed middle class families hid their pregnant daughters. Under these arrangements, children were taken from their mothers and given up for adoption. With the introduction of birth control pills, the legalization of abortion, and the lessening of stigma against unwed pregnancy, Homes across the country began closing. The Hampden Florence Crittenton Home stayed in use until 2010.
The mansion is currently being renovated and converted to apartments. The mid-century dormitories that served the Florence Crittenton House have been demolished to make way for townhouses.
Born in Central City, Colorado, on November 9, 1871, Florence Rena Sabin, M.D. (1871-1953) was the youngest daughter of a mining engineer. After her mother's death from sepsis, Florence and her sister moved first to Chicago, then to stay with her paternal grandparents in Vermont.
She earned a bachelor's degree in 1893 from Smith College, then went to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where she became the first female graduate. She returned to the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine a few years later on a research fellowship. She started teaching in the Department of Anatomy in 1902, with a promotion to associate professor in 1905 and finally full professor of embryology and histology in 1917, becoming the first female full professor at the college.
She introduced techniques for staining living cells and played an important role in the reform of Colorado's health laws. Her statue still stands in the U.S. Capitol.
Baltimore activists have a long history of fighting discrimination and segregation in the city鈥檚 public establishments. In the years after World War II, the NAACP and their allies worked to end segregated seating at Ford鈥檚 Theatre on Fayette Street and drew national attention to the fight for equal rights in Baltimore. Ford's Theatre opened in 1871. It was built by John T. Ford, a Baltimore native, and the owner of the Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. infamous as the site of President Abraham Lincoln's assassination. Like many other theatres in downtown Baltimore, Ford's enforced a strict policy of racially segregated seating. As early as 1947, Baltimore鈥檚 branch of the NAACP began picketing the theatre. At that time, NAACP executive secretary Addison Pinkney stated that the protest had gone on for 鈥漷he entire season鈥 and 鈥渞educed the average attendance to less than one-half capacity of [the] building.鈥 Unfortunately, theatre management was resistant to changing their discriminatory policies. Protests continued for five years with national and international stars joining the fight. In 1948, celebrated singer and Civil Rights activist Paul Robeson walked a picket line in front of the theatre. In 1951, Basil Rathbone, the British actor famous for playing Sherlock Holmes, declared: 鈥淵ou may depend on my taking a firm stand of disapproval of the segregated theatre in Baltimore and to inform any management to whom I may in future contract myself and the case of any play in which I play.鈥 By 1950, the protests were hurting the theatre鈥檚 bottom line. The theatre, which was operated by United Booking Office Inc. of New York, leased the building from Baltimore theatre mogul Morris Mechanic. By 1950, United Booking Office reported that Ford鈥檚, once one of the most prosperous theatres in the nation, had its box office receipts cut almost in half, attributing the decline to the NAACP protest and to the poor selection of plays. In 1952, the protest gained another strong ally: Maryland Governor Theodore R. McKeldin. Speaking in early 1952 at Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, McKeldin declared that he wanted Ford鈥檚 opened to African Americans because they had been 鈥渘eedlessly affronted鈥 by its policies. 鈥淲e are going to walk together,鈥 he said. 鈥淚 am an optimist, and we must win. We are going to stop this evil thing.鈥 On February 1, 1952, Ford鈥檚 dropped its segregation policies and was finally open to all. In 1964, the Sun recalled, "Almost every theatrical star from the last century has played there, from James W. Wallack and Maude Adams to Katharine Cornell, and the building has gained a reputation for everything from cats on stage to deer in the balcony and bats in the dressing rooms." Unfortunately, neither theatrical or Civil Rights听history could save the three-story theatre from the wrecking ball. The building was torn down in 1964 to make way for the parking garage that stands on the site today.
The congregation of the Carter Memorial Church has its origins in 1926 when James Roosevelt Carter and his wife Catherine Carter arrived in Baltimore from Pennsylvania. James Carter spent years preaching on the city streets before opening his first church on Lombard Street in 1944. The congregation continued to grow and by 1955 under the name of the 鈥淕arden of Prayer Church of God In Christ鈥 purchased the former home of the Beechfield Methodist Church that was originally built in 1833 as the Fayette Street Methodist Episcopal Church. The congregation has continued to grow and recently purchased St. Peter the Apostle.
Built in 1922, the former Enoch Pratt Free Library Branch No. 19 at 606 South Ann Street was one of a large number of branch libraries that opened in the early twentieth century. Between 1908 and 1920, the Pratt Library opened a new branch every sixteen months including new libraries in Hamilton and Mount Washington. The building boom was supported by a 1907 gift from Andrew Carnegie and by the generosity of local residents and community organizations who donated land and funds to support their construction. In 1920, Baltimore City acquired a lot on Ann Street donated by the Children's Playground Association and William Hooper Grafflin, a Baltimore native, banker, and board member of Johns Hopkins Hospital. Local architect William W. Emmart put together a design and the contract for construction was awarded to R.B. Mason in May 1921. By June 1922, the new Branch No. 19 was open. During the early decades of the library's operation, a large number of the patrons were European immigrants, especially from Poland. The population of Polish immigrants in Baltimore grew quickly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century reaching over twenty-three thousand people by 1893. A large share of these residents lived in southeast Baltimore, earning Eastern Avenue the reputation as Baltimore's "Polish Wall Street." After the Pratt began offering "book lists" of suggested readings in 1934, a patron at Branch No. 19, Mrs. Charles D. Sadowski, worked with Miss Sara Siebert, branch librarian, to assemble a list of Polish-language books on the history and culture of Poland along with any English novels translated into Polish. The history of immigration in southeast Baltimore is woven together with the history of maritime industry. For example, in December 1941 at the beginning of World War II, more than fifty members of the National Maritime Union walked from their hall at 1700 Fleet Street to register as volunteers for civil defense activities. Some of the volunteers were unable to write in English but the branch librarian Miss Annabelle Collins helped in "filling out their blanks." The war effort also inspired residents to turn the library's back yard into a "Victory Garden." By the 1950s, the Fell's Point Improvement Association began regular meetings at the library and, in the 1970s, the librarians at Branch No. 19 began offering a growing variety of programming for patrons. For example, on June 1, 1974, the library hosted a "family fun festival" with "rock groups, movies, a puppet show, storytelling games, a mahic show contests, and a bake sale." On December 22, 1975, the library invited neighbors to join a free "Community Christmas Party" with seasonal movies, tree decorating, and caroling. Budget troubles for the Enoch Pratt Free Library system in the early 1980s led to a month-long closure for what was then known as the Fell's Point Library Center in 1981. The library declared the large back yard "off-limits" to patrons because they could not afford to maintain or restore the area. Fortunately, residents pitched in to sustain and support the branch. In spring 1985, a neighborhood group, the Owners' Restoring and Renovating Association, secured a $2,500 matching grant from the city's Neighborhood Incentive Program. They planed to plant new flowers and trees and install tables and benches. When other library visitors learned about the plan, they donated even more time and money to raise over $6,000. The community celebrated the new "reading garden" with a dedication on May 17, 1986. By 2001, however, years of inadequate funding led the Enoch Pratt Free Library to announce a plan to close five small branches鈥攊ncluding the Fell's Point Center. In August 2001, just two weeks before the branches were set to close, then Mayor Martin O'Malley announced that the city had agreed to keep four of the five branches open through partnerships with local nonprofit organizations. The Education-Based Latino Outreach (EBLO) center would move into the former Branch No. 19 and turn it into "a center for immigrants to learn language, assimilation and job skills." According to the Baltimore Sun, Clinton Roby, treasurer of Friends of the Fell's Point Branch, was glad the city avoided selling the building to a private investor, remarking, "We were worried the city was going to take the highest bidder. I'm just glad it's not going to be taken away from the community." In 2018, after fifteen years of service as the Education-Based Latino Outreach (EBLO) center, the former library is again in need of repairs and improvements. Flooding in the basement is a regular concern. Roof leaks have damaged the interior and forced EBLO to move programs out of the building. Residents, local elected officials, and EBLO staff are working together to seek funding for repairs and return the building back into use as a resource for the community.
Fort Carroll is a 3.4 acre artificial island and abandoned fort located within the shadow of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. The fort was designed by then Brevet-Colonel Robert E. Lee, and construction was started in 1848 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers under Lee鈥檚 supervision. The fort was named for Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the last living signer of the Declaration of Independence. Before it was created, the only military defensive structure between Baltimore and the Chesapeake Bay was Fort McHenry. Additionally, a lighthouse (now abandoned) was built to aid navigation into Baltimore鈥檚 harbor.
Though never completed and never used as a fort, the architecture is quite amazing, featuring curved granite stairs, brick archways, etc. It originally had 350 cannon ports, a blacksmith shop, carpentry shop, and a caretaker's House. In 1864, it was flooded by torrential rains and declared vulnerable and obsolete. Subsequent uses of the fort included storing mines during the Spanish-American War, holding seamen, and as a pistol range. Most of the steel was salvaged for the war effort and the government abandoned the fort in 1920.
While there have been plans over the past ninety years to redevelop the site, nothing was able to come to fruition and it has fallen into extreme disrepair.
On the morning of September 12, 1814, five thousand British troops landed outside of Baltimore and marched on the city of Baltimore with a plan to capture the city. Major General Robert Ross, a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars who had burned the White House and the U.S. Capitol just a few weeks before, led the advance. However, within hours Ross was dead after being shot by an American 鈥 perhaps Daniel Wells and Henry G. McComas although their claim on the deed is now considered unlikely. Following the Battle of North Point, the British forces realized the strength of the defenses at Hampstead Hill, now located within Patterson Park, and returned to the site of their landing to head south towards New Orleans.
In 1896, the federal government took over the British landing site and completed construction on a coastal artillery fortifications to defend Baltimore from naval attack in 1901. In 1900, Secretary of War Elihu Root named the site Fort Howard after John Eager Howard, a Baltimore native and Revolutonary War veteran who is buried alongside veterans of the War of 1812 at Old St. Paul's Cemetery.
In 1902, five of the six coastal artillery batteries were named for men who witnessed the War of 1812 including Lt. Levi Clagget who died at Fort McHenry, Col. Davis Harris who commanded a regiment of artillery, Brig. Gen. John Stricker who commanded the 3rd brigade Maryland Militia, Judge Joseph H. Nicholson who served as Captain of Volunteer Artillery at Fort McHenry, and, of course, Francis Scott Key, the author of the Star Spangled Banner. A sixth battery was named for Dr. Jesse W. Lazear, a U.S. Army doctor who died in Cuba in 1900 while conducting research on yellow fever. Known as the "Bulldog at Baltimore's Gate," Fort Howard was manned by the 21st, 40th, 103rd, and 140th Companies of the Coast Artillery Corps but remained quiet throughout WWI and up until the fort shut down in 1926.
Fort Howard was transferred to the Veterans Administration which built a hospital on the grounds in 1943. Today the coastal batteries are incorporated into Fort Howard Park and, while covered in ivy and masked by bushes, endure as a reminder of the importance of the spot from the War of 1812 and on.
Fort McHenry's history began in 1776 when the citizens of Baltimore Town feared an attack by British ships. An earthen star fort known as Fort Whetstone was quickly constructed. The fort, like Baltimore, was never attacked during our first conflict with England. In 1793, France declared a war on England that became known as the Napoleonic Wars. In 1794, Congress authorized the construction of a series of coastal forts to protect our maritime frontier. Construction began on Fort McHenry in 1798 and, by 1803, the masonry walls we view today were completed. The fort was named for James McHenry, our second Secretary of War. In 1809, the U.S. Army's first light artillery unit was organized here. On June 18, 1812, the United States declared war on England, in part to "preserve Free Trade & Sailor's Rights." In August 1814, British forces marched on Washington, defeated U.S. forces, and burned the Capitol. Then, on September 13-14, the British attacked Fort McHenry. The failure of the bombardment and sight of the American flag inspired Francis Scott Key to compose "The Star-Spangled Banner."
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The Key Monument on Eutaw Place is a grand reminder of how Baltimoreans have kept the memory of the Battle of Baltimore and the War of 1812 alive over two hundred years. Francis Scott Key was a Maryland lawyer and slaveholder who was on board the British vessel HMS Tonnant during the evening of September 13 and morning September 14, 1814, as part of a delegation to try to negotiate the release of prisoners. Key was stuck on board the British vessel to helplessly watch as the British Navy shelled Fort McHenry and Baltimore throughout the night.
At dawn, Key saw the Stars and Stripes still flying over the fort. That morning, the unsuccessful British allowed Key to return to shore, and on the return trip, he wrote a poem describing his experience the night before. The poem was quickly published in two Baltimore papers on September 20, 1814, and days later the owner of a Baltimore music store, Thomas Carr of the Carr Music Store, put the words and music together in print under the title "The Star-Spangled Banner."
Before his death in 1907, Baltimore resident Charles Marburg gave $25,000 to his brother Theodore to commission a monument to his favorite poet, Francis Scott Key. Theodore selected French sculptor Marius Jean Antonin Mercie known for monumental sculptures of Robert E. Lee (1890) in Richmond, Virginia, and General Lafayette (1891) in the District of Columbia. The Key Monument was added to Eutaw Place in 1911.
The monument was restored in 1999 after a multi-year fundraising campaign by local residents. In September 2017, the monument was spray painted with the words "Racist Anthem" and splashed with red paint to highlight Key's legacy as a slaveholder. The city quickly restored the monument.
Franklin Square Park is one of the oldest parks in the city, with its origins in the estate of Dr. James McHenry, who lived at a home known as Fayetteville located near Baltimore and Fremont Streets in the early 1800s. Born in Ireland, James McHenry arrived in Philadelphia in 1771, settling in Baltimore with his family the next year. During the Revolutionary War, McHenry joined the Continental Army, becoming a secretary and friend to General George Washington. After the war, McHenry served as the Secretary of War to George Washington and John Adams, before retiring to Baltimore in 1800 and continuing to live quietly at his home until his death in 1816. James and Samuel Canby, successful development speculators from Wilmington, Delaware, purchased 32 acres of land from the heirs of Dr. James McHenry in 1835 with the goal of developing the estate. Two years later, they offered two-and-a-half acres of land to Baltimore for the nominal sum of $1 with city's promise that they would maintain the land as a public park forever. The City Council accepted but made a condition of their own by offering to erect a "handsome iron railing, six feet high" and a paved sidewalk around the park when the James and Samuel could build eight or more "three-story brick houses, to cost at least $10,000 apiece." The park was an enormous success, as on a single Sunday in the spring of 1850 when over 3,300 locals came for a visit. The Sun reported, "At almost every hour of the day, numbers may be seen promenading through the walks." The grand Waverly Terrace on the east side of the square was completed in 1851 at a cost of $160,000 offering, according the Baltimore Sun, a rowhouse block "much handsomer than any yet finished in this city, and displaying the pure Italian style of architecture." The Aged Women's and Aged Men's Homes, built in 1849 and 1864, located at the site of the present day Franklin Square Elementary/Middle School and a handful of churches began to fill the blocks around the park.
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The Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park is a Living Classrooms Foundation campus (and headquarters). It is a national heritage site that celebrates the contributions of African Americans in the development of Baltimore鈥檚 maritime industry while preserving one of the city鈥檚 oldest existing waterfront industrial buildings. The museum chronicles the saga of Frederick Douglass鈥 life in Baltimore as an enslaved child and young man. It also highlights the life of Isaac Myers, a free-born African American labor leader and businessman.听
Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey (later Douglass) was born into slavery on the Eastern Shore of Maryland in February 1818. When he turned eight years old, his enslaver forced him to work for a family in Baltimore. When Frederick was fifteen, his enslaver sent him back to the Eastern Shore to labor as a fieldhand. Frederick rebelled intensely. He educated other enslaved individuals, physically fought back against a "slave-breaker," and attempted to seize his freedom through a bold, but ultimately unsuccessful plan.
Frustrated, his enslaver returned him to Baltimore. This time, Frederick met a young free Black woman named Anna Murray. Anna Murray used her money to buy him a train ticket, risking her own safety to help him seize his freedom. On September 3, 1838, with the ticket in hand, he boarded a northbound train dressed as a sailor. In less than 24 hours, Frederick arrived in New York City. From there, he became the most important leader of the movement for African-American Civil rRights in the 19th century (read more about Frederick Douglass ).听
Kennard's Wharf at the end of Philpot Street, the very place where Frederick Douglass entered Baltimore as an enslaved child in the 1820s, later became the site of one of the most successful black-owned businesses in Baltimore City, the Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company. It was founded by Isaac Myers and other Black labor organizers.听A caulker by trade, Myers was born free in Baltimore in 1835. The ship-building/maritime industries, and specifically the caulking trade, of Baltimore were historically interracial. By the close of the U.S. Civil War, black workers were systematically pushed out of this type of employment to make room for growing numbers of white workers in the city. This reality led Myers and others to found the Colored Caulkers Trade Union Society.In the early 1860's, the union formed a cooperative company. Pooling their resources, the workers issued stock and quickly raised $10,000 in subscriptions among Black Baltimore residents. On February 12, 1866, they purchased a shipyard and railway, which they named the Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company. Within months, the cooperative employed 300 black caulkers and received several government contracts. Ultimately it employed a number of white workers as well.听
The success of Myers鈥檚 union in Baltimore encouraged black caulkers in other seaport cities to organize. Myers was elected president of the (Colored) National Labor Union, the first organization of its type in U.S. history. Myers appealed to black workers to join unions and called on white unions to accept them as full members. Myers also organized and became president of the Maryland Colored State Industrial Fair Association, the Colored Business Men鈥檚 Association of Baltimore, the Colored Building and Loan Association, and the Aged Ministers Home of the A.M.E. Church.听 He also authored the听Mason鈥檚 Digest. Myers was married twice and had several sons, one of whom became a leading political figure in Ohio. Isaac Myers died in Baltimore in 1891.
1234 Druid Hill Avenue had a story unlike any other. When builders erected the house in the nineteenth century it was one of many handsome Italianate rowhouses in the northwestern suburbs of the city. In 1899, as the neighborhood changed from white to black, Harry S. Cummings, a local African American politician and lawyer, moved into the house with his family. Cummings had graduated from the University of Maryland Law School (one of the first two black men to do so) and, in 1890, became the first African American elected to a Baltimore City Council seat. Cummings lived in the home until 1911, when he moved up the street into another Druid Hill Avenue rowhouse, where he lived until his death in 1917.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the building served as offices to the local chapter of the NAACP, hosting Martin Luther King and Eleanor Roosevelt when they came to Baltimore to work with key leaders like Lillie Mae Carroll Jackson. In 1970, the property became 鈥淔reedom House鈥 and continued to serve as a central hub of activism. By December 1977, the organization had 鈥渞eceived many citations including the AFRO鈥檚 highest honor for its successful crusades in reducing unemployment, crime and delinquency.鈥 When Dr. Jackson donated the house to Bethel AME Church in 1977, the deed required that the property remain in community use or revert back to the ownership of her family.
Immediately next door to the site of Freedom House is 1232 Druid Hill Avenue. As late as 1930, the 1232 Druid Hill Avenue served as a residence, then home to Mrs. Ida Barber (n茅e King). That same year, the property is listed as a residence by Rev. J.E. Lee. By 1934, the property was listed in local directories as the office of W. Owens Stewart in his role as Superintendent of Mt. Zion Cemetery for the Baltimore A. M. E. Conference. By the late 1980s, the building had been turned into the Bethel Bible Institute and also provided space for a Women's Resource and Development Center and the Bethel Christian School.
1234 Druid Hill Avenue and its neighbor at 1232 have been owned or controlled by Bethel AME Church for decades. In recent years, the buildings deteriorated significantly and, in July 2015, Baltimore Slumlord Watch highlighted their poor condition. Bethel AME Church responded to these issues by securing a city building permit for both buildings in late September that allowed non-structural alterations and limited interior demolition. Unfortunately, in October 2015 the church changed their plans and received approval from the Baltimore Housing Department to demolish 1234 Druid Hill Avenue鈥攚ithout notifying preservation advocates or the local chapter of the NAACP. At present, Freedom House is a vacant lot, and the future of the adjoining rowhouse at 1232 Druid Hill Avenue remains uncertain.
Contained on a little less than three acres across from Clifton Park in northeast Baltimore, the Friends Burial Ground tells the stories of generations Baltimore's Quaker families across their 300 years of rich history in our city. Established in 1713 on a tract of land known as Darley Hall when the Friendship Meetinghouse was built on what is today Harford Road, the cemetery has been in continuous use ever since.
While small, and a bit unassuming, the Friends Burial Ground has approximately 1,800 graves with the earliest legible marker dating from 1802 and, without a doubt, many date from the 1700s. The stone wall around the grounds and the Sexton's House both date back to the 1860s and, in 1926, 122 graves were moved from a Friends cemetery at the Aisquith Street Meeting House in Old Town.
The many notable interments include Louisa Swain, who made history in Wyoming on September 6, 1870 as the first woman to vote in a general election in the United States at age 69, and Dr. Thomas Edmondson who lived in a grand estate that eventually became Harlem Park in West Baltimore. Dr. Edmondson recently resurfaced in the public light as his collection of Richard Caton Woodville鈥檚 artwork was exhibited at the Walters Art Museum.
A slice of English architecture, the Furness House was built in 1917 by architect Edward H. Glidden. Glidden also designed the Washington Place Apartments in Mount Vernon and the Marlboro Apartments on Eutaw Place (home to the famed art-collecting Cone sisters). The Furness House was built as offices for an English steamship line and named after shipping entrepreneur Christopher Furness. The building is an example of the English Palladian style, which has roots in Italian architecture, particularly the works of Andrea Palladio. It features a large Venetian window and looks like many commercial building built in England built around the same time. The Furness House was renovated in the 1990s and operates today as a conference center.
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For more than 200 years artisans here have hammered out practical and ornamental ironwork that still graces local landmarks as Otterbein Methodist Church, the Basilica of the Assumption, Baltimore's Washington Monument, Zion Church, Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Baltimore Zoo.
"There is hardly a building in Baltimore that doesn't contain something we made, even if it is only a nail," boasts Theodore Krug, heir to the oldest continuously working iron shop in the country. G. Krug & Son is one of the oldest companies in Baltimore, and the oldest ironworks factory in the country. These ironworks have been in operation without interruption, at the same location, since 1810. At that time, it was operated by Augustus Schwatka who was listed in the Baltimore Directory of 1810 as Schwatka, Augustus, blacksmith, corner of Saratoga St. and Short Alley. The firm changed hands in 1830, when it was sold to Andrew Merker. It was then listed as Merker, A., Locksmith and Bell Hanger, Eutaw St. and Saratoga. Today, the profession of "bell hanger" combined with "locksmith" may sound strange; however, in the year 1831 it made sense as more and more churches were being built. Gustav Krug came to Baltimore in 1848 and worked under Merker, but quickly advanced to foreman, then partner of the company. Upon the death of Andrew Merker in 1871, Gustav Krug became the sole proprietor, and "A. Merker & Krug" became "G. Krug & Son" in 1875. By the late nineteenth century, the company records listed the most important jobs as Johns Hopkins Hospital, Emanuel Church, Otterbein Church, and one of Baltimore's most famous landmarks, "The Fountain Inn." The bill for the Fountain Inn at the time was $524.00 for 262 feet of plain railing and $475.65 for 151 feet of fancy railing. The Krugs' signature "Otterbein Style" has become synonymous with Baltimore history and can be seen on many buildings throughout the city. While the company keeps a steady flow of new work, it also restores the work made by its predecessors. G. Krug & Son is one of the few companies left in Baltimore that can state it helped in building the city. Today, the company is run by 5th generation Peter Krug.
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Robert Garrett was the original owner of the thirteen-story Garrett Building. Among other things, Garrett was a banker, Olympian, collector of medieval manuscripts, and a leader in the development of recreational facilities in Baltimore. He was a participant in the first modern Olympic games in 1896. He paid for three of his Princeton classmates to make the trip and they all took home medals, much to the displeasure of the Greeks. Garrett in particular specialized in the shot put but also decided to try the discus throw for fun after realizing the discus only weighed five pounds. Unlike the Greek discus throwers who implemented the graceful throwing techniques of antiquity, Garrett appropriated the crude, brute force style of shot put throwing to the sport. Despite narrowly missing audience members on his first two throws, his final throw was spot-on and won him the gold. He also took home the gold in shot put. Garrett built 233 East Redwood Street in 1913 with the Baltimore architecture firm Wyatt and Nolting. The limestone faced skyscraper is as striking on the inside as the outside. The lobby is donned with marble walls and columns. Garrett could never turn away from his love of athletics, not even at work. He commissioned a swimming pool and gymnasium for the upper floors. The building is now home to the Gordon Feinblatt law firm.
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Beginning in 1872, the mansion was the home of Robert Garrett, president of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, and his wife Mary Frick Garrett. After Robert Garrett's death, Mrs. Garrett married Dr. Henry Barton Jacobs and the couple added the ballroom by purchasing the neighboring house and converting it into an space for entertaining.
The mansion is exceptional for many things, including that it can boast of being the product of two renowned architects, Stanford White and John Russell Pope. The building, and particularly the ballroom, was the location of many society balls and Gilded Age parties that included dinner, dancing, live music, theater, and other festivities often for hundreds of people.
After Mrs. Garrett passed in 1936 and Dr. Jacobs in 1939, the Mansion had a series of different owners. In 1961, The Engineer's Club leased the building from the City of Baltimore. The city had acquired the property as part of an urban renewal plan to demolish the south side of Mt. Vernon Place and make way for an expansion of the Walters Art Gallery. Fortunately, these plans never received the funding required and in 1962 the Engineer's Club purchased it outright beginning a dedicated effort to preserve and maintain the historic structure.
with research support from Historic American Building Survey
Built in the aftermath of the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904, the Gayety Theatre opened on February 5, 1906鈥攎aking this building the oldest remaining burlesque theater in Baltimore. While the theatre interior was subdivided into three separate spaces in 1985, the Gayety still boasts an elaborate, eye-catching, and fanciful fa莽ade (designed by architect John Bailey McElfatrick) that is a wonderful example of the exuberance of theater design in the period.
The Gayety is the venerable keystone of 鈥淭he Block鈥 on Baltimore Street long known as a destination for adult entertainment. 鈥淭he Block鈥 is somewhat of a misnomer, as the area of arcades, bars, burlesque houses and adult bookshops extended east along Baltimore Street from Calvert Street for approximately eight blocks in the middle third of the 20th century. Due to various cultural forces, and particularly to a concerted 鈥渁nti-smut鈥 campaign during the mayoral tenure of William Donald Schaefer in the early 1980s, most of this extensive commercial sub-cultural landscape no longer exists, and 鈥渢he Block鈥 is, in fact, a small representative of a once-thriving red-light district.
The Gayety began after the Great Baltimore Fire destroyed the offices of The German Correspondent. While some downtown theatres moved to Howard Street after the fire, The Gayety, Lubin鈥檚 Nickelodeon and Vaudeville 鈥渄uplex鈥 directly across the street, The Victoria (later known as The Embassy) and The Rivoli all remained in the area and defined this stretch of Baltimore Street as a 鈥減opular entertainment鈥 center, with an emphasis on burlesque and vaudeville. Despite the connotations acquired later, burlesque and vaudeville were mainstream forms of entertainment aimed at the working and middle classes.
By World War I, the Gayety鈥檚 neighbors had made the switch to showing movies. In the 1920s and 1930s, cinema began to supplant burlesque and, especially, vaudeville as the chief form of low-cost popular entertainment across the United States. Burlesque houses, such as The Gayety, promoted more risqu茅 acts in the effort to give the public something that they couldn鈥檛 get in movies, especially after the adoption of the Hayes production code in 1932, which not only banned nudity but placed Draconian restrictions on sexual content and references in film.
From its heyday in the 1910s and 1920s鈥攚hen The Gayety鈥檚 bill included nationally prominent comedians such as Abbott and Costello, Phil Silvers, Jackie Gleason and Red Skelton鈥攖he Gayety was a 鈥渢op-of-the-line鈥 burlesque house. In this period (just before and after World War II) iconic strippers such as Gypsy Rose Lee, Blaze Starr, Sally Rand, Valerie Parks and Ann Corio performed there. Following the Second World War, more arcades, as well as adult bookshops, peep shows and show bars cropped up to fill in the vacant spaces and gradually redefined East Baltimore Street as a 鈥渞ed light district,鈥 analogous to New York鈥檚 Times Square, Washington, DC鈥檚 14th Street and New Orleans鈥檚 legendary Bourbon Street. By the 1960s, The Gayety no longer hosted headline performers, and local news features surrounding the cataclysmic fire in 1969 tended to emphasize nostalgia for its decline. In this sense, The Gayety Theater Building encapsulates the history of burlesque as an entertainment form and its interaction with civic form in the 20th century United States.
Nostalgic descriptions of performances at The Gayety and its peers indicate that, by today鈥檚 standards, the performances were quite modest. However, the aura of taboo was a large part of what sustained burlesque in general, and The Gayety in particular, through the mid-twentieth century.
The General Electric (GE) Apparatus Service Center did not support private consumers in maintaining their individual household appliances. Rather, this service center maintained large electrical transformers, electrical motors, and turbine engines which helped supply electrical energy to the city and surrounding area. From 1946-1993, these huge pieces of equipment arrived and departed the Service Center by rail.
Maintenance of this kind of equipment required all manner of industrial substances. Beginning in 1988, poor internal regulation of substance disposal caught up with the facility when a soil test confirmed polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)鈥攁 group of highly toxic carcinogens鈥攊n the surrounding soil. For the next 23 years various environmental cleanups have removed PCBs, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), chlorinated solvents, petroleum, and various toxic metals from contaminated soil and groundwater.
The original Service Center was demolished between 2002 and 2003. Three underground storage tanks of petroleum substances were removed in 2007, likely remnants from a historic gas station which occupied part of the lot during the 1950s and 1960s. GE Power Systems submitted an official Voluntary Cleanup Program application to the Maryland Department of the Environment in 2003, indicating their intention to eventually sell the land for residential development.
The land was held off the market for just under a decade for environmental cleanup until GE sold it to Solstice Partners in 2012. Solstice Partners, a development company, partnered with The Bozzuto Group and War Horse Cities to build Anthem House, a 鈥渉ealthy-lifestyle, luxury residential community鈥 on the corner of E. Fort Avenue and Lawrence Street. Scott Plank, brother of Under Armour founder Kevin Plank, launched War Horse Cities in 2010. The $100 million development, which opened in 2017, includes 292 rental units as well as 20,000 square feet of street-level shops and restaurants.
GE continues to have an impact on Maryland industries. In 2017, the subsidiary GE Healthcare closed a plant in Laurel which manufactured 鈥渋ncubators and warmers for hospital neonatal intensive care units.鈥 GE Aviation owned Middle River Aircraft Systems (MRAS) in Middle River until early 2019 when it was sold to ST Engineering, a Singapore-based aerospace conglomerate. MRAS has pioneered many innovations in airplane engine nacelle and thrust reverse systems.
As buildings are used and reused, remnants of a building鈥檚 former life sometimes appear. Those industrial legacies are baked into the character of a place. How do you feel that the transition from industrial to residential has changed the character of Locust Point?
General Ship Repair maintains the rich shipbuilding tradition so long associated with the South Baltimore neighborhoods of Federal Hill and Locust Point. Charles 鈥淏uck鈥 Lynch founded the company in 1924, moved to this location in 1929, lost the company to bankruptcy during the Great Depression and managed to buy it back at auction. Today, the fourth generation of the Lynch family operates the company at one of the last remaining industrial sites along Key Highway. General Ship has repaired a variety of vessels through the years, including schooners, steamships, paddle wheelers, and supertankers. Among the notable vessels that have been worked on recently are the Pride of Baltimore II and Mr. Trash Wheel. Workers perform maintenance work on ships in dry docks at this site in addition to sending crews out to other facilities. As of 2020 the facility, which includes a 17,300 square foot shed and two 1000-ton floating docks, repairs mostly workboats. The company serves as the tug and barge repair facility for the Port of Baltimore. The machine shop on site allows General Ship crews to weld and fabricate steel parts here. Key Highway was once home to a variety of industries including molasses production, oil reprocessing, canning, and locomotive repair. While access to the waterfront remains more limited here than around other parts of the Inner Harbor, residential and mixed-use development has boomed in South Baltimore for the past decade. The Lynch family has considered relocating the business for the past few years, selling the waterfront property to be redeveloped into luxury housing. However, as of October 2020, General Ship Repair remains a bastion of shipbuilding in South Baltimore. What do you predict the Locust Point peninsula will be known for in the 21st century?
Although the famed African American lawyer and civil rights advocate George McMechen is remembered fondly for his service to the community, he is best remembered for living on McCulloh Street. In June 1910, McMechen and his family moved to 1834 McCulloh Street and the local white community reacted with outrage. The first night McMechen and his family stayed at the house on McCulloh Street, white Baltimoreans vandalized it. In the middle of the night, someone broke all the windows and flung a brick through the third-story skylight. In late 1910, white-owned newspapers reported that the vandalism occurred as a direct result of McMechen family choosing to live on McCulloh Street.
In response to the McMechen family, and several other African American families moving to McCulloh Street, the city responded with a segregation ordinance. The ordinance declared: 鈥淣o negro may take up his residence in a block within the city limits of Baltimore wherein more than half the residents are white.鈥
McMechen said of the ordinance, 鈥淚t is my opinion as a lawyer that it is clearly unconstitutional, unjust, and discriminating against the negro, although on its face it appears to be equally fair to white and black鈥.our people feel very deeply the action taken, and there is no doubt but that this feeling will shortly crystallize into a movement against the ordinance which will result in legal proceedings to have it declared void as it certainly is.鈥
McMechen, and another lawyer named Ashbie Hawkins (McMechen鈥檚 sister鈥檚 husband and legal counsel for the Baltimore NAACP), led the crusade in the courts against the ordinance. In the meantime, McMechen was forced out of his house on McCulloh St.
In 1911, Hawkins and another lawyer, Warner T. McGuinn, successfully argued that the West Ordinance was unconstitutional and it was repealed. A pattern then emerged where the Mayor and City Council would tweak the ordinance and re-establish it. McMechen, Hawkins and McGuinn would then successfully argue it was unconstitutional and the ordinance would be repealed. Another segregation ordinance would then be created.
It wouldn鈥檛 be until a Supreme Court case coming out of Kentucky that the Baltimore segregation ordinances would be overturned permanently. After 1910, the West Ordinance, often called the 鈥淏altimore idea,鈥 for promoting residential segregation proved so attractive for White Americans that it was copied in a score of other southern and border cities, including Richmond, St. Louis, and Louisville, Kentucky.
It was from Louisville that the case testing the constitutionality of segregation ordinances came to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1916. It was called Warley v. Buchanan. Buchanan was a White individual who sold a house to Warley, a Black individual. Since 8 of 10 houses were occupied by White people, Warley was not allowed to live on the block. Buchanan sued Warley in Jefferson County Circuit Court to complete the sale. Warley cited the city ordinance as the reason for non-completion of the sale.
Baltimore鈥檚 own Ashbie Hawkins filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Baltimore Branch of the NAACP and appeared before the Supreme Court for this case. After hearing and rehearing the Court made fast work of it. The Court ruled that the motive for the Louisville ordinance鈥攕eparation of races for purported reasons鈥攚as an inappropriate exercise of police power, and its insufficient purpose also made it unconstitutional.
Buchanan v. Warley is one of the most significant civil rights cases decided before the modern civil rights era. After the Supreme Court case, Maryland courts found the Baltimore segregation ordinances unconstitutional as well.
Hawkins continued to work with George McMechen until he died in 1941. McMechen continued to practice law until his death on February 22, 1961. They made an undeniable impact on our country鈥檚 legal system.
As an influential figure in Baltimore鈥檚 African American community, George McMechen served in many important appointed positions throughout his life. He served as a trustee of Morgan College from 1921 to 1939. He was also the first African American member appointed to the Board of School Commissioners. Lastly, he was the first Baltimorean elected Grand Exalted Ruler (National President) of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World. In 1972, Morgan State erected its School of Business and named it in McMechen鈥檚 honor.
The research and writing of this article was funded by two grants: one from the Maryland Heritage Areas Authority and one from the Baltimore National Heritage Area.
with research support from
A novelist, playwright, poet, and essayist, Gertrude Stein is remembered as a literary innovator who fearlessly experimented with language in the early twentieth century. Today, Gertrude Stein is still renowned as a magnet for those who would profoundly change art and literature. In 1892, at age 18, newly-orphaned Gertrude and her brother Leo moved to Baltimore. Her experiences in Baltimore paved the way for her later successes, as she wrote in her biting 1925 piece "Business in Baltimore": "Once upon a time, Baltimore was necessary." The siblings lived briefly with their Aunt Fanny Bachrach in Baltimore before moving to Massachusetts for college. In 1897, the duo truly settled in Baltimore, living at 215 East Biddle Street, marked by the traditional Baltimorean marble front steps. The unique environment of Mount Vernon introduced Stein to a variety of people and perspectives that would influence both her literature and her life. The Steins' five-bedroom rowhome was luxurious, dictating a certain lifestyle. Like their neighbors, the Steins kept servants. Through her familiarity with the neighborhood servants, who generally were African American women, along with her experience caring for African American patients during clinical rotations, Gertrude developed an understanding of "black language rhythms" and a knack for reaistic characterization of African Americans, both of which later appeared in her writing. Like their servants, Biddle Street residents also influenced Stein. The gossip that filled the parlors of Biddle Street and the affairs that occurred in the bedrooms above reappeared in several of Stein's works. For instance, Wallis Simpson of 212 East Biddle Street, future Duchess of Windsor, inspired Ida, while Stein's own relationship with May Bookstaver and the ensuing love triangle created by Bookstaver's lover, Mabel Haynes, provided the plot for the novel Q.E.D.听as well as the story "Melanctha." Life in Baltimore influenced more than just Stein's literature. Her experiences, particularly while studying medicine at Johns Hopkins University, prompted her lifelong habit of challenging societal standards. She learned to smoke cigars, confronted sexist professors (thereby earning the nickname "old battle ax"), took up boxing, rejected feminine stereotypes and instead "went flopping around...big and floppy and sandaled and not caring a damn," as one male classmate remembered. Stein left Baltimore in 1903 after leaving Hopkins following her third year of medical school. However, despite her 39-year absence, Stein claimed Baltimore as her "place of domicile" in her will, as, in her words, she was "born longer [in Baltimore] because after all everybody has to come from somewhere."
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East Baltimore Church of God, the second oldest congregation established by Lumbee Indians in the City of Baltimore, was in 1955 known as the 鈥淯pper Room鈥 Church because services were held above Gordon Cleaners at the corner of Baltimore and Wolfe streets. Sometime prior to 1961, the church ceased to meet at this location. This property was auctioned in 1963.
The first true brownstone building in Baltimore, today鈥檚 Grace & St. Peter鈥檚 Church opened its doors in 1852 as Grace Church on Park Avenue in Mount Vernon. Architecturally, it was the first church built of stone in the city and with stained glass and floor tiles imported from England, the majestic interior of this Gothic Episcopal church, designed by architect J. Crawford Neilson, harkens directly back to its Anglican origins.
In 1912, Grace Church combined with St. Peter鈥檚, then on the edge of today鈥檚 Bolton Hill neighborhood, merging high-church and low-church traditions in a single congregation. By the 1920s, what once was a place of worship mainly for prominent Baltimore families, including the nearby Garrett family of B&O Railroad fortune, had begun to change. The church at that time created a church school for Chinese immigrants who worshiped alongside many African American families who had moved to the neighborhood.
Today, the church embraces both Anglican and Western Catholic traditions and its Park Avenue complex includes a magnificent rectory and houses the Wilkes School for children per-kindergarten through fifth grade. Please
Once a bustling department store complex on North Gay Street, the Great House of Isaac Benesch and Sons has been vacant for over a decade as the Old Town Mall waits on the progress of long stalled revitalization efforts. Isaac Benesch started his business shortly after the Civil War with a furniture store operating out of a single rowhouse. In the 1880s, as dry goods dealers like Hutzler's built their 鈥済rand emporiums鈥 on the west side, Benesch acquired nearby rowhouses and began to rebuild them into a department store. By 1911, his business included three large 4-story buildings, dominating the 500 block of N. Gay Street. The store at 549-557 Old Town Mall, an Italianate brick building with large windows, still features an elegant copper sign band across the facade, proclaiming the 鈥淕reat House,鈥 perhaps added by Philadelphia architect Louis Levi in 1914. Next door at 565-571 North Gay Street is a four story, two bay Renaissance Revival building, of brick with terra cotta ornamentation designed by architect Charles E. Cassell and built in 1904 by William H. Porter. Cassell had a long list of major projects in Baltimore, including the grand Stewart鈥檚 Department Store at Howard and Lexington Streets, built in 1900. Benesch鈥檚 likely hoped Cassell could bring the same architectural magnificence to his work on the east side. More buildings went up in the 1920s with a warehouse at 600 Aisquith Street by the J.L. Robinson Construction Company, virtually unchanged from its 1925 construction. Unlike those westside department stores, however, Isaac Benesch established an early reputation for serving all customers鈥攂lack and white. One 1898 account from the听Afro-American听newspaper stated, 鈥淚saac Benesch & Sons very much appreciate the large volume of colored trade which they have, coming from all parts of the city.鈥 In 1926, when few department stores hired African Americans as salesmen, Benesch hired Josh Mitchell to sell automobile tires鈥攁nd featured him in advertisements. In the 1940s, the Afro-American gave Benesch an 鈥渙rchid鈥 for 鈥渟erving all alike.鈥 In the 1970s, several of the original buildings were demolished as the block was redeveloped for the pedestrian-only 鈥淥ld Town Mall.鈥 The Great House had closed a few years earlier, in the early 1960s, and was run as Kaufman鈥檚 Department Store until 1997.
Today, the parking lot of the West Baltimore MARC Station and the concrete highway lanes to the east dominate this site, symbols both of the weight of the past and prospects for the future. In the 1970s major demolition occurred in the corridor to the east to build the first leg in a proposed East-West expressway, envisioned as the eastern extension of Interstate 70. The route was to proceed west along a corridor directly through the Greater Rosemont communities and continue on through the heart of Gwynns Falls/Leakin Park. African American residents in this section of the city fought the road plan under the banner of RAM (Relocation Action Movement). The organization joined with city-wide expressway opponents under the umbrella of MAD (the Movement Against Destruction), a coalition that cut across lines of race, class, and differing interests in opposition to various sections of the proposed expressway system. In the late 1960s, the city condemned hundreds of houses along the corridor to the west of this site for the proposed highway. However, mounting protests initially forced the decision to designate an alternate route and eventually to abandon the section through Greater Rosemont and the parks to the west altogether. Soon, the one-mile stretch of expressway that was completed with such controversy and such cost鈥攅conomic as well as social鈥攚as being called 鈥淭he Road to Nowhere.鈥 To the west of the station, between Franklin Street and Edmondson Avenue stand 880 houses condemned by Baltimore officials for the proposed construction of the East-West Expressway in the late 1960s, little more than a decade after African Americans had seized the opportunity to acquire homes in neighborhoods formerly closed to them. Witnessing the process immediately to the east where condemnation already had occurred (and demolition was imminent) for the artery to be built between Franklin and Mulberry Streets, Greater Rosemont residents became active in the Relocation Action Movement, which united with others opposing various sections of the proposed expressway system across the city under the banner of MAD. In April 1968, civil disturbances convulsed the city in the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., adding to the general climate of heightened social tension between Baltimore鈥檚 citizens and its officials. For RAM, the highway threat was a civil rights issue. As an example, when the group鈥檚 proposal for an underground roadway to spare residences was rejected on the grounds that it would be too expensive, a member exclaimed, 鈥淚t always has been expensive to operate a segregated society.鈥 James Dilts, in a series of articles in the Sun that year, decried the logic of the expressway plan, which he believed amounted to destroying parts of the city and harming its residents, even as it promised to improve the city. Late in 1968, mounting opposition to the Greater Rosemont route led Mayor Thomas D鈥橝lesandro, III, to propose an alternative that would bypass the affected neighborhoods by following a route along the railroad line to the south. However, the following year, when the city announced a plan to sell the formerly condemned houses back to their original owners, only half took up the offer, the remainder having decided to move out for good. A 1970 Sun article referred to Rosemont as 鈥渁 once stable middle-class Negro community which was devastated by plans to build the East-West Expressway through its core.鈥