Henry Thompson was born in 1774 in Sheffield, England and came to Baltimore in 1794, where he became a member of the Baltimore Light Dragoons. He was elected captain of this company in 1809, six years after completing a house called "Clifton" in what is now Clifton Park in Baltimore City but back then was Baltimore County. By 1813, Captain Thompson had disbanded the Light Dragoons and formed a mounted company called The First Baltimore Horse Artillery. Brigadier General John Stricker soon enlisted Captain Thompson and his horsemen to act as mounted messengers traveling between Washington and Bladensburg to report on the movements of British troops and ships. The unit also became the personal guard to General Samuel Smith, who commanded the defenses during the Battle of Baltimore and Ft. McHenry in 1814. Henry Thompson contributed much to Baltimore in addition to his War of 1812 service. In 1816, he built and was president of the Baltimore and Harford Turnpike Company, now Harford Road. In 1818, he served on the Poppleton Commission that laid out the street grid in Baltimore that we have today. He was also a director of the Port Deposit Railroad, The Bank of Baltimore, the Merchant's exchange, the Board of Trade, the Baltimore Insurance Company, and, to boot, he was the recording secretary of the Maryland Agricultural Society. Later in life he served as a marshal at the dedication ceremonies of the Washington Monument and Battle Monument, and Grand Marshal of a procession commemorating the death of General Lafayette in 1834. As for Clifton Mansion, Thompson owned the property until 1835. During that time, he hosted a number of notables that include Maryland Governor Charles Ridgely of Hampton, Alexander Brown (considered America's first investment banker), Henry Clay (who early in his political career was a chief agitator for declaring war on Britain in 1812), and General Winfield Scott (who commanded forces in 1812 and later masterminded the Union's military strategy in the Civil War). In 1835, Thompson sold Clifton to a gentleman named Daniel Cobb. Thompson died shortly after, in 1837, and Cobb went broke. After failing to make his mortgage payments, Thompson's heirs reclaimed Clifton. The heirs soon sold the house and grounds to a prosperous and up and coming Baltimore merchant looking for a fine summer estate. That, of course, was Johns Hopkins, and a story for another day.
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Built primarily between 1806 and 1821, the Baltimore Basilica was the first Cathedral erected in the United States. Bishop John Carroll, America's first bishop and a cousin of Charles Carroll of Declaration of Independence signing fame, led the effort to build a cathedral in Baltimore based on "American" principles of architecture (read: not European and especially not Gothic). Bishop Carroll was lucky to connect with young architect named Benjamin Henry Latrobe, who volunteered his architectural services for the new cathedral and would later achieve the moniker "Father of American Architecture." With inspiration from the newly completed skylight in the U.S. Capitol following the vision of Thomas Jefferson, Latrobe designed what many consider to be one of the finest examples of nineteenth century architecture in the world. Latrobe and Carroll were able to complete much of the architectural original plans, but the church didn't have enough money to complete the portico by the dedication in 1821. Twenty years later, Latrobe's son, lawyer and inventor John H.B. Latrobe (who lived on Mulberry Street across from the Basilica) submitted plans for the portico's foundation but it wasn't until the 1860s that architect Eben Faxon carried out the work of completing the portico entrance. This internationally significant building has played a central role in the history of Baltimore and the Catholic Church. Along the way, it has gained recognition as a Minor Basilica (1937), national historic landmark (1972), Baltimore City historic landmark (1975), and a national shrine (1993). Most recently, the Archdiocese of Baltimore, the Basilica of the Assumption Historic Trust, and John G. Waite Associates Architects oversaw a major restoration and rehabilitation project covering nearly every square inch of the building, both inside and out. The work included the reintroduction of clear lights in the nave, restoration of the skylight, and the creation of a chapel in the undercroft.
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Opened in 1786 by Baltimore's First Presbyterian Church, the Westminster Burying Ground is the resting place for many of early Baltimore's most notable citizens, including merchants, mayors, and fifteen generals from the Revolutionary War and War of 1812. In 1852, the church that also occupies the property was built on brick piers over some of the tombs, creating what is called the "Baltimore Catacombs."
Although notables such as Sam Smith and James McHenry are buried here (bitter rivals in life, fate brought them cheek to jowl in the graveyard), the most famous eternal resident is Edgar Allan Poe. When he died in 1849, Poe was originally buried in an unmarked grave next to that of his grandfather in the back of Westminster. In 1875, Poe's body was moved to the front of the graveyard with a dedication ceremony that included the American poet Walt Whitman. Adding to the mystery that surrounds Poe and his death, Baltimore lore has it that the re-internment in 1875 got the wrong poor soul into the new grave (probably not true) and that the current monument has Poe's birth date wrong (true).
The church and graveyard are now in the care of the Westminster Preservation Trust, a private, non-profit organization established in 1977. In the early 1980s, the Trust restored the graveyard as well as the former church building, and the church is now available to rent.
Incorporated in 1873 shortly after the end of the Civil War as the "Russian Congregation B'nai Israel of Baltimore City," B'Nai Israel was formed by Eastern European Jews living at a hub of Jewish Baltimore along the Jones Falls River. The founding members were working class Baltimoreans: shoemakers, clothiers, and the like. Despite the nod to Russia in the synagogue's name, many actually hailed from Poland. Between 1880 and 1905, Baltimore's Jewish population swelled from 10,000 to 25,000, and many German congregations moved out of east Baltimore and downtown. Examples of congregations moving west included Baltimore Hebrew (1891), Oheb Shalom (1893), Har Sinai (1894), and Chizuk Amuno (1895).
B'Nai Israel took advantage of the exodus, and laid down $12,000 in 1895 to buy the synagogue it now occupies from the Chizuk Amuno congregation. While many East Baltimore congregations closed or left the city following World War II, B'Nai Israel remained, perhaps part of a Talmudic obligation to protect at least one shul in every city. After years of decline, fortunes turned in the late 1970s when the congregation began to grow and restoration work on the synagogue began.
The building dates to the late nineteenth century, before the advent of modern architecture trends in American synagogues. Its large central window, stained glass, and interior sanctuary are heavily influenced by Eastern Mediterranean and Byzantine architecture. The sanctuary's original ceiling, with frescoes akin to those in European churches, remains intact, as does a tremendous hand-carved ark in the central sanctuary.
Step inside this grand residence and find 18-foot ceilings, a spiral staircase, and ornate chandeliers. Few Americans could have afforded the Carroll Mansion in the early 1800s when Charles Carroll, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, bought this Lombard Street house for his daughter and son-in-law. Carroll, however, was in no way an ordinary citizen. In addition to being the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence and the first Catholic senator, Carroll was fabulously wealthy. He was instrumental in founding the B&O Railroad, the First and Second National Banks, and gave lavishly to build the Baltimore Basilica and Georgetown University. Before his death in 1832 in the Mansion, Carroll entertained frequently for people who came to learn about the Revolution first-hand. John H.B. Latrobe, son of the famous early American architect Benjamin Latrobe, called it "the finest house in Baltimore at the time." The building has a history as varied as its most prominent occupant. It has been a saloon, a house for Jewish immigrants, a sweatshop, a school, and a recreation center. The City first boarded it up in 1954, then restored it and operated as a history museum until 1997, when it was again boarded up. In 2002, the non-profit organization Carroll Museums, Inc. reopened the Mansion and has been restoring it since. It is currently open for tours and to rent for events.
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The Crimea Estate is the former summer home of Thomas DeKay Winans, a chief engineer of the Russian Railway between Moscow and St. Petersburg in the 19th Century. The estate features Winans' Italianate stone mansion, Orianda, as well as a gothic chapel, a "honeymoon" cottage, and a carriage house. The architectural design is said to have been inspired by Winans' French-Russian wife, Celeste Louise Revillon. An early, and now often overlooked, part of the estate is called Winans Meadow in Leakin Park. This current meadow was the site of an early milling operation along the Gwynns Falls River. An iron water wheel still remains that pumped water to the Orianda mansion. Along with the water wheel, a barn, silo, smokehouse, and root cellar also tell the story of early development in West Baltimore. There is even an intriguing battlement near the meadow that is thought to be modeled after the Battle of Balaklava where the Russian stand against the British was immortalized in Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade." Although Leakin Park has retained its original structures in a picturesque natural setting, it almost wasn't so. In the 1970s, federal and city officials planned to route Interstate 70 through the park in front of the mansion and directly through the carriage house. Saved by a group of dedicated Baltimoreans, the estate remains a central element in Leakin Park.
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With a Civil-War era mansion and a brand new visitor's center, Cylburn Arboretum is bustling with history and energy. Cylburn began as the private estate of Jesse Tyson, president of the Baltimore Chrome Works Company and a successful businessman. Tyson began building the mansion in 1863 as a summer home for himself and his mother. He completed it in 1888 at the age of 61 and after marrying the 19 year old debutante, Edyth Johns. Tyson is said to have remarked at this time, ""I have the fairest wife, the fastest horses, and the finest house in Maryland." With its Italianate design, stone from Tyson's own Bare Hills quarry in Baltimore County, and an interior of hardwood floors, grand fireplaces, and ornate plasterwork, Mr. Tyson was at least correct about the quality of his house. Not surprisingly, Jesse Tyson died before his "fair" wife. Ms. Johns continued to live in the house until her death in 1942 when Baltimore City purchased the estate for $42,300. In 1954, the property became the "Cylburn Wildflower Preserve and Garden Center," and a group of volunteers designed trails and gardens for the park. The named officially changed to "Cylburn Arboretum" in 1984, and the property now covers over 200 acres of grounds dotted with horticultural and historic sites.
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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.
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.
In 1800, Charles Carroll of Carrollton (the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence and the wealthiest signer to boot) decided to give his son (also Charles) and bride, Harriet Chew, a nice present: a country estate just north of the city. Taking his father's money but not his advice to renovate an existing farm house, the younger Charles and Harriet commissioned Homewood House. No expense was spared, and at a price tag of $40,000 (a fortune at the time), Homewood became a show place for the elite young couple.
The house is noted as one of the best examples of Federal style architecture in the country. Built on a Palladian-inspired five-part plan, Homewood is renowned for its elegant proportions, fine workmanship and materials, and the extravagant detail in all aspects of its construction, from the intricately carved wooden fireplace surrounds, doorways, and chair rails, to the marble painted baseboards and mahogany grained doors and the ornate plaster ceiling ornaments. Johns Hopkins University acquired the building, which gave rise to the "Homewood Campus" name, in 1902 and opened it as a museum in 1987.
Small in size but featuring a nationally significant story, Baltimore's Irish Railroad Workers Museum on Lemmon Street offers a rare glimpse of immigrant home life in America in the middle of the 19th century.
An avalanche of Irish immigrants hit Baltimore in the 1840s and1850s, many escaping Ireland's Great Hunger Famine of 1845-1853. Many of these immigrants settled in southwest Baltimore and promptly went to work for the vibrant Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. The B&O had located in the countryside that was then West Baltimore in 1827 and quickly built a roundhouse, station, shops, and other buildings in the years that followed. All of this construction required human labor, as did the operation of the railroad itself, and Irish immigrants came to fill the need. The Irish Shrine consists of two renovated alley houses in 900 block of Lemmon Street that were built by carpenter Charles Shipley on land leased to him by John Howard McHenry, a grandson of Col. John Eager Howard. By September 1849, all the houses had been sold to Irish households, including many who worked for the B&O Railroad 鈥 Thomas McNew, a watchman; Thomas Medcalfe, a fireman; and Dennis McFadden and Cornelius McLaughlin, laborers. One of the houses is furnished as a period house museum, reflecting the lives of the Irish-immigrant family that lived there in the 1860s. The other house offers exhibits on Irish-American history and local neighborhood life. With a lot of hard work and a lengthy law suit, a number of dedicated Baltimoreans founded the Irish Shrine (now the Irish Railroad Workers Museum) in 1997 to save the buildings from proposed demolition.
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In 1784 during the "Christmas Conference" at the Lovely Lane Meeting House in Baltimore, American Methodist was born. Surprisingly, this predated the organization of the Methodist community in England where it originated. In 1784, English Methodism founder John Wesley reluctantly agreed that Methodists in the newly formed United States of America could organize their own church. Francis Asbury was chosen to become the first General Superintendent by consecration at Barratt's Chapel in Delaware, but he demurred until a majority of Methodist preachers in the country would elect him. After a six-week, 1200 mile campaign up and down the east coast, Asbury was consecrated at Lovely Lane Meeting House in Baltimore later that year. The meeting then occupied a small structure at what is now Redwood and Calvert Streets, and relocated to Light Street in 1786. This site now contains the Merchant's Club building that houses the Baltimore Culinary Institute. Nearly a hundred years later, in 1883, the church's pastor, Dr. John F. Goucher, hired Stanford White, the famous Victorian architect, to build a new church as a centennial monument to the founding of Methodism. The present building at 22nd and St. Paul Streets was completed and dedicated in November 1887. After experiencing hard times in the 1960s and 1970s as much of its congregation moved away from the area, the congregation began restoration work in earnest in 1984 on the 200th anniversary of the founding of Methodism here in Baltimore. The work included refurbishing the extraordinary domed ceiling that depicts the morning sky with the stars and planets as they were at 3:00 am, November 6, 1887 the date on which the church was dedicated.
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On June 16, 1808, Elizabeth Bayley Seton arrived at St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore on the same day that Bishop John Carroll, the first bishop in the Unites States, dedicated the seminary's newly built chapel. Elizabeth came to Baltimore from New York to set up a boarding school for girls. During her one-year stay in what is now the Mother Seton House, she took the vows of a Daughter of Charity, thus cementing her conversion and commitment to Catholicism. Following her start in Baltimore, Mother Seton, as Bishop Carroll dubbed her, went on to found Saint Joseph's Academy and Free School in Emmitsburg, Maryland, the first free school for girls in America, and the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph, the first apostolic community of women in the United States.
The St. Mary's Spiritual Center, as the location is now called, is also the original home of St. Mary's Seminary, the first seminary in America. The seminary has trained a number of notables, including: Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange, a Haitian immigrant who founded the Oblate Sisters of Providence (the first African American Catholic community) and St. Francis High School; Father Gabriel Richard, who is called "The Second Founder of Detroit"; and Father Michael McGivney, who went on to found the Knights of Columbus in Connecticut.
Old Otterbein Church, built in 1785, is one of the oldest churches still standing in Baltimore. With its classic brick and white trim tower (with bells brought over from Germany), the church shows off its landmark stature for countless Orioles fans and anybody traveling around downtown and Camden Yards.
Old Otterbein got its start in 1771, when a group of Baltimoreans erected a temporary chapel to house the German Evangelical Reformed Church. A few years later, the church hired Philip William Otterbein as pastor. Otterbein had come from Germany to Pennsylvania, and accepted the position in Baltimore as his fifth pastoral duty.
Otterbein apparently took to Baltimore, preaching at the church for 39 years and staying in the city for the rest of his life. Otterbein was a remarkable man. In 1784, he assisted Francis Asbury in founding the Methodist Episcopal Church, and in 1800, he and Martin Boehm helped found the United Brethren in Christ, with Otterbein's church in Baltimore as the cradle of the new denomination.
Members of Baltimore鈥檚 German immigrant community played a central role in the defense of Baltimore during the War of 1812 from Peter Gold and George Decker who volunteered as superintendents overseeing the construction of fortifications, Brigadier General John Stricker who commanded the Maryland Militia at the Battle of North Point (and later became Vice-President of the German Society of Maryland), and the Baltimore Jagers and die Union Jagers - two companies of German immigrants commanded in the German language. Many of these men, along with their families, worshipped with Philip William Otterbein at what is now Old Otterbein Church. Otterbein himself died less than a year before the Battle of Baltimore and remains buried in the churchyard with a monument placed over his grave in 1913.
The present church structure was erected in 1785, with the nearby parsonage in 1811 and the city's first German Sunday School in 1827. The interior of the church has been remodeled at various times, but the sanctuary remains the oldest in continuous use in Baltimore.
There are few places where you can stand in the middle of a room and almost everything you see is made or decorated by Tiffany: glass, paint, finishes, etc. St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church on St. Paul Street, with its entire interior designed by the Tiffany Company of New York, is one of them.
In the 1890's, the St. Mark's congregation engaged architect Joseph Evans Sperry (who would later go on to design Baltimore's Bromo Seltzer Tower, among other notable buildings) to help them build a new church. Sperry came up with a Romanesque design that is known for its heavy stones, arched doors and windows, and short columns. Romanesque design comes from central and western Europe, where many of St. Mark's congregants also traced their lineages. To this day, an Estonian congregation called EELK Baltimore Markuse Kogudus continues to use St. Mark's for worship each month. In 1898, the church was completed and since then has been one of Baltimore's outstanding examples of Romanesque architecture.
On the inside, St. Mark's engaged the Tiffany Glass Decorating Company, under the direction of Rene de Quelen (Tiffany's head artist), to come up with a plan that was equally fitting to the grand architecture. De Quelen used a Byzantine approach, with deep colors, lots of jewels, and many mosaics. Louis Comfort Tiffany, son of Tiffany's founder and then head of the company, had studied art in Paris and had spent time in Spain and North Africa where he learned about this approach to decorating, and is thought to have helped direct de Quelen in his approach. The interior boasts Tiffany windows and Rubio marble inlaid with mother of pearl for the altar, pulpit, and lectern.
Who knew that tucked away inside the Mount Pleasant public golf course off Hillen Road sits a remarkably well preserved 150 year-old Methodist chapel?
Taylor's Chapel has its roots to the Taylor family, which is one of the oldest in Maryland, stretching back to the 1600s. As brothers, John Taylor was one of the first commissioners of Baltimore County and Thomas Taylor ("Colonel Taylor" at the time) was a councilor to Lord Baltimore. The chapel was built on a tract Colonel Taylor's land called "The Ridge" where William Penn and Lord Baltimore first met to resolve their dispute over the boundary line between the colonies. The Chapel has its origins in a Quaker meeting house that likely was built by Joseph Taylor in the mid-1700s on his property, called Taylor's Range (then in Baltimore County). Joseph was disowned by the Society of Friends for "speaking evil" of some fellow Quakers and refusing to apologize, and went off and built his own Quaker meeting house a little further away on the corner of his property. The Taylor Family kept this wooden building as a meeting house for a number of generations. Interestingly, the Quaker family allowed Bishop Francis Asbury, a leader in the founding of Methodism in America, to preach there in 1777. The conversion was surely slower that Bishop Asbury would have liked, but about thirty years later, the worshippers at the wooden building did indeed switch from Quakers to Methodists. In 1853, Elijiah Taylor inherited the property and tore down the log meeting house to build the Methodist chapel that stands today. By 1930, however, regular services had ceased and the building sat vacant until the early 1960s, when a group of volunteers from St. John's of Hamilton United Methodist Church began taking care of it. From parent to child over a number of generations, this group still acts as caretakers of this little known jewel, and opens it up for weddings, baptisms and other events. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983, and still contains the original 1853 frescoes on its walls, among many other original features.
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In 1869, the Freemasons finished a new Grand Lodge for the State of Maryland on Charles Street in downtown Baltimore, with each room more decorated than the last. Originally designed by Edmund G. Lind, who also designed the Peabody Institute in the Mount Vernon neighborhood, the Masonic Temple is a testament to architectural wonder.
The building boasts what seem like miles of marble floors, stained-glass windows, painted ceilings, and decorative columns. The building's primary 19 rooms have names that portray a litany of architectural styles and historical frameworks that were important to the Masons: Oriental Room, Marble Room, Corinthian Room, and even an Edinburgh Hall. Each is done in a different architectural style and glamor. The building, completed in 1869, caught fire on Christmas Day 1890 and again in January of 1908. Although much of the interior was destroyed, the thick walls saved the structure and the decorations were brought back each time.
The Masons completed repairs to the building in 1909 following a design by Joseph Evans Sperry, who also designed the city's landmark Bromo Seltzer Tower. The building then spent over eighty years with little outward drama until the Masons moved out to a new headquarters in 1994. The city spent the next few years devising plans to raze the structure for a parking garage. Luckily, the William C. Smith Company bought the building in 1998 and with the help of architects Murphy and Dittenhafer, completed a complete overhaul following exacting preservation standards. The building today serves as a stunning conference facility.
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.
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.
Erected in stages between 1890 and 1910, the former H.F. Miller & Son Company building consists of a 77,000 square foot brick manufacturing plant that occupies half of the city block bounded by 26th Street on the south, 27th Street on the north, North Howard Street on the west and Mace Street on the east. The complex incorporates the original, four story, "L" shaped brick building (1890-1895), a large three story brick addition (1910) and a two story brick stable that was remodeled as an open storage shed in 1928.
The H.F. Miller & Son Company building represented a significant era in the city's industrial history. In the late nineteenth century the company was one of the largest manufactures of tin boxes in the United States. Between 1890 and 1895 the company erected a state of the art industrial facility which incorporated new types of mechanization that greatly improved the efficiency of the can making industry. The company distributed its wares widely to Canadian, Mexican, European, African and South American markets, as well as in the U.S.
In 1953 the company ceased operations on the North Howard Street site. Between 1954 and 1985 the Miller Factory building was divided into several spaces. A series of businesses including the Commander Garment Company, Rombro Brothers, Ember Reuben and the Majestic Furniture Company occupied the building. During the 1990 census, the building served as the local headquarters of the U.S. Census Bureau.
Since the completion of the census, the building stood vacant until Seawall Development Company began renovations. Combining green construction and a focus on creating apartments for teachers, Miller's Court combines great historic preservation work with an interesting new approach to finding a new life for older buildings.
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 January 1799, the Maryland Legislature approved a petition for a charter to incorporate a society of physicians in Maryland to be known as the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of the State of Maryland. As written, this special act of the Maryland Legislature was intended to "prevent the citizens (of Maryland) from risking their lives in the hands of ignorant practitioners or pretenders to the healing art."
The society became the seventh of its kind in the country, and some of its notable achievements include the creation in 1807 of what became the University of Maryland School of Medicine, the establishment in 1830 of a medical library, and the creation of the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery in 1839 that was the first institution of its kind in the world. MedChi has been in its current building since 1909 and Dr. William Osler, co-founder of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, is given credit for the creation of the MedChi library that is still housed there today.
When Dr. Osler arrived in Baltimore in 1889 he was disappointed to find that the Society's library consisted of only 7,000 volumes of outdated and dilapidated books. He convinced the Society to purchase a building on Eutaw Street for use as a library but the collection soon outgrew the location.
The Society purchased a lot at 1211 Cathedral Street and dedicated the current building in 1909. Modeled after the medical society libraries of Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City, the building included a roof-top apartment (described by the Baltimore Sun as the "first penthouse in Baltimore") and a garden for a full-time, live-in librarian. The building was later renovated in 1962 by University of Maryland architect Henry P. Hopkins.
On August 15, 1814, almost exactly one month before the Battle of Baltimore and the bombing of Ft. McHenry in the War of 1812, Rembrandt Peale opened "Peale's Baltimore Museum and Gallery of Paintings" on Holliday Street in downtown Baltimore. Designed by noted Baltimore architect Robert Carey Long, the building is the first purpose-built museum in the western hemisphere. Taking after a natural history museum that his father, Charles Wilson Peale, started in Philadelphia in 1786, Rembrandt Peale displayed collections of fossils and other specimens, as well as portraits of many of the country's founding fathers that his family had painted. As the British made plans to attack and the War of 1812 was on the city's threshold, portraits of the Revolutionary War heroes were highly popular, and Peale was able to charge 25 cents for admission. In September of 1814, Baltimore turned back the British invasion on land and sea, providing a critical turning point in the war and likely sparing the city from destruction. The British, after all, had burned the nation's capital just a few miles south after Washington fell the month before. The Peale Museum capitalized on patriotic fervor, and put a number of bombs and shells that were collected from the failed British bombardment on display. In doing this, Peale became the first person to display samples of Britain's firepower, which of course Francis Scott Key immortalized as the bombs bursting in air in the Star Spangled Banner. Some years later, in 1830, Peale's museum was still capitalizing on the War of 1812 when they displayed the original flag that flew over Ft. McHenry, borrowed from a willing Mrs. Louisa Armistead, the widow of Lt. Colonel George Armistead. Lt. Colonel Armistead commanded Ft. McHenry during the war and reportedly ordered an extra large flag to fly at the Fort as a pointed challenge to the British. From its earliest days embracing Baltimore's war effort, the Peale Museum has been intertwined with the city's history. The building served as a museum from 1814 until 1830. It then became the Baltimore City Hall until 1875 when the current city hall building was erected. After 1875, the museum had various uses, including as the Colored School Number 1 for African American children, and then in 1931, it returned to its origins as a museum, becoming the "Municipal Museum of Baltimore." Fittingly, the Municipal Museum focused on Baltimore City history. In 1985, the museum underwent a physical renovation and was reborn as the center of the "City Life Museums." With exhibits on Baltimore's historic gems, such as the H.L. Mencken House and Phoenix Shot Tower, to the rowhouses and front steps that help define working class life in Baltimore, the City Life Museums lasted until 1997 when the enterprise closed. Today, the Peale Museum is empty and awaiting the next chapter in its long and storied service to Baltimore.
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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.
In 1961, the cornerstone of the Baltimore Civic Center (as it was then called) was laid, enclosing a time capsule with notes from President John F. Kennedy, Maryland Governor Millard Tawes, and Baltimore Mayor Harold Grady. Located on the site of the former Old Congress Hall where the Continental Congress met in 1776, the arena opened a year later to great acclaim as part of a concerted effort to revitalize downtown Baltimore. Through ups and downs and a number of renovations, the arena has become woven into the fabric of the city.
In its early years, Baltimore鈥檚 professional hockey team (the Baltimore Clippers) played here, as did the Baltimore Bullets, the city鈥檚 former basketball team. In 1966, Dr. Martin Luther King delivered a speech called "Race and the Church" at the arena as part of a gathering of Methodist clergy, and in 1989 the arena hosted the U.S. National Figure Skating Championships. And then there are the concerts. On Sunday, September 13, 1964 the Beatles played back-to-back shows at the arena to throbbing young Baltimoreans, and the arena is reportedly one of the only indoor venues in the U.S. still standing where the Fab Four played. In the 1970s, Led Zeppelin played the arena and shot a few scenes for their movie 鈥淭he Song Remains the Same鈥 backstage. Also in the 1970s, the Grateful Dead performed many shows here, including a performance where they played the song 鈥淭he Other One鈥 for a reportedly record forty minutes.
Finally in 1977, Elvis Presley performed at the arena just weeks before he died. The tickets for the show sold out in 2 陆 hours, and although there were no untoward incidents reported while The King was onstage, he did apparently lose his lunch in a corridor in the back.
The Mansion House, built by Revolutionary War Colonel Nicholas Rogers, has stood in what is now Druid Hill Park since 1801. The house is the third to stand in this location. Originally a castle known as 鈥淎uchentorolie,鈥 built by Rogers鈥 ancestors, occupied the hill but had burned sometime during the war. Rogers studied architecture in Scotland and most likely became familiar with Druids鈥 love of nature and hilltops and selected the name 鈥淒ruid Hill鈥 for his estate.
The house was initially planned to be a summer home but during its construction the family home at Baltimore and Light Streets burned and it was decided to use the Druid Hill house year-round. The Mansion remained in the Rogers family until the mid-1800s, when Rogers鈥 grandson sold the house and lot to Baltimore City for $121,000 in cash and $363,000 in City of Baltimore stock. One stipulation of the sale was that the family burial plot remain property of the family, and the plot is still in place today in the park.
The Mansion House has seen many rebirths. In 1863, during the park movement in Baltimore City, the house was greatly modified. Under the direction of John H. B. Latrobe, it was turned into a pavilion and updated in the Victorian style. By 1935, the porches were enclosed and the house became a restaurant. In the 1940s, the building was used as a day school for the Young Men and Women鈥檚 Hebrew Association.
The Zoo, which had begun developing around the mansion beginning in 1867, used the building as its bird house from the 1950s until its restoration in 1978. The restoration efforts took the house back to its 1860s design. Just last year, the Mansion underwent its most recent restoration and repair work, including much needed wood restoration and structural shoring. The building today houses the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore鈥檚 administrative offices and event rental space.
Erected high on a hill above the Gunpowder River Valley, Perry Hall Mansion dominated life in northeastern Baltimore County in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Built in the 1770s by Harry Dorsey Gough, Perry Hall was named after the family castle near Birmingham England. The sixteen-room home, the seat of a vast plantation, soon became one of the leading houses in colonial Maryland. The mansion, considered a 鈥渟ister鈥 house to near by Hampton Mansion, turned from a house of raucous parties to a place of more reserved pleasure as Gough and his wife, Prudence, became ardent supporters of the early Methodist movement that had strong roots in Maryland.
Gough became a distinguished planter, a member of Maryland鈥檚 House of Delegates, and on the board of one of Maryland鈥檚 first orphanages. After Gough鈥檚 death in 1808, the mansion remained in the family for nearly fifty years. It was sold to a group of investors in 1852 that carved the plantation into lots for houses, many of which went to German immigrants. By 2001, the estate had dwindled to four acres and the house was sold to Baltimore County for use as a museum and community center. The County completed the first stage of restoration in 2004, and exterior restoration won an award from the Preservation Alliance of Baltimore County as an 鈥渙utstanding public project.鈥 The Friends are continuing with the restoration of this stately home.
The Gwynns Falls first saw industrial development as early as the late 1700s and, by 1808, the small industrial village began to form around an early paper mill along the water where Dickeyville sits today. Although few of these early stone structures remain, the village endured and grew in the mid 1800s when the Wethered Brothers, owners of the mills, began building homes for their workers and made other improvements for the community. The Wethereds sold off small lots to private owners, many of whom built their own houses along with public buildings such as a fraternal hall, a general store, and churches. The diversity of worker housing and industrial buildings created over time resulted in a uniquely diverse architecture that is at the heart of the historic village鈥檚 captivating character today. In the 1930s, however, the isolated mill village was rocked by change thanks to the start of the Great Depression and the introduction of electrified industrial facilities that brought older mills like those on the Gwynns Falls to a stop. In 1934, the entire stock of buildings was sold at auction and bought by a group called the Title Holding Company. The new owners hired Palmer and Lamdin, noted local architects from the Roland Park Company, to build new houses and renovate existing ones, using the Roland Park Company as its sales agent. A rush of new residents decided they wanted their community to resemble an English village in design and name鈥攎aking Dickeyville one of Baltimore鈥檚 earliest attempts at historic restoration. The new homeowners added many historic details such as gas-lamps, Belgian block gutters, and picket fences, and gave their streets names evoking another era鈥攍ike Pickwick Road named for an English village. Dickeyville residents have worked hard for several generations to maintain and build from the village鈥檚 historic buildings and character. Standing in the center of the community today, you might swear you were in the middle of an nineteenth century village in the Cotswalds.
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John McDonogh, a Baltimore-born merchant and philanthropist, was born in 1779 and died in 1850, bequeathing half of his estate to the City of Baltimore to educate children. However, since the public school system already existed in Baltimore, the mayor and city council used the funds to endow a 鈥渟chool farm鈥 for poor boys of good character. Mr. McDonogh had envisioned such a school in his handwritten will dated 1838.
In 1872, a tract of 835 acres鈥攅ssentially the same land that comprises the campus today鈥攚as purchased for $85,000 for the school鈥檚 establishment. McDonogh School was founded on November 21, 1873 with the arrival of twenty-one poor boys from Baltimore City. From the beginning, the boys followed a semi-military system, which provided leadership opportunities and ensured order. Major milestones in McDonogh鈥檚 history signaled change. The first paying students arrived in 1922 and day students in 1927. The semi-military program was dropped in 1971, and the first female students enrolled in 1975.
Today, McDonogh is a non-denominational, college preparatory, co-educational day and boarding school. The school calls many accomplished athletes alumni. They include tennis-pro and sports commentator Pam Shriver, Orioles pitcher Brian Erbe, and equestrian Olympic gold medalist Bruce Davidson.
The Clifton Park Valve House on St. Lo Drive in Clifton Park is a magnificent Gothic revival stone and tile-roofed structure built between 1887 and 1888. It was built to house the machinery used in the operation of Lake Clifton, which was once part of the city鈥檚 water supply and was connected to Lake Montebello to the north by a 108-inch underground pipe. Large wheels were set underneath the floor of the Valve House to regulate the flow of water from Lake Montebello. Lake Clifton began to be filled and developed with Lake Clifton High School in 1962. No longer needed, the Valve House was abandoned at that time. Designed in the style of a small medieval cathedral, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. By then it was already in a state of disrepair and 糖心影视 first recognized it as endangered. Baltimore City owns the building, and in 2003 a private developer began plans for the restoration and reuse of the building. This effort did not mature, and the City continues to own the building.
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