Founded in 1863 by German immigrants Ludwig Hilgartner and Gottfried Schimpf, Hilgartner Stone has made some of the nation鈥檚 finest stonework for over one hundred and fifty years. Of course, the company has made a unique mark on both Baltimore鈥檚 sculpture and architecture during that time. The company鈥檚 work can be found at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Greenmount Cemetery, Walters Art Museum, Maryland Institute College of Art, the Baltimore War Memorial鈥攁long with other major landmarks. The company鈥檚 most widely used product, however, may also be one of the most humble: the city鈥檚 iconic marble steps. Born in Hessen, Germany in 1832, Ludwig H. Hilgartner immigrated to the United States at age nineteen in 1851. Hilgartner found work as a stone-cutter and, in 1863, worked with stonemason Gottfried Schimpf to form a new stone company, Schimpf and Hilgartner. By 1870, the company maintained an office on Lexington Street in downtown Baltimore and a busy workshop at the southwest corner of Pine and Mulberry Streets. Just a few years later, in 1873, Hilgartner bought out Schimpf. By the next decade, Hilgartner鈥檚 two sons were learning the business as apprentices and eventually joined the firm, changing the name to L. Hilgartner and Sons. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Hilgartner鈥檚 thirty horsepower stone-cutting engine turned Baltimore County marble into thousands of steps to supply the city鈥檚 building boom. The company grew over the years to such an extent that by 1910, it opened a branch office in Chicago. Hilgartner even added a marble purchasing agency in Carrara, Italy and a workshop in Los Angeles to feed the demand created by new aqueduct projects and a burgeoning movie business in California. The onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s hit Hilgartner hard. The company was able to survive thanks to business from the Dupont Company, which had plenty of money and did a lot of building, taking advantage of cheaper prices for labor and materials at the time. All the same, the company had to layoff a substantial portion of its workforce and close some of its factories. Hilgartner continued to shrink until 1971 when the firm was sold. Once the largest finisher of slab marble in the U.S., Hilgartner had shrunk to just seven employees. Over the last thirty years, the firm has slowly come back to life. Though much of Hilgartner鈥檚 stone work has been on a grand scale, some of its smallest works are marble door stops. Probably made with scrap marble, they were popular at the turn of the last century. They made a brief resurgence in 1976 when Hilgartner offered them at the Baltimore City Fair, where the company set up a booth to showcase its work. The City Fair, begun in 1970, was held for 21 years as a venue to showcase Baltimore鈥檚 neighborhoods and institutions. The small door stops were so popular that Hilgartner started receiving orders for them to commemorate weddings, births, and other special occasions. The company鈥檚 current owner, Tom Doyle, purchased the firm in 1986 and led the business to grow and take on large projects again. One of Hilgartner鈥檚 recent projects was the conversion the former Maryland Masonic Grand Lodge on Charles Street into 鈥淭he Grand鈥 event venue. When they started on the project, Hilgarten鈥檚 masons were surprised to find a room elaborately decorated with a wide array of marble. A little research revealed that the room began in the early twentieth century as a Hilgartner showroom that promoted the company鈥檚 offerings. Today, the room is back in operation as one of the most extravagantly decorated ladies rooms visitors are likely ever to see. Good fortune has played no small part in keeping Hilgartner Stone alive for over 150 years. If it wasn鈥檛 for a move from downtown to south Baltimore in the early years of the twentieth century, the business would have burned down with the rest of the heart of Baltimore during the 1904 fire. Since it became one of the few stone companies still in business after the fire, it flourished during the rebuilding. In addition to restoring stone in old buildings, such as St. Ignatius Church on Calvert Street, today Hilgartner also does plenty of new construction like a chapel in St. Patrick鈥檚 Cathedral in New York City and a new floor under a dinosaur exhibit at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. The company left its long-time home on Sharp Street in 1975 to move to 101 W. Cross Street, and, in 2016, moved again to the current location on Severn Street.
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More than just a road, Hilton Parkway was inspired by the advice of renowned landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. and is a testament to the transformative investment of the New Deal in Baltimore.
In the 1930s, the Gwynns Falls blocked traffic between the northwestern suburbs and the growing rowhouse neighborhoods along Edmondson Avenue. In his influential 1904 report on the city's park system, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. i recommended the development of Hilton Parkway as a scenic path across the landscape.
Support from the New Deal-era Public Works Administration enabled the construction of the parkway in 1938. It included two bridges, the largest of which spanned 390 feet with arches up to 90 feet.
Designed by noted Scottish American theatre architect Thomas Lamb, the Hippodrome Theatre opened in 1914 as one of the first theatres in the United States to operate both as a movie house and a vaudeville performance venue. Local theatre impresarios Marion Pearce and Philip Scheck (who owned six theatres and exclusively distributed Hollywood films), commissioned the theater on the site where the nineteenth century luxury hotel Eutaw House (1835) once stood.
The original theatre seated 3,000 people and visitors entered the grand building through glorious doors that featured stained glass transoms, opening into red carpeted rooms adorned with painted gold plasterwork and heavy crimson curtains. The Hippodrome's opening night featured a screening of the film "The Iron Master," vaudeville acts, a man juggling a barrel with his feet, and a group of four performing elephants. Pearce and Scheck operated the theatre until 1917, when it was sold to the Lowe's Theatre Chain, who held it until 1924.
By 1920, around 30,000 people visited the theater every week鈥攐ne of the most well-attended theaters in the city. After a prosperous decade, in which the theatre often featured three shows a day, declining attendance put the Hippodrome into receivership in 1931. L. Edward Goldman purchased the property, plus debts, for a mere $14,000 and hired Philadelphian, Isidor "Izzy" Rappaport, to manage the ailing venue.
During Rappaport's tenure, the Hippodrome saw a second golden age. Rappaport, who later bought the Hippodrome himself, oversaw the installation of a grand new marquee , outfitted the theatre with new seats, and brought in numerous notable acts, such as Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, and many others, securing its reputation as one of America's premier vaudeville houses. The lure of new, high-paying gigs in Las Vegas along with the arrival of television and televised variety shows in the 1950s, however, brought the demise of many vaudeville houses across the country and the Hippodrome held its final live show in 1959. Business continued to decline in the 1970s and 1980s and though it had become the last operating movie theatre on the west side of Baltimore's downtown, the Hippodrome shut its doors in 1990.
Fortunately, this landmark theater has been reborn, reopening in 2004 as the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center, combining new construction with the preservation and reuse of the Western National Savings Bank, the Eutaw Savings Bank, and the original Hippodrome Theatre. The Performing Arts Center has brought the Hippodrome back as a state-of-the-art showcase featuring touring Broadway shows and much more.
In 1942, after taking a powerful loss during the early years of the Great Depression, the Hochschild Kohn & Co. Department Store was finally ready to expand. An anchor for this planned growth was their brand-new warehouse at 520 Park Avenue that housed all of the sundry items that the department store offered.
Founded in 1897 by Max Hochschild and brothers Benno and Louis Kohn, Hochschild Kohn was the first of Baltimore鈥檚 big department stores to expand beyond the downtown shopping district of Howard and Lexington Streets. The company established its first suburban store in Edmondson Village (1947), then another on York Road and E. Belvedere Avenue (1948). It eventually had stores in Towson, Harford Mall, and beyond.
The warehouse on Park Avenue is a massive building of reinforced concrete. More impressive than the building鈥檚 size is that it got built at all. In 1942, the United States had just entered World War II and the federal government strictly rationed building materials, including the concrete and steel the building needed. Company records indicate that it took vice president Walter Sondheim (who went on to lead the integration of Baltimore鈥檚 school system after Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 among many other civic contributions) pleading with the U.S. War Department that the building justified an allocation of construction materials as it would serve as a distribution center. Sondheim鈥檚 persuasion worked, and the building opened and operated as a warehouse and furniture showroom until 1983.
In 1983, the Bank of Baltimore purchased the building and converted it into offices. In 2014, the building underwent another conversion when Marks, Thomas Architects, Kinsley Construction, and The Time Group transformed the building into 171 apartment units with commercial space on the ground floor.
Today, the one-time furniture showroom and department store warehouse that defied war time rationing is now a hub of activity at the edge of the Mount Vernon neighborhood.
In 1975, Earl Brooks (Lumbee) purchased a storefront building at 207 S. Broadway and opened Hokahey Indian Trading Post with his friend, Solomon Maynor (Coharie). The store primarily sold silver and turquoise Indian jewelry purchased in New Mexico. Brooks sold the property in 1977 and it is part of El Salvador Restaurant today.
The market was conceived in 1835 after piano makers Joseph Newman and his brother Elias Newman were given permission by the city to erect a market on the 1100 block of Hollins Street. In 1838, winds from a severe storm destroyed the original market, which was rebuilt the following year. The market found success in the following decades and expanded in 1864 with the creation of the current Italianate building, designed by architect George Frederick.
Augusta T. Chissell was one of the most influential activists in the women鈥檚 suffrage movement in Maryland. She lived in the red painted row house at the corner of Druid Hill Ave and McMechen St. Through her tireless participation in important civil rights organizations, she was able to give women of color a voice in the movement.聽 Born in Baltimore in 1880, Augusta Theodosia Lewis briefly worked making hats for friends before she married Dr. Robert Garland Chissell in the 1910s. Robert Chissell was a prominent physician and an executive committee member for the Maryland Medical, Dental, and Pharmaceutical Association. By 1917, the Chissells had moved into the house at 1534 Druid Hill Ave. At that point, Augusta was already heavily involved in advocating for civil rights for African Americans. She was one of the founding members of the Baltimore branch of the NAACP, and was its first vice-president in 1912.聽 Beyond this already impressive achievement, she also established herself as one of the most important African American activists in the women鈥檚 suffrage movement. White women鈥檚 suffrage activists often excluded the voices and interests of women of color. This led many African American women to form their own suffrage organizations. One of these organizations was the Progressive (or sometimes Colored) Women鈥檚 Suffrage Club (PWSC), which Chissell鈥檚 friend, Estelle Young, founded in 1915. The PWSC stressed the importance of women of all races being given the right to vote. Yet another group was the DuBois Circle, which was (and still is) a group of prominent women of color from Baltimore and Washington D.C. that met to discuss arts such as literature and music. More importantly, it was involved in supporting suffrage and other rights for women of all backgrounds. It did this mainly through academically supporting community youth, especially through scholarships. Chissell鈥檚 next door neighbor, Margaret Hawkins (1532 Druid Hill Ave), was the Circle鈥檚 first president when it was founded in 1906.聽 Chissell served in important roles in both of these groups. She was an officer in the PWSC, as well as a member of the Dubois Circle鈥檚 Executive Committee from 1921 to 1935, and its Executive Secretary from 1930 to 1940. She also dedicated her time to serving with the Women鈥檚 Cooperative Civic League, which organized grassroots efforts to bring about change by spreading awareness about a variety of issues affecting Baltimore. They did this mainly by handing out pamphlets and organizing committee fundraisers to get Baltimoreans interested and involved in supporting their cause. They also organized a flower mart in West Baltimore. Chissell served as the chair of the Flower Mart committee in the 1930s, as well as of the indoor flower show committee. She was a networker and a prominent member in her community. Because of this, she had connections with many other important African American women鈥檚 rights activists. She would even invite Hawkins, Young, and other activists to her house for meetings and organizing events. Once the 19th Amendment was adopted into the Constitution in 1920 securing a woman鈥檚 right to vote, Chissell continued to be an advocate for other fundamental women鈥檚 issues. For instance, she wrote a weekly column in the Afro-American called 鈥淎 Primer for Women Voters.鈥 The column focused on giving advice and answering questions about voting for women of color. She was also involved with the Women鈥檚 Auxiliary of the Baltimore Urban League, serving as its president in 1936. During Chissell鈥檚 time as president, the Women鈥檚 Auxiliary focused heavily on getting white women involved with combating racial inequity. Her involvement with many different activist groups led the Afro-American to describe her as a 鈥済o-getter鈥 in 1931. Augusta Chissell passed away on May 14th, 1973 around the age of 92. Her devotion to social justice and humanitarianism never wavered throughout her long life. Up until her death, she continued to be an important part of the NAACP and the DuBois Circle. Because of the sheer influence and scope of her work, Chissell was inducted into the Maryland Women鈥檚 Hall of Fame in March 2019. Later that year, the Maryland Women鈥檚 Heritage Center dedicated a historical marker to both Chissell and her neighbor, Margaret Hawkins. The marker was placed in the front yard of 1534 Druid Hill Ave, Chissell鈥檚 home for much of her nearly 60 years of activism. 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.
There are very few people who have made an impact on American popular culture like Tupac Shakur. His music served to inspire a generation of musicians--music that was inevitably shaped by his time in Baltimore. Although Shakur did not grow up in Baltimore, the years he spent here marked an important point in his life where he began to transition from a child to an adult. At 14, Shakur and his family moved to Baltimore from the Bronx. The family made their home in the North Baltimore neighborhood of Pen Lucy. They lived in a small first-floor apartment in a traditional brick row house on Greenmount Ave.聽 In Baltimore, Shakur had the opportunity to share his talent with the community. In November 1985, the Enoch Pratt Free Library sponsored a rap contest and encouraged participants to rap about the library to be eligible for a cash prize. Shakur, alongside his friend Dana Smith, created the winning song, 鈥淟ibrary Rap.鈥 Eventually, Shakur teamed up with several more friends to form a new group, Born Busy. With Born Busy, Shakur made his very first rap recordings. In Charm City, Shakur took his very first steps into rap. At this time, he had no idea he would become a visionary leader of the budding genre.聽 For eighth grade, Shakur attended Roland Park Middle School. For high school, Shakur was originally enrolled at Dunbar High School. However, he soon transferred to the Baltimore School for the Arts, where his talent as a performer had a place to shine as a theater major. At school, Shakur practiced his rapping skills. In the days before social networking, Shakur would write raps and share them with his classmates for feedback. Friends and teachers recognized his star potential. Richard Pilcher, who taught at the School for the Arts noted, 鈥淵ou didn鈥檛 forget Tupac. There鈥檚 no two ways about it, he had charisma for days.鈥澛 Although Tupac Shakur will always be remembered as a West Coast rapper, his short time in Baltimore was crucial to his musical and stylistic development. In an interview Shakur said of his time in Baltimore, 鈥淢an, I would have been a totally different person had I not been exposed to these things.鈥 In the summer of 1988, Shakur and his family left Baltimore behind for another fresh start. Shakur would go on to become one of the top fifty best selling musical artists of all time. Sadly, Tupac passed away in 1996 after being shot in a drive by shooting. In 2002, Shakur was post-humanosly inducted into the Hip-Hop Hall of Fame.聽
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.
The Hotel Brexton was built in 1881 for Samuel Wyman, a wealthy Baltimore merchant. The six-story Brexton was built as a residential hotel in the Queen Anne Style, with Baltimore pressed brick and Scotch sandstone. Noted architect Charles Cassell designed the building. Cassell was a founding member of the Baltimore Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and the designer of the Stafford Hotel on Mount Vernon Place, Stewart's Department Store on Howard Street, and the First Church of Christ Scientist on University Parkway.
This beautiful building sat vacant for over two decades before RWN Development (and local architect Donald Kann) completed a top-to-bottom restoration in 2010. The work included replacement of over two hundred windows that had rotted or disappeared and the restoration of the original spiral stair.
The Hotel now has twenty-nine rooms (including a "Wallis Warfield Simpson" suite, named after the hotel's most famous occupant) and is part of the Historic Hotels of America network.
Tracey Clark and Ben Riddleberger purchased the 1885 gas valve building, historically known as the Chesapeake Gas Works, in 2005 to house their architectural salvage business鈥擧ousewerks. Riddleberger and Clark have since stabilized and restored the long vacant building (also known as Bayard Station) and have highlighted its many fine details. These include ornamental plaster and woodwork, fireplaces, ten-foot high Palladian windows, and granite walls on the lower level.
Bayard Station was once the headquarters for the Chesapeake Gas Company of Baltimore City, which merged with several other companies eventually becoming BGE. During the station's heyday, the gas works spread over 14 acres. The complex included the Valve House (Housewerks); four large telescoping holding tanks, called "gasometers;" and a series of processing buildings, of which one remains today across Hamburg Street. The gas was manufactured, stored in the gasometers, and then piped into the valve house where it was compressed before being directed into the main lines of the city. (The pipe for the Hamburg Street Line is still visible in the cellar!)
Riddleberger and Clark extensively researched the history of the building and proudly display early images throughout their store. In addition, they worked with the Pigtown neighborhood in 2006 to have the building included on the National Register of Historic Places. With more than a little sweat, the building now is a centerpiece in a quickly changing industrial part of South Baltimore.
Born in Camden, New Jersey, in 1858, Howard Atwood Kelly attended the University of Pennsylvania, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1877 and his M.D. in 1882. In 1889, he became the first professor of gynecology and obstetrics at the Johns Hopkins University launching a 30-year career at the school.
Kelly is remembered鈥攁long with William Osler, Professor of Medicine, William Stewart Halsted, Professor of Surgery, and William H. Welch, Professor of Pathology鈥攁s one of the "Big Four" founding professors at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was called a "wizard of the operating room" and was an early user of radium to treat cancer.
Established in 1888 as the Druid Hill Conservatory, the Howard P. Rawlings Conservatory has grown from the original Palm House and Orchid Room to include three greenhouses, two display pavilions, and outdoor gardens. In 1874, Baltimore's park commissioners proposed the establishment of a botanical conservatory in Druid Hill Park and directed George A. Frederick, the park architect, to design and make plans for the new building. Abbott Kenny, a member of the committee for the conservatory, traveled to Europe to visit the famous Kew Gardens of London, a model for the new design. The idea was abandoned for a decade but then revived in 1885. Construction soon began on a structure of iron and wood with a Palm House at its center. The Conservatory opened August 26, 1888, to a well-received audience of about three hundred visitors. Holding steady through the years, the affectionately named Baltimore Conservatory was closed to the public in 2002 for a major renovation. The newly redesigned production houses were to include a Mediterranean House, a Tropical House and Desert House. The conservatory re-opened September 24, 2004, and shortly thereafter its official name was changed by law to the Howard Peters Rawlings Conservatory & Botanic Gardens, in honor of the former Maryland House of Appropriations chair Pete Rawlings. The Conservatory is the second-oldest steel framed-and-glass building still in use in the United States.
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Built in 1938, the Howard Street Bridge is nearly 1,000 feet long with two steel arches spanning the Jones Falls Valley. This award winning bridge (voted one of the most beautiful by the American Institute of Steel Construction in 1939) was designed by the J.E. Greiner Company, the firm established by one of the nation's foremost bridge builders John Edwin Greiner. Born in Delaware, Greiner got his start designing and building bridges for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad until 1908 when he set himself up as a consulting engineer. The story of the bridge and the extension of Howard Street to North Avenue begins years earlier when local business leaders first began to imagine Howard Street as a major route across the Jones Falls.
The proposal to extend Howard Street north started to build support in 1923 with the organization of the Howard Street Association but without any funding the idea languished for over a decade. Finally in the late 1930s, thanks to a $32,000,000 investment in Baltimore's New Deal work relief programs, construction began. The first steel girders for the bridge swung into place around midnight on December 16, 1937 to "avoid tangling traffic on the Baltimore and Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland and Pennsylvania railroads" whose tracks ran along the valley below. Baltimore Mayor Howard W. Jackson presided over a ground-breaking ceremony on July 15, 1937 throwing the first shovel of dirt with a spade after the "motor shovel" they had waiting unexpectedly broke down.
At a cost of $1,350,000, construction on the road extension by the Philadelphia-based Kaufman Construction Company moved quickly and by January 12, 1939, Mayor Jackson was back on Howard Street, joined by representatives from the Public Works Administration and local civic and neighborhood associations. Stretched across Howard Street near the Richmond Market (now part of Maryland General Hospital) was a ribbon, which Jackson cut then planned to "enter his automobile and drive along the extensive and over the bridge spanning Jones Falls... followed by a cavalcade of cars containing Federal and city officials and members of the Howard Street and Mount Royal Protective Associations."
The bridge caught the interest of another Baltimore Mayor one fall morning in 1974 when Mayor William Donald Schaefer drove down Howard Street and was "struck by how rusty and run-down it looked," immediately asking his Committee on Arts and Culture if they could "do something about freshening it up." The committee came up with a proposal to give the bridge a new name "Gateway to Baltimore" and a bold new color scheme worked out with assistance from Don Duncan, an artist employed by the Baltimore City Department of Planning. Fights with neighborhood residents over the color selection broke out eventually resolving with a new red paint job in the early 1980s.
Work began anew on creating a more colorful Howard Street Bridge (along with over a dozen other bridges over the Jones Falls) in the late 1980s when local artist and MICA graduate Stan Edmister conceived of the "Painted Bridges" project to create a "gateway of color" from the suburbs to downtown with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Baltimore Municipal Art Society. For the 15 years, city bridge painters followed Edmister's scheme painting the bridges with industrial oranges, yellows and rusty browns. Edmister explained the colors, noting, "I think the colors I choose blend with an urban environment. They make some comment about Baltimore being a postindustrial town." Mayor Martin O'Malley objected to the color selection in 2004, preferring a Kelly green but lost out to Edmister's proposal in an online poll.
Claudie and Mabel Hunt (Lumbee) purchased the Sinclair service station at 100 S. Broadway, ca. 1967. It had a three-bay garage and six gas pumps. After about a year, the station was converted to BP. The Hunts sold the station when they moved back to North Carolina, ca. 1973. It is the site of a popular 7/11 today.
"If you wanted the good stuff, you went to Hutzler's," said Governor William Donald Schaefer and for generations of Baltimoreans, Hutzler's represented the height of downtown shopping, simply the place to shop. Many Marylanders still have fond memories of taking a streetcar down to Howard Street to shop at Hutzler's - the grande dame of Baltimore department stores with the richly detailed 1880s Palace building the modern 1930s Tower building next door.
Founded in 1858 as a single storefront at the corner of Howard and Clay streets by German-Jewish peddler Moses Hutzler and his son Abram, the store soon expanded to two additional Howard Street storefronts. Abram welcomed his brothers Charles and David into the retail operation in 1867 and the business incorporated as the Hutzler Brothers Company in the early twentieth century. The store carefully cultivated an image as not only a purveyor of fine goods, but a destination in itself. Hutzler's prided itself on being a place where shoppers could spend an entire day, complete with lunch in The Colonial or the Quixie, a haircut in the Circle Room Beauty Salon, and a shoeshine at the Shoe Fixery on the 8th floor.
The magnificent "palace" building on Howard Street reflects the reputation for class with a ornate Nova Scotia gray stone fa莽ade designed by the firm of Baldwin and Pennington. The store continued to grow in the twentieth century with the construction of the Art Deco "tower" building in 1932 (which gained five additional stories in 1942) designed by architect James R. Edmunds, Jr.
Hutzler's claimed many innovations in Baltimore retailing including the widespread institution in 1868 of the now standard "one-price policy," which replaced a system of bargaining that favored the loudest or boldest bidder. Hutzler's offered an early liberal returns policy and was the first department store in Maryland to boast a fleet of delivery trucks. Like many department stores across the nation, Hutzler's sought to employ the latest technology; they installed Baltimore's first escalator in this building in the early 1930s.
In 1952, Hutzler's expanded to the Baltimore suburbs, opening a store in Towson, Maryland, which was quickly followed by eight additional suburban outlets. Despite their forward-looking expansion, competition from national retailers and the continued decline of downtown business forced the 132 year-old family-owned business to close in 1990.
East Baltimore's "I Am An American Day" parade is captured in a unique 1981 news program from WJZ-TV and a book of documentary photographs showing the people and places of East Baltimore in the late 1970s. The book collected photos from the East Baltimore Documentary Photography Project which was inspired after the photographer and creator of the project Linda attended the parade in 1975.
The first "I Am An American Day" parade in Baltimore started at Thirty-third Street and The Alameda on May 17, 1942. The event (and similar marches and rallies across the country) was promoted by the Hearst Corporation, then owner and publisher of the Baltimore News American newspaper, as a way to celebrate the U.S. Constitution. Some accounts suggest the initial idea for "I Am An American Day" came from Arthur Pine, head of a New York public relations firm, after he was asked to promote a new song, 鈥淚 Am An American,鈥 by Gary Gordon. In 1940, William Randolph Hearst succeeded in pushing the U.S. Congress to name the third Sunday in May as 鈥淚 Am An American Day鈥 as a way to recognize immigrants who had received U.S. citizenship. The date was moved to September 17 in 1952 and, in 2004, an amendment by Senator Robert Byrd led congress to rename the event from 鈥淚 Am An American Day鈥 to 鈥淐onstitution Day.鈥 In Baltimore, the annual parade moved to the streets around Patterson Park and quickly began to draw thousands of participants. The 1944 march saw an estimated 23,000 people. The next year, around 75,000 people came out to see 100 groups of marchers along with 50 "bands and drum, fife and bugle corps" By the 1970s, the parade had steady attendance from church groups, veterans organizations, and politicians developed into what the Baltimore Sun writer Liz Atwood later called "an opportunity for Baltimoreans to show their pride in being Americans." By the mid-1990s, the parade followed a naturalization ceremony for new citizens. Over the years, special guests at the parade included actors from popular soap operas and Hollywood movies. Huge crowds gathered for the route to watch and hear local high school marching bands and out-of-town draws like the Philadelphia Mummers Quaker City String Band. At the parade's height, the event drew over 300,000 people and lasted four hours or more. In 1975, Maryland Institute College of Art photography professor Linda G. Rich was among the crowd. According to the Maryland Historical Society, Rich was new to Baltimore and was "struck not only by the patriotic display of the celebration but by the unique characteristics of the surrounding neighborhood: the rows of clean, white marble steps, the vibrant painted screens, the window displays full of religious and patriotic iconography." The next year, Rich, along with her students Joan Clark Netherwood and Elinor B. Cahn started what became the four-year-long East Baltimore Documentary Photography Project that captured over 10,000 photographs capturing the area's strong sense of community and unique identity. Southeast Baltimore has changed in radical ways since the 1970s and the "I Am An American Day" parade changed as well. Unfortunately, in 1993, the city's effort to raise fees for the event led parade organizers to threaten to move the event away from Highlandtown and Patterson Park. Edwin F. Hale, Sr., then chairman of Baltimore Bancorp, wrote a check to cover that year's extra expenses but, in 1994, no other benefactor came forward and organizers moved the event to Dundalk in southeastern Baltimore County where it continues to be held through at least 2014.
Immanuel Lutheran Church purchased a six-acre farm on Grindon Lane near Harford Road in 1874 for the purpose of a cemetery. This area, known as Lauraville, was a sparsely populated community of farming families. The church, which served a mostly German congregation, was located at the time on Caroline Street and is now at Loch Raven Boulevard and Belvedere Avenue.
The purchase of the cemetery was financed by selling $5 shares to the members of the congregation. These shares were redeemable, either in cash or in burial lots. The majority of the members took advantage of the latter offer.
A chapel was built in 1882 and a home for the caretaker was added in 1890. The chapel is still used for funerals, Easter Services, and other events. The caretaker鈥檚 home is now a private residence.
The cemetery became the final resting place for a few notable Baltimoreans, such as Johnny Neun, a local Major League baseball player, and John J. Thompson, a Civil War veteran who received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his service during that conflict.
Industries flourished in the lower Gwynns Falls Valley since the early 1700s, when the Baltimore Iron Works Company turned iron into nails and anchors and Dr. Charles Carroll's gristmills ground wheat into flour. The Union Stockyards, located south of Wilkens Avenue near the railroads from 1891 to 1967, brought "every hoof under one roof" in was was claimed to be the largest stockyard east of Chicago.
Nearby Wilkens Avenue is named for William Wilkens, a German-born entrepreneur who built a large factory complex in 1845 to the east where the Westside Shopping Center is located. The Wilkens Curled Hair Factory, which had as many as 1,000 employees and operated until the 1920s, processed animal hair from slaughterhouses to make mattresses and upholstery鈥攁nd, like many other industries, dumped its waste into the waterways flowing to the Chesapeake Bay. Wilkens built housing for some of his workers and provided land for the avenue that bears his name today.
The Institute of Notre Dame is a Baltimore landmark that has educated young women for over 150 years.
Originally established in 1847 as the Collegiate Institute of Young Ladies, the Institute of Notre Dame High School (IND) was founded by Baltimore鈥檚 own Mother Theresa 鈥 the Blessed Mother Theresa of Jesus Gerhardinger.
A native of Munich, Bavaria, Mother Theresa helped to found the School Sisters of Notre Dame (SSND) in Germany and came to Baltimore with a small group of sisters to educate the children of immigrants and minister to the poor. Mother Theresa purchased the original convent building from the Redemptorist priests assigned to nearby St. James in 1847 and soon expanded the convent into a boarding school when the sisters discovered two orphans left on their doorstep. By 1852, the sisters had built the school that still stands today.
The school continued to grow through the years: adding an auditorium in 1885, a chapel in 1892, additional classroom space in 1926, and their gymnasium in 1992. Since the first graduation ceremony on July 24, 1864, over 7,000 alumnae have graduated from IND including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (1958) and Sen. Barbara Mikulski (1954) who later recalled, 鈥淭hey taught me more than geography or mathematics; they taught me to help those in need of help. They inspired my passion for service.鈥
The Baltimore American Indian Center opened the Inter-Tribal Restaurant at 17 S. Broadway, during the tenure of Director Barry Richardson (Haliwa Saponi), ca. 1989. Board members of the Indian Center wanted to try another restaurant venture as part of their economic development activities. They felt that the Center had a fair amount of experience selling food due to its work with the concession stands at Orioles baseball games. One could 鈥渆at in鈥 or 鈥渃arry out鈥 at the restaurant, which sold foods like sandwiches, shrimp, chicken, and french fries, and also cigarettes and beer. The Center closed the restaurant after only a couple of years because it was not profitable.
At the corner of Broadway and Eastern Avenue, stands a modest three-story brick building with corbeling below a flat roof supported by heavy brackets and full cornice line. Over the course of the twentieth century, this building was home to three of the most important unions for Baltimore鈥檚 maritime industry: the International Seamen鈥檚 Union, the Seamen鈥檚 Defense Committee, and the National Maritime Union.
During the early 1900s, workers on board shipping vessels faced harsh living conditions. Ship owners could maximize space for cargo by crowding seamen into tiny living spaces. Quarters were more like cowsheds than housing, although, according to one physician鈥檚 report, cattle had it better. When on land, seamen were often forced to stay close to the water in overcrowded boarding houses that were segregated by race. The boarding house owners often supplied food, liquor, and prostitutes at such high rates the seamen often became indebted to them.
The boarding house owners also served as agents, hiring seamen on behalf of the ship owners, so they became 鈥渂oth the seamen鈥檚 debtor and his employer.鈥 Their control over the labor force made them powerful players in regulating wages and working conditions; however, this it was hardly absolute. Ship owners had the ultimate control over their workers. Seamen constituted an ethnically and racially diverse workforce, and ship owners often used ethnic and racial antagonisms to divide workers in the effort to thwart unionization. For example, they would give jobs that were traditionally the purview of a specific ethnicity to members of other groups in order to create social schisms. But the nature of their work introduced seamen to people around the world, and many became more open to different cultures and political ideas as a result.
Seamen established their first labor organization, the International Seamen鈥檚 Union (ISU), in 1895 under the American Federation of Labor; but, this organization was only open to skilled workers, and their exclusivity limited the union鈥檚 strength and weakened strikes. In the 1930s, longshoremen and ship and dock workers formed the Maritime Workers Industrial Union (MWIU), a left-leaning organization that opposed racial discrimination and worked for higher wages, better working conditions, and fair hiring practices.
The ISU, however, viewed the MWIU as a threat and often worked to thwart their efforts during the early years of the Depression. In the mid-1930s, seamen worked to push the ISU to become inclusive and adopt a more militant position. Consequently, the Seamen鈥檚 Defense Committee (SDC) was formed in October 1936 and it adopted the MWIU鈥檚 policy of organizing all workers, regardless of position, race, or nationality. That same year, four hundred ISU members from Baltimore joined an SDC strike in support of workers belonging to the Maritime Federation of the Pacific. Meeting at this hall, they voted to use the strike to advance their own demands for ship owners to hire workers鈥攔egardless of race or nationality鈥攁t the union halls, an eight hour workday, pay for overtime work, and for an end to port work on Saturday afternoons and Sundays. Eight hundred workers showed up for picket duty on the first day.
The strike endured despite outbreaks of violence on both sides, but support began to waver as the weeks dragged on. The SDC decided to put pressure on Washington, for the National Labor Relations Board was in the midst of determining the legitimacy of the ISU鈥檚 contract with ship owners. On January 18, 1937, a massive group of seamen from ports spanning the Atlantic and Gulf coasts marched all day and night in the cold and rain from Baltimore to Washington in what became known as the Midnight March of the Baltimore Brigade. When they reached Washington, they were joined by thousands more demonstrators. Delegates met with every major head of the government, even President Roosevelt. This gave them the 鈥渕oral victory鈥 that the strikers sought and led to the strike鈥檚 conclusion. The strikers voted to return to work on January 25, ending the 87-day strike. The NLRB gave the seamen a favorable ruling, and during the spring of 1937 the National Maritime Union officially formed, with a constitution stipulating the organization of all seamen, 鈥渨ithout regard to race, creed, and color.鈥
The little-known history of Baltimore's Interstate 395 (I-395) and Martin Luther King Boulevard, Jr. Boulevard offers a reminder of the years of contentious planning efforts that ended with the construction of these roadways in the early 1980s. I-395, known as Cal Ripken Way since 2008, is a little over one mile long and connects the northbound lanes of I-95 to Howard and Camden Streets near the southern end of downtown Baltimore. Originally known as Harbor City Boulevard, Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard was before it was renamed in honor of the famed civil rights activist in 1982. The Sun reported on the opening of both new highways in early December of that same year:
An early Christmas presents awaits motorists commuting to downtown Baltimore from the south. Today, three major segments of new highway open near Interstate 95, alleviating years of traffic congestion in the always busy and now-revitalized areas of South and Southwest Baltimore. Commuters used to the morning backup at the Russell street off-ramp from I-95 can opt for I-395, an $82 million northbound spur that will take them straight to Howard Street just west of the Convention Center. Those wishing to go farther north can select te 2.3-mile stretch on the Harbor City Boulevard, a direct route to the University of Maryland professional schools, the State Office Building complex near Bolton Hill, the new Meyerhoff Symphony Hall and the Lyric. The new boulevard cost $67 million.While debates over a building a "bypass" road encircling the city's commercial downtown dated back to the 1950s or earlier, the most influential plan for Baltimore's highway system, known as 3-A, was created in 1969 by the Design Concept Team. The city established the team three years earlier in an effort to restart stalled highway building efforts. Anti-highway activists continued to fight the proposal through the 1980s leading the city to convert the proposed boulevard from a sunken highway to the at-grade route used today. In March 1980, the Sun reported on the experience of Emily Makauskas and her neighbors on the "stately 800 block Hollins Street" who fought to change the plans and "saved their block." The city planned to line the boulevard with "small parks, bicycle paths, brick sidewalks and trees" but an article in April noted that the improvements "may not placate some area homesteaders who are concerned about the road's affect on their neighborhoods." In June 1982, as the road built by James Julian, Inc. neared completion, reporter Charles V. Flowers celebrated the new views of public and private housing developments visible from Harbor City Boulevard. Flowers explained that the area "once contained what were slums as depressing as any in Baltimore" but now "a walk along the boulevard should convince Baltimoreans that the city is upgrading itself in sections other than the Inner Harbor." William K. Hellman, the city's transportation coordinator, shared his satisfaction with the highway in November, remarking:
The boulevard is a collector and distributor road, and will do two things. It will move people in and out of downtown more efficiently and it will get traffic that need not be in the downtown area to go around it... it will be a perfect route for people going to the baseball games at Memorial Stadium. They won't have to go up Charles street until they're north of downtown.The original name of Harbor City Boulevard was a submission to a contest sponsored by then Mayor William Donald Schaefer. Schaefer initially opposed efforts to rename the road after Martin Luther King, Jr. citing the cost of producing new signs. The renaming campaign ultimately won out thanks to the advocacy of state delegate Isaiah "Ike" Dixon, Jr. Dixon had first introduced similar legislation to rename the Jones Falls Expressway after King a full eleven years earlier. This successful effort was supported by city council member and civil rights activist Victorine Q. Adams who introduced the name change before the City Council. Over thirty years later, few drivers likely recall the divisions over the name and the highways are considered a fixture of the busy urban lanscape.
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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Spinning wheel manufacturers, cigar makers, tailors, hat makers, multiple banks, and a music school all occupied this site鈥攐ften at the same time鈥攇oing back to the early nineteenth century. During the decade after the Civil War, the upper stories provided a home for the James M. Deems Music School established in 1867 by Civil War veteran and well-known composer General James Monroe Deems.
Born in Baltimore in 1818, Deems played music since early childhood鈥攍ater declared a "prodigy" for his performances with a group organized by his father. He traveled to Dresden, Germany in 1839 to study musical composition and cello with J. J. F. Dotzauer, a famed German cellist and composer. After his return to the United States, Deems became an instructor at the University of Virginia but maintained his ties to Baltimore, convincing Baltimore schools to adopt his Vocal Music Simplified instructional book for music education in 1851. After a brief but active military career during the Civil War, Deems opened his music school on West Baltimore Street sharing the building with the Haydn Musical Association. Even after the school left Baltimore Street in 1877, Deems remained an active composer and educator through his death in 1901.
In the years after World War II, the condition of the block deteriorated as the decline of the clothing industry left many small commercial buildings vacant. Fortunately for this handsome landmark, the building was restored and opened as a PNC Bank branch in 2009.
James Mosher Elementary (#144) was built in 1933. The original brick structure, facing Wheeler Avenue, was constructed in simple Art Deco style. In an era of segregation, it was designated a 鈥渨hite鈥 school; children still were required to travel outside the neighborhood for junior high and high school. In the early 1950s, Baltimore school officials were described as stunned by the scale and pace of racial change on the west side. A September 1952, Sun article reported a spokesperson as saying that 鈥淏altimore never has known anything such as the population shift within the summer months.鈥 The reporter went on to write:
鈥淭he ingress of Negro home owners and dwellers in hitherto white neighborhoods in northwest and northeast Baltimore during the summer months has presented a problem which is bound to perplex the School Board until some kind of relief can be obtained either through construction of new facilities or through the use of portables.鈥School #144 was specifically identified as one of several schools where there had been 鈥渢remendous turnover鈥 from white to black. By 1953 James Mosher鈥揵y then designated officially as a 鈥渃olored鈥 school鈥搘as reported to be tremendously overcrowded. In 1954, immediately following the Supreme Court ruling that school segregation was unconstitutional, Baltimore public schools became the first formerly segregated major urban system to adopt a desegregation policy. The change had little practical effect on schools already virtually all-black, like James Mosher. In 1955 a much-needed addition was completed along Mosher Street in contemporary architectural style. By then school enrollment had surpassed 900, up from less than 400 a few years earlier. Two new schools, built nearby in the 1960s, provided further evidence of the dramatic growth in the area鈥檚 school-age population. In 1960, Calverton Junior High was constructed on the western edge of the neighborhood. The massive complex housed four nearly self-contained units, each conceived as a 鈥渟chool within a school.鈥 In 1963, Lafayette Elementary School was built, also on the west side. It closed as a standard elementary school in 2003 and reopened as the Empowerment Academy, a public charter school.
Of the many Jewish institutions in East Baltimore, the Jewish Educational Alliance at 1216 East Baltimore Street is one of the most fondly remembered. The organization formed in 1909 when the Daughters in Israel merged with the Macabbeans, a similar organization serving local boys.
The JEA building, donated by the Levy family, opened in 1913. It immediately became a refuge where local adults and children participated in activities that included English classes; art, dance, and music programs; citizenship, business, and job training; and athletic, literary, and social clubs. There was also a nursery, kindergarten, health clinic, and rooftop playground.
In 1951, with Jewish families gone from the neighborhood, the JEA merged with related organizations to form the Jewish Community Center (JCC), located in northwest Baltimore, and this building was sold to the maritime Seafarer鈥檚 Union. It later became an adult day care center. Through the years, the building was altered so that the original brick facade is no longer visible but it is still the same building that served thousands of Jewish residents in East Baltimore.
In the early 1900s, more than 600 people lived in the 70 houses on just a single block of Lombard Street between Lloyd and Central Avenue. For example, two households lived in 1139 E. Lombard Street in 1910. The Bergers consisted of Morris, a 55-year-old pants presser; his 50-year-old wife Eva; their 18-year-old daughter Fannie, a coat operator; their newlywed son, 26-year-old Harris, a pants maker; and Harris鈥檚 wife Rebecca, age 20. The Sundicks included 36-year-old Max, a pants presser; his 35-year-old wife Sarah; and their four children ages 6 months to 10 years.
As they made the difficult economic and cultural adjustment to life in America, struggling Jewish immigrants like the Bergers and Sundicks often relied on the many charitable organizations run by uptown German Jews. One of the best known, the Hebrew Friendly Inn and Aged Home (which later became Levindale Hebrew Geriatric Center and Hospital) began in 1890. In the early 1900s, it was located at 1153 E. Lombard Street, just east of Weiss Deli.
On the site of what is today Lenny鈥檚 Deli, Louis Herman operated a shvitz bad (Russian bath) in the early 1900s at 1116 E. Lombard. While very few homes featured hot water or indoor bathrooms, going to the Russian baths was generally an indulgence reserved for special occasions. For most residents, bathing meant a trip to the Walters Free Public Bath on High Street near Pratt (demolished 1953) where a nickel bought a shower, soap and a towel.
On a vacant lot facing the McKim Center, once stood a mid-nineteenth century Greek revival townhouse that served as the Jewish Working Girls Home in the early 1900s. The home at 1200 East Baltimore Street was a boarding house operated by the Daughters in Israel, founded in 1890 to aid immigrant girls and daughters of immigrants.
The adjoining vacant lot at 1208 East Baltimore Street was the former site of the acclaimed Russian Night School, run by Baltimorean Henrietta Szold, who later achieved fame as the founder of Hadassah, the Zionist women鈥檚 organization. Szold鈥檚 work with the Russian Night School reaffirmed her commitment to the often-despised Eastern European Jewish immigrants, whom she found to be intelligent, cultured, and well-versed in history and literature.
The Russian Night School closed in 1898 after city officials assured its directors that public night schools for immigrants would soon open.
Formerly home to a whiskey barrel warehouse and the offices of the Baltimore Copper Paint Company, the Jim Rouse Center of the American Visionary Art Museum serves as a prime example of adaptive reuse in the City of Baltimore.
Built in the 1930s, the simple brick exterior housed an intricate timber framework to support the whiskey barrels, walls, and roof. After many years of vacancy, the building was given new life as part of the American Visionary Art Museum, which recognizes the work of untrained artists.
When the museum was rehabilitated the architects reused portions of the timber framing as a design element, and also brought in other creative materials.The project explores the use and reuse of found objects. Glass bottle bottoms, barrel staves, exposed brick, refurbished windows and neon signs bring an eclectic look to the building, while both recycling used materials and allowing the building to receive historic tax credit certification.
The project received a Preservation Award from 糖心影视 honoring the American Visionary Art Museum, Cho Benn Holback + Associates, Inc., J. Vinton Schafer & Sons, Inc., Burdette, Koehler, Murphy & Associates, Hope Furrer Associates, Inc., Miller, Beam, & Paganelli, Inc., Cramptin/Dunlop Architectural Lighting Services LLC, and Alain Jaramillo.