Heralded as "the greatest writer of our time" by philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, John Dos Passos spent time in and out of Baltimore from his birth in 1896 and lived here from 1950 until his death in 1970. An acclaimed biographer and novelist, Dos Passos is best remembered for his experimental writing style, often emulating the techniques of the camera and the newsreel, particularly in his trilogy of novels, U.S.A.
While Sartre called him "the greatest," Baltimoreans just called him "John." Dos Passos worked in the George Peabody Library as well as the Enoch Pratt Free Library and Johns Hopkins University Library almost daily during his time in Baltimore. Although Dos Passos once described his ideal working conditions as only, "a room without any particular interruptions," the George Peabody Library is majestic鈥攑articularly the reading room, which has been called "the setting of a bibliophile's dream," and "the most beautiful room in Baltimore."
The library was a gift from entrepreneur George Peabody to the people of Baltimore for their kindness and hospitality, and remains free and open to the public as part of the Sheridan Libraries Special Collections at Johns Hopkins University. In the reading room, one can find the library's collection of more than 300,000 volumes housed in five tiers of ornamental cast-iron balconies that stretch from the marble floor to skylights 61 feet above. There too, one could find John Dos Passos.
Bald and bespectacled, Dos Passos hunched over his desk researching American culture and writing his own works. Often confused for a librarian, he helped library visitors locate books in the card catalog, understand antiquated text, and complete research papers.
Although Dos Passos never wrote a book set in Baltimore, the city provided the author with more than just rooms in which to work. Baltimore helped pique Dos Passos' literary interest. The author recalled as a boy, "I would hide in the shadows so that I wouldn't be sent off to bed. I'd listen till my ears would burst" to stories of old storytellers and watermen, stories in which Baltimore "was the center." Shortly before his death, he described Baltimore as a city that "imbues the inhabitants with a certain dignity" where "neighborhoods had a special flavor."
The John H.B. Latrobe House is the only surviving site associated with the "Saturday Morning Visiter" writing contest that launched Edgar Allan Poe's literary career. On an evening in October 1833, Latrobe, along with John Pendleton Kennedy and James H. Miller, read Poe's "Ms. Found in a Bottle" and unanimously declared him the winner. Poe, who was at the time a penniless unknown author, received a $50 cash prize. Perhaps more importantly, Poe struck up a friendship with Kennedy who would help jump-start his literary career.
John Pendleton Kennedy was already a moderately successful author when he met Poe. His first major romance about the agrarian South, "Swallow Barn," was published a year before and helped established the Southern gentleman archetype we have today. In 1838, Kennedy published "Rob of the Bowl"鈥攁 tale about religious and political rivalries in seventeenth century Maryland. Kennedy gave up writing when he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives later that year. The peak of his political career was in 1852 when served as Secretary of the Navy.
Poe got his job at "The Southern Literary Messenger" because of a reference from Kennedy; a job Poe was fired from only weeks later when he was caught drinking on the job. Despite Poe's missteps, Kennedy believed in the young writer. Poe would often write to him for favors, money, and reassurance and considered Kennedy to be his friend when no one else was. The relationship became strained once Kennedy got into politics. The loans and favors stopped coming, leaving Poe feeling abandoned by his old friend.
For many years, the Latrobe House held the offices of furniture manufacturing company Fallon & Hellen. Today, it is a private residence and signifies a milestone in Poe's career as an author.
Born near Cleveland, Ohio, in 1857, John Jacob Abel received a Ph.B. (Bachelor of Philosophy) from the University of Michigan in 1883 and his M.D. from Strasbourg in 1888. In 1893, after further training from Henry Newell Martin of the Johns Hopkins University and at various European University, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine recruited Abel to start a department of pharmacology becoming first full-time professor of pharmacology in the United States.
Among the most notable legacies of Abel's work is his research on adrenalin, insulin, and an apparatus that is widely regarded as a forerunner of the artificial kidney.
For such a small park, this green block on John Street has had a large impact on the history of Bolton Hill. In the early 1950s, a group of local residents organized to establish the park, one of the first "vest pocket" urban parks in the country. Dedicated in 1955, the park was maintained by the Village Garden Club, now the Bolton Hill Garden Club, which took on the work of maintaining plantings and fencing. The Club started an annual spring plant sale, which continues to this day, to help pay for the upkeep of the park, joining the club's traditional Christmas Greens sale, which included decorations at the Women's Hospital on Lafayette Avenue. The residents involved in the creation of the park built on their efforts and began advocating more broadly for the Mt. Royal area to be designated one of the city's first urban renewal areas under the Federal Housing Act of 1954. Their small success on John Street led to transformative changes across the area in the 1960s and 1970s with the demolition of many rowhouses and alley houses to make way for new high-rise apartment buildings and modern townhouse developments.
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John Stuban moved from New York City to Baltimore, Maryland in 1987 and settled in a small rowhouse on Tyson Street. That same year, a group of New York City activists founded ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). The new organization focused on bringing new visibility to AIDS and HIV through disruptive direct action. Since 1981, the number of known AIDS cases had grown from 234 to over forty thousand. Despite the growing crisis, President Ronald Reagan did not even acknowledge the existence of the disease until 1985 and didn't hold a press conference on the topic until 1987. ACT UP criticized the lack of action by the federal government by staging 鈥渄ie-ins,鈥 where protestor laid on the ground wearing t-shirts with the words 鈥淪ilence=Death鈥 and blocking roads until they were bodily removed by law enforcement. John Stuban brought this same approach to AIDS activism to Baltimore when he helped found a local chapter in 1990. Together with other local activists, Stuban picketed the mayor's home and delivered a coffin to City Hall. A group of ACT UP protestors chained themselves to front doors of the city health department offices. They disrupted a Board of Estimates meeting seeking a promise from the mayor to consider complaints about Baltimore's AIDS programs and distributed condoms to students at the Baltimore School for the Arts. Stuban also sat on the mayor's AIDS advisory committee, the executive committee of the Greater Baltimore HIV Planning Council, and served as the president of the local chapter of the People with AIDS Coalition. In 1994, Stuban died of AIDS at age thirty-eight. In his obituary the Sun described him as "outspoken, uncompromising, and unrelenting in his efforts to pressure local public officials to provide more AIDS care and to demand a fair share of money for AIDS-related research." Garey Lambert, a friend,聽projectionist at the Charles Theater, editor for the Baltimore Alternative gay newspaper, and founder of AIDS Action Baltimore, explained the importance of Stuban's efforts:
He made AIDS visible. He was an inspiration. He was upfront and in your face. He was the guy with the conscience, the guy who kept community scrutiny going on and on, and without that, there would be nothing done.Even after his death, the work continued. Over two hundred people attended Stuban's memorial service at Emmanuel Episcopal Church at Cathedral and Read Streets. After the service ended, many of the mourners marched to city hall where they placed an empty coffin on the steps of city hall to memorialize Stuban's death and demand action on behalf of the thousands of people still living with AIDS.
The Joseph Beuys Sculpture Park was established in April 2001 as part of a larger tree-planting effort that supported projects across the Baltimore region. Designer Renee van der Stelt, project coordinator for UMBC鈥檚 Fine Arts Gallery, now the Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture, developed the Joseph Beuys Tree Partnership with a mission to 鈥渆xtend beyond the gallery walls [and] bring art to the people.鈥 Joseph Beuys, a German avant-garde artist who emphasized natural materials in his work, inspired the new sculpture park鈥攅specially his most famous piece: 7000 Oaks.
Between 1982 and 1987 residents of Kassel, Germany planted 7,000 oak trees in the town and installed a stone next to each tree. As the oaks grow, the stones erode, nourishing the soil around the trees. 鈥淭he intention of such a tree-planting event,鈥 Beuys explained in a 1982 interview, 鈥渋s to point up the transformation of all of life, of society, and of the whole ecological system.鈥 Beuys believed that all of nature and humanity are in relationship with one another and this inter-connectedness is represented by both the installation itself and by the collaboration necessary to bring the art into existence. He called this type of partnership 鈥渟ocial sculpture.鈥
In the fall of 2000, hundreds of children and adults pitched in to bring 鈥渟ocial sculpture鈥 to Baltimore. With help from nearly two dozen community organizations, the Joseph Beuys Tree Partnership organized volunteers to plant trees and rocks throughout the city. Annapolis-based TKF Foundation, an organization that promotes its mission of peace through the development of green space, provided funding for the Tree Partnership. The volunteers planted trees in Patterson Park, Wyman Park Dell, and Carroll Park in Baltimore. Later, stones were installed in each park to continue the Beuys model. The thirty oak trees and thirty granite stones planted on the UMBC campus in spring 2001 completed the project.
Visitors to the UMBC Sculpture Park can find a journal stored under one of the benches. The book provides an opportunity for visitors to contribute to the social sculpture by recording their thoughts and feelings. In 2011, the journal entries became source material for a music and dance program entitled 鈥淐reative Acts: Site Specific Dance & Music in Joseph Beuys Sculpture Park.鈥 UMBC students composed and performed the music for a program hosted by the UMBC Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture (CADVC). Their original works expressed 鈥渁 dialogue between the human instinct to preserve and enjoy nature while also transforming and polluting it.鈥 They encouraged the audience to add to the journal during the performance, continuing the interactions that make up the social sculpture.
The Joseph Beuys Sculpture Garden, along with its sister parks throughout Baltimore, is a space in which the art is constantly changing. Its material is not just the wood and stone, but the oxygen which the trees contribute to the air to combat the car exhaust from the adjacent parking lot, the minerals slowly eroding into the soil from the granite, and the deep breath that a harried college student takes when she stops for a moment on the bench and records her frustrations in the field journal. All are in relationship, and all are participating in the social sculpture.
Juanita Jackson and Clarence Mitchell moved to 1324 Druid Hill Avenue in 1942, the same year Clarence started working at the Fair Employment Practices Commission set up by President Roosevelt to fight workplace discrimination during WWII. Visitors at the home included Paul Robeson, Duke Ellington, and Marian Anderson. The couple raised five sons at the house and continued to live there until the end of their lives. Baltimore City stabilized the roof and rear wall of the building in 2013 but it remains vacant and in poor condition.
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The former Maryland National Bank building at the southwest corner of Maryland and North Avenues is a faded but still striking example of the modern architecture that accompanied the city鈥檚 growth in the 1950s and 1960s. The Fidelity Baltimore National Bank (a predecessor of Maryland National) opened their first branch location on North Avenue since the late 1930s. In the mid-1950s, the firm built a drive-in on the eastern side of Maryland Avenue鈥攁 structure still in use today as the home of K & M Motors. The local architectural firm of Smith & Veale (Albert K. Broughton serving as the project architect) designed the modern building and the general contractor was the Lacchi Construction Company. Broughton remained a practicing architect in Maryland up through 2002, shortly before his death in 2005. Reflecting the continued importance of automobiles to retail banking, a large parking lot was located on the southern side of the building and the branch was designed so patrons could enter the bank from either North Avenue or the parking lot. As the building went up in March 1961, the Baltimore Sun touted the bank as the city鈥檚 first commercial building with a precast concrete frame. The Nitterhouse Concrete Product Company in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania cast a series of t-shaped elements that were then transported to Baltimore by truck. The Maryland National Bank sold the property in 1990 and, sometime after 1995, the Korean-American Grocers & Licensed Beverage Association of Maryland (KAGRO) moved into the building as their office. In 2015, the Contemporary occupied the building for an exhibition by artist Victoria Fu. The exhibition, Bubble Over Green, is described as multilayered audio-visual experience consisting of moving images projected onto architectural surfaces, aligning the physical site with the space and textures of digital post-production.
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Karl Shapiro was a true Baltimorean. As a young man in the 1920s and 1930s, Shapiro fed his literary ambitions with the city's rich cultural history; for instance, writing love poems at Fort McHenry where Francis Scott Key was inspired to pen the Star-Spangled Banner. In 1939, Shapiro enrolled in the Enoch Pratt Library School at the library's central branch, an experience that would greatly influence his life and his writing.
Shapiro later expressed his gratitude to Enoch Pratt Free Library, by capturing it in the lines:
"Voltaire would weep for joy, Plato would stare.
What is it, easier than a church to enter,
Politer than a department store, this center,
That like Grand Central leads to everywhere?"
Open to all Baltimoreans since its 1894 founding, the city's first non-segregated cultural institution does indeed "lead to everywhere," thanks to the library's numerous resources and founder Enoch Pratt's firm belief in inclusiveness. The architecture of the 1933 Central Branch building exemplifies Pratt's philosophy. Designed to mirror a department store, library patrons, not just librarians, could access the books, and large exhibit windows advertised library news to passersby. Following Pratt's requirements, the building's entrance remained without stairs for the convenience of women pushing strollers. This revolutionary design went on to inspire library architecture nationwide.
Shapiro enjoyed studying to be a librarian; however, World War II intervened. "I couldn't take the final exam because I was drafted," Shapiro explained. "Because of my background of two years of college...they put me in the company headquarters office and gave me a typewriter." As the company clerk, Shapiro was never far from writing materials and had "endless amounts of empty time"鈥-everything a poet needs. He wrote prodigiously, sending his poems stateside to his Baltimorean fianc茅e, Evalyn Katz, who then published them.
Although 9,000 miles from home, the Pratt Library was never far from Shapiro's mind. He frequently wrote to his former colleagues, signing his letters with "Very best wishes to you and the Library." Meanwhile, the library also contributed to the war effort, housing various headquarters and providing basement air-raid shelters.
When the war ended in 1945, the library returned to business as usual, but Shapiro did not. Having left America only a student, he returned home an established poet. Shapiro published four books and received several prizes including the Pulitzer Prize during the war. Assuming a radically different life than the one he had left, Shapiro taught at several universities, and describes his role as "not really a professor, but a sort of mad guest." He also worked as the Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress, a position known today as the Poet Laureate; edited poetry magazines; and of course, wrote poetry. All the while, Shapiro embodied the philosophy of Enoch Pratt, relentlessly fighting against prejudice and injustices both in his poetry and with his actions, until his death in 2000.
The Key Highway Yards along the southern side of the Inner Harbor played a pivotal role in Baltimore鈥檚 shipbuilding industry from the 1820s until 1982. Passersby today see almost no traces of this industrial history at the upscale Ritz Carlton and HarborView communities. One of the only remnants of shipbuilding along this stretch of Baltimore鈥檚 waterfront lies underneath the 30-story HarborView Towers, completed in 1992: the dry docks used for ship repair were converted to become a parking garage. Boatbuilding brothers William Skinner Jr. and Jeremiah Skinner moved from Dorchester County to Baltimore in the 1820s to establish the Skinner yard at the base of Federal Hill. William later sold his share of the company to his brother and purchased his own shipyard on Cross Street specializing in sailing ships and steamboats. The Skinners contributed greatly to the city鈥檚 prominence in American shipbuilding, with William remembered as having built the first Baltimore clipper ship. The for this site describes the Skinner yard as 鈥渢he largest and most important of the period.鈥 William鈥檚 descendants carried on the family business and consolidated other small shipyards, eventually creating a 35-acre complex at Key Highway. Business boomed during the Civil War and continued through the turn of the century. Although World War I brought another wave of activity to these shipbuilding operations, the company went into receivership and Bethlehem Steel Company acquired this yard in 1921.聽 During the Bethlehem era, this was known as the 鈥渦pper yard.鈥 The 鈥渓ower yard鈥 referred to the shipyard adjacent to Fort McHenry, which is still in operation today. Workers at Bethlehem鈥檚 shipyards at Locust Point as well as Sparrows Point and Fairfield鈥攖ogether the largest ship repair operation in the United States鈥攑articipated in the. Baltimore shipyards churned out a record-setting number of Liberty and Victory Ships between 1941-1945. The Key Highway yards repaired over 2,500 ships during WWII.聽 Enjoying a stroll along the harbor today, one could almost miss the fact that this place was once a hub of heavy industry, lined with massive equipment and bustling with workers. Although the shipyards are no longer visible at this location, you can experience this chapter of history at the Baltimore Museum of Industry. The 1942 Clyde Model 17 DE 90 whirley crane outside the museum, restored and painted bright green in 2019, worked on Pier 3 between the 1940s-1980s. Can you imagine the sense of awe one would have experienced seeing a whole fleet of these massive cranes hard at work along the shipyard?
The L. Gordon & Son factory is a sixty-four thousand square foot industrial building on the corner of South Paca Street and West Cross Street, a few blocks from M&T Stadium. It is a three-story building of lightly-ornamented but utilitarian brick, with a Star of David design in the brickwork at the top. In the past century, the factory has housed at least four family businesses and each one has left their mark.
Fr. Bergner & Co. erected the factory on Paca Street, designed by architect J. Edward Sperry, in 1905. Two brothers, Frederick and William Bergner, ran the company for over 25 years manufacturing picture frames, photo albums, and other small luxuries. William died in 1902, leaving behind his parents, three brothers, and wife. It was Frederick who moved the business to the new factory and continued to oversee the company until his death in 1919.
The onset of the Great Depression, however, was a greater challenge than fire. In 1930, the company began leasing out the top floor of the Paca and Cross Street factory. In 1931, the company sold two tracts of land adjoining the Paca and Cross Street factory, one to the city to expand Sterrett Street, the other to the Catholic Church. By 1933, at the trial for a fraud case involving forty-two shares of Bergner & Co. stock, the prosecuting attorney implied that 鈥渢he company consisted only of an empty warehouse.鈥 In March 1933, Fr. Bergner & Co.鈥檚 remaining assets were seized, and in 1934 the court-appointed trustee sold the Paca and Cross Street factory to The Hopkins Place Savings Bank, who had held the mortgage for $47,000.By 1940, L. Gordon & Son was operating out of the Paca & Cross Street factory and they purchased the building in 1942. Paca and Cross Street was at least L. Gordon & Son鈥檚 third factory in the fifty years since its founding, but the firm would remain in that building for the next sixty years.
L. Gordon & Son was, as the name suggests, a family-owned business. Louis Gordon started the enterprise in 1891, making paper boxes by hand at his house on Orleans Street. He was a Russian Jewish immigrant, and his son Paul was, from the time he was a young man, an active participant in several Jewish and Zionist organizations in Baltimore.
Given his spiritual and political affiliations, it seems likely that Gordon installed the six-pointed star design at the top of the outer wall of the factory around the time they acquired the building. In 1897, the six-pointed star, known as a 'Magen David', was adopted as a symbol by the First Zionist Congress. From that point forward, the star became a symbol of Jewishness in general in the early twentieth century. The crest of Hadassah, the women鈥檚 branch of the American Zionist movement and the organization to which Paul Gordon's wife belonged, included the Magen David in their crest design at least as early as 1915.
After Paul's death the company passed to his son, Bertram I. Gordon. In 1951, L. Gordon & Son bought several lots surrounding their factory from Barnett L. Silver, who had spent the last decade buying them up from individual homeowners. Besides buying up half of the block at Paca & Cross Street, Gordon & Son also added a warehouse in 1967 at 2020 Hollins Ferry Road.
In May 1985, Bertram Gordon died of a heart attack. His widow Marjorie Gordon took over the company after his death, and it remained in operation at least through 1991. Marjorie Gordon died in 2009 at the age of eighty. The company sold the factory to Toybox, LLC, in 1997, and it has remained largely empty ever since.
In the early 1900s, the Labor Lyceum at 1023 E. Baltimore Street was a busy union hall and neighborhood cultural center. Americans once used the term 鈥渓yceum鈥 to describe public halls used for lectures and meetings. The Labor Lyceum was one of many halls serving working class immigrants. Local men and women came here to read newspapers, socialize, and discuss job prospects. During strikes, which occurred frequently, the Labor Lyceum became the center for organizing union members, planning strategy and garnering public support.
In March 1913, more than one hundred East Baltimore female garment workers gathered at the Labor Lyceum before marching to a downtown train station, where they joined other women鈥檚 groups on their way to Washington, D.C., for a demonstration in favor of working women鈥檚 rights and female suffrage. Today, the Lyceum is the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg building, part of the Helping Up Mission complex.
A few steps away stands the former home of the Arbeiter Ring, more commonly known as the Workmen鈥檚 Circle. Established in 1898, the 1,200-member Workmen鈥檚 Circle was the center of Jewish socialist and labor activities for decades and moved to 1029 E. Baltimore Street in 1930. From 1909 to the early 1920s, the same building housed Talmud Torah, Baltimore鈥檚 first large Hebrew school. Founded in 1889 by recently arrived Russian Jews, the Hebrew Free School, as it was known, attracted students from very poor families and often provided shoes and clothing.
Since 1857, Lafayette Square has been Baltimore鈥檚 height of fashion. Situated atop a ridge in an area once noted for its fine country villas and breadth-taking panoramic views of the waterways, rolling hills and public landmarks of the bustling nineteenth-century city, the Square was a favorite outlying destination of Baltimore鈥檚 leisure and laboring classes. The popularity of the site, fueled by a desire to enjoy the area鈥檚 fresh air and fine vistas on a permanent basis, led to the creation of the Lafayette Square Company for promoting the Square as a fashionable place to live. The drive to develop the area around the Square for residential use came to a halt soon after it had begun, however, for in 1861 the City turned the Square over to the federal government for military use during the Civil War. After the war and minus the green fields and majestic oaks鈥攊ts main attractions prior to 1861鈥擫afayette Square reverted back to the city and development efforts resumed. Construction proceeded rapidly under the direction of the Lafayette Square Association (a second organization, incorporated in 1865), which, in 1866, enticed the congregation of the Episcopal Church of the Ascension to relocate from downtown to the Square with an offer of a free corner lot. By 1880, Lafayette Square had been developed to a great extent and ornamented with many buildings of grand proportions. The Church of the Ascension (1867-9, now St. James), many imposing residences, including Matthew Bacon Sellers鈥 impressive brick mansion (1868-9), Grace Methodist Church (1871-6, now Metropolitain), and, perhaps most conspicuous of all, the new State Normal School (1875-6, demolished), set the scale for subsequent building projects in the neighborhood. Although designed in keeping with the Square鈥檚 other Gothic revival buildings, the former Bishop Cummins Memorial (1878, now Emmanuel Christian Community) and Lafayette Square Presbyterian (1878-9, now St. John鈥檚 A.M.E.) outdid the more conservative-looking churches of the neighboring congregations in both architectural variety and decorative daring and exuberance, signaling that architectural tastes, even within the prevailing Gothic revival style, were susceptible to swift and dramatic change. Lafayette Square changed dramatically between 1910 and 1930. Built-out by 1910 and starting to show its age, the Square could not compete with the new residential developments such as Ten Hills (begun 1909) and Hunting Ridge (1920s) that offered detached, single-family houses and all the modern amenities of the early twentieth century. Between 1910 and 1930, all but two households on the Square had changed hands, and a new generation of residents had emerged, 95% of which African American, whose numbers and diverse backgrounds brought a renewed vitality to the Square. The Square鈥檚 new residents worked as maids, chauffeurs, cooks, and laborers, but also as dentists, physicians, attorneys, and schoolteachers. They benefited from close proximity to the neighborhood鈥檚 major commercial, retail, and entertainment districts, being just a few minutes鈥 walk from the shops and other attractions of Druid Hill and Pennsylvania Avenues. In the short time between 1928 and 1934, four African American congregations moved to Lafayette Square. Metropolitan led the charge with a ceremonial march from Orchard Street in 1928, followed by St. John鈥檚 A.M.E. in 1929 (from Lexington Street), St. James Episcopal in 1932 (from Park Avenue and Preston Street), and Emmanuel Christian Community in 1934 (from Calhoun). The spacious sanctuaries, the classrooms, and other amenities of the four grand churches suited the needs of these growing congregations, whose active ministries transformed Lafayette Square into a spiritual center for West Baltimore鈥檚 African American community. The old State Normal School, vacated in 1915 and later converted to school district offices, received a new lease on life in 1931 as the home of the George Washington Carver Vocational-Technical High School, the first school in Maryland to provide vocational training for African American students.
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Like many old family-owned businesses, Lakein鈥檚 Jewelers was started by a newly arrived immigrant, 29-year-old Isadore Lakein, who arrived in the United States from Russia in 1912 with his wife Anna and their son Samuel. A second son, David, was born in 1915. Isadore started his jewelry business the year after arriving in the U.S. when he began selling a variety of goods door-to-door in the Fell's Point neighborhood of Baltimore. Lakein offered customers the option to pay in installments, and would return to collect regular payments. By 1929, he opened a store at 515 S. Broadway. His sons, Samuel and David, joined him in the enterprise. Attention to detail and care for customers is imperative to the success of any small family business and Lakein鈥檚 is no exception. In a 2019 interview, present-day owner Warren Lakein shared how a customer had recently stopped in the shop, now located in Hamilton, to pick up a watch he left for repair鈥攖hree years earlier. Despite the delay, the customer still found the repaired watch waiting and ready for pick up at the counter. The Lakein family applies the same customer-centered approach to the repair of watches of all kinds, whether it is a basic Timex, an expensive Rolex, a rare antique, or a sentimental treasure. The threat of theft is present at all jewelry stores and Lakein鈥檚 has seen some losses. One old wrong was made right several years ago, when a plain manila envelope arrived at the store with no return address. The envelope contained a wedding band and an unsigned note reading: 鈥淚 shoplifted it from your store about forty years ago, and I鈥檓 very sorry for that.鈥 The tradition of layaway and door-to-door service stayed with the family for generations. The business grew to include four locations in Baltimore including shops at 3221 Greenmount Avenue, the corner of Erdman Avenue and Belair Road, and at 5400 Harford Road in Hamilton. Isadore retired to Florida and started another location there before his death in 1962. Warren Lakein, a current owner of Lakein鈥檚 Jewelers of Hamilton and grandson of the founder, grew up behind the Harford Road store in a small stucco house and recalled making house calls with selections of rings for people who requested something special. Lakein's continues to offer layaway accounts for up to eight months. Hundreds, if not thousands, of local Baltimoreans still shop at Lakein鈥檚 to buy special gifts for sweethearts or parents. Payments were made regularly for as little as one dollar per week back in the 1960s and 1970s. For some fortunate shoppers, those friendship and 鈥済oing steady鈥 rings led to engagement and wedding rings鈥攊ncluding some still in use forty or fifty years later. Customers have maintained their loyalty to the store for generations. Some customers own Lakein鈥檚 jewelry from forty to eighty years ago that has been handed down by their parents or grandparents. One customer received his grandmother鈥檚 engagement and wedding rings, which he later gave to his wife. They were purchased at the original store鈥檚 location just a few years after it opened on S. Broadway in 1929. Lakein鈥檚 Jewelers is a remarkable reminder of the opportunities Baltimore offered to European immigrants in the early twentieth century. A hard-working door-to-door salesman from Russia could open a store in Fell's Point and grow the business over time to five locations. Regrettably, it also shows the challenges small businesses have faced in recent decades. Most of the stores have closed, including the original Broadway location, which closed in 2005. Fortunately, due to a loyal clientele and dedicated owners, Lakein鈥檚 Jewelers of Hamilton is still going strong.
with research support from Friends of Maryland's Olmsted Parks and Landscapes
In south Baltimore, Latrobe Park still has traces of Olmsted design elements. Originally only 6 acres in size, this park was created to serve the working class neighborhoods on the Locust Point peninsula. Unlike much larger plans for Patterson and Clifton Parks also begun in 1904, what distinguishes Latrobe Park was the amount of active recreation that had to fit in a tight space. In 1904, the Board of Park Commissioners retained the Olmsted Brothers firm to provide a plan that would accommodate a children鈥檚 play area, a men鈥檚 running track, and a small women鈥檚 fitness section. A broad promenade would overlook the park with trees and plantings while a grand stair with a fountain at its base would be the central entrance. In the middle of a wide lawn a grove of trees would provide a shaded haven for the public to sit and relax, or listen to band concerts. This design combined old sensibilities of parks as natural retreats with new ideas that parks could promote recreation. Construction began in 1905 and much of the Olmsted design materialized. Over the years, the park has grown and added tennis courts and a baseball field. Today, a berm constructed for the I-395 Fort McHenry Tunnel obscures the view of the water, but the shipping cranes of the marine terminal are visible. Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in Latrobe Park. Through great community effort, neighbors upgraded the playground and planted trees.
Laurel Cemetery was incorporated in 1852 as Baltimore鈥檚 first nondenominational cemetery for African Americans. The location chosen was Belle Air Avenue (now Belair Road), on a hill long used as a burial ground for free and enslaved servants of local landowners. Laurel quickly became a popular place of burial for people across Black Baltimore鈥檚 socioeconomic spectrum, including the graves of 230 Black Civil War veterans, members of the United States Colored Troops (U.S.C.T.). After its creation, Laurel Cemetery was known as one of the most beautiful and prominent African American cemeteries in the city.
Serving as the commemorative center for the African American community in the late 1800鈥檚, annual parades and Memorial Day gatherings to honor and decorate the graves of the Black Civil War veterans occurred regularly at Laurel Cemetery, which was also the resting place of many prominent members of Baltimore鈥檚 African American population. Historical records show that in 1894, Frederick Douglass traveled to Laurel Cemetery to speak on the occasion of the unveiling of a monument honoring Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne, who served as the sixth Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopalian (A.M.E.) church, and was a founder and former president of Wilberforce University.
The decline of Laurel Cemetery started in the early decades of the twentieth century. In 1911, the remains of the Civil War veterans were removed and reinterred at Loudon Park National Cemetery to accommodate the expansion of Belair Road. In 1920, Elmley Avenue was created and row houses were built along the newly constructed street on the southern boundary of the Cemetery. In 1930, a portion of the grounds were sold for the construction of a gas station, and the offices of the Laurel Cemetery Company were moved offsite. This highly contested sale drove a wedge between the private owners of the cemetery and the deed holding descendants of the interred.
By the 1930s the site had become overgrown and garbage-strewn, and the owners of the cemetery failed to uphold their duties in maintaining the property. In May of 1948, members of the Belair Edison Improvement Association called for the demolition of Laurel Cemetery, which declared bankruptcy in 1952. Legislation passed in 1957 by Maryland Lawmakers provided the legal justification for the sole shareholder of the now defunct Laurel Cemetery Company to sell the land to the McKamer Realty Company for $100 in 1958.
Although the McKamer Realty Company was founded for the express purpose of purchasing the cemetery by two employees of the Baltimore Law Department, an internal review by the Mayor鈥檚 office found no evidence for a conflict of interest and the sale went through, netting thousands of dollars in profits for the owners upon selling the rezoned property. A series of lawsuits seeking justice for the disenfranchised descendants failed to prevail in the courts and thus, after being in existence for 106 years, Laurel Cemetery was leveled. Some the remains of those buried at Laurel were sent to cemeteries in Arbutus in Baltimore County and an estimated 350 remains were reburied at the new Laurel Cemetery in Carroll County. Unfortunately, this new site has also not been maintained.
In February of 1962, the former site of Laurel Cemetery became the new location of Two Guys Department Store. Today it is the site of the Belair-Edison Crossing Shopping Center, and home to several businesses. The Shopping Center is a heavily traveled and highly valued local establishment 鈥 most recently sold to a Florida based-business in 2014. However, many current patrons and nearby residents have no knowledge of the site鈥檚 former purpose and significance.
Built in 1873 by the Maryland Baptist Union Association for black Baptists in south Baltimore, Leadenhall Baptist Church has long been a center of activism and source of strength for African Americans in south Baltimore and the Sharp Leadenhall neighborhood. The church was designed, built and furnished by the firm of Joseph Thomas and Son. Established 1820, the company manufactured building materials along with church, bank and office furniture. Many notable community leaders from Sharp Leadenhall, including Mildred Rae Moon and Martha Roach, were members of the congregation, leading the fight to preserve the neighborhood from demolition for highway construction in the 1960s and 1970s. The church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
By the time of the Civil War,the Thomas firm operated the largest steam turning mill works in the South at Park, Clay and Lexington Streets. The fire of 1873, which destroyed much of what is now the Retail District, began in the Thomas plant.
Today, Leadenhall Baptist Church continues to play an important role in neighborhood life, holding recreational and academic programs for neighborhood children and supporting community residents. However, similar to other churches in the community, many congregants live outside the neighborhood, and commute back for services on Sundays.
1627 Aliceanna Street, is a rare eighteenth century wooden house, built in 1797 and once home to "The Academy" run by schoolmaster Nicholas Leeke. Leeke's daughter, Mary, married a young sea captain, Henry Dashiell, who was a privateer in the War of 1812 and lived in a mansion at Aliceanna Street and Broadway. The Preservation Society of Fells Point and Federal Hill was deeded this and other historic properties by the Dashiell sisters, great-great granddaughters of Nicholas Leeke, when the City of Baltimore issued a "rehab or raze" order on the properties in 2006.
Thankfully, after three years of blood, sweat, tears, and many volunteer hours, the once-derelict wooden house at 1627 Aliceanna Street is rehabilitated and now reoccupied as a family home.
In December 1919, the Rainbow Theatre first opened on Pennsylvania Avenue entertaining an African American audience with vaudeville performances and films. The theatre continued in operation until 1925 and then spent a decade as a garage.
The building was then remodelled to the plans of architect David Harrison, and, on December 25, 1936, reopened as the Lenox Theatre. The theatre continued in operation up until 1964 when the property became home to Christ Temple Church.
Leon Day Park is named for Leon Day an outstanding player in the Negro Leagues who was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. A resident of southwest Baltimore, Day joined the Baltimore Black Sox in 1934 when African Americans could not play in the Major or Minor Leagues. He went on to excel as a second baseman and pitcher for several teams and returned to Baltimore in the 1940s as a member of the Elite Giants. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1995 just a few days before he died. Leon Day played every position in the field but catch, and he played them all magnificently.
From picnic and playground facilities to sports fields and courts, Leon Day Park serves as a gathering place for people of all ages in the Rosemont-Franklintown Road neighborhood. Formerly called Claverton, the area contained mills and slaughterhouses before becoming residential in the 1920s and 1930s. The community became known as Rosemont in the 1960s when it opposed plans to demolish 790 homes to make way for the I-70 highway.
Leon's is Baltimore's oldest continuously operating gay bar. The bar鈥檚 current name comes from Leon Lampe, who owned the bar during the 1930s. 870 Park Avenue was never a speakeasy though Leon Lampe and his brother Sam ran several speakeasies during Prohibition. They were also into insurance fraud, racketeering, witness tampering and bootlegging. After WWII, the bar became a hangout for beatniks and artists with a mix of gay and straight patrons. Since 1957, Leon鈥檚 has operated as a gay bar.
It is rumored that in its early days as a gay bar, patrons had to say a password before they were let in the door: 鈥淎re you a friend of Dorothy?鈥 A common identifier among gay men at that time, the phrase is a reference to Dorothy Gale of the Wizard of Oz鈥攔eportedly for Dorothy's acceptance of her friends despite their unusual identities.
Built in 1928-1929, Levering Hall is named in honor of Eugene Levering, a local banker. Levering, who served as a trustee for Johns Hopkins University from 1898 to 1928, donated the funds to build a YMCA on land provided by Johns Hopkins University.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Levering Hall on the Homewood Campus of Johns Hopkins University served as an important site of interracial Civil Rights organizing and activism. In 1953, Chester Wickwire accepted a position as the executive secretary of the campus YMCA and the chaplain for the university. At Levering Hall, Wickwire provided 鈥渁 haven for liberals on an otherwise conservative campus鈥 and ran 鈥渞an various student life programs such as concerts, dances, and movie screenings while simultaneously organizing political discussions about civil rights, pacifism, the Cold War, and Vietnam.鈥 Wickwire himself was an active participant in the Civil Rights movement and helped support student activists.
In a 2006 oral history, Wickwire described the culture of discrimination and how, beginning in 1959, he sought to 鈥渃hange Hopkins, desegregate it鈥 by organizing performances by jazz and rock musicians that appealed to interracial audiences including Dave Brubeck, Charles Mingus, Joan Baez, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Mothers of Invention. In his efforts to end segregation on the Hopkins campus, Wickwire recalled: 鈥淛azz helped us.鈥
Johns Hopkins University students and faculty played a variety of roles in local Civil Rights activism. In the late 1960s, Dr. Peter Rossi, from the Johns Hopkins University Social Relations Department and Rev. Chester Wickwire both joined the largely white Baltimore Committee for Political Freedom 鈥渇ormed because of fear that the local police were planning to assassinate Black Panther Party leaders in the city鈥. Students from Johns Hopkins University, Goucher College, and Morgan State College participated in the Emergency Rehabilitation Assistance Project (ERAP) of the local chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). According to Rhonda Williams, the organizers of ERAP were 鈥渉oping to build an 鈥榠nterracial movement鈥 by galvanizing poor people at the grassroots around issues such as housing, schools, medical care, and food insecurity.鈥
In 1969, Johns Hopkins University purchased the building from the YMCA and remodeled the building as a student union. Today, the building includes the offices of the Center for Social Concern founded in 1992 to promote student volunteerism and community engagement.
Lexington Market, originally known as Western or New Market, was started at the western edge of the city at the turn of the 19th century to take advantage of the trade with the recently opened Northwest Territory. The first market shed was built c. 1805 on land once belonging to John Eager Howard. It grew quickly along with the city, which was advantageously situated on the western most harbor along the East Coast. This access to transatlantic trade routes, then the railroads, were major factors to the growth of Baltimore through the 19th century. After a visit to the market, Ralph Waldo Emerson dubbed it the 鈥済astronomic capital of the world.鈥
The larger and more established public markets, like Centre, Hanover, and Broadway markets, were often used for court ordered auctions of enslaved people. Having been located at the edge of the city, there is not much evidence that such sales were common at Lexington Market. The only information found so far indicates that at least one such auction did take place here in 1838. A monument was recently erected here to memorialize the woman sold at that court-ordered auction and a runaway enslaved man who had worked at the market. Their names were Rosetta and Robert.
Hotels and taverns proliferated near public markets, including this area around Lexington Market. It was a common practice during this time to arrange business meetings in hotels and taverns, to such an extent that bartenders and inn keepers would take and relay messages for regular customers. The meetings could be business or social. Transactions discussed could be anything from starting a chapter of a fraternal organization to the selling and buying of real estate, farm animals, or enslaved people. Many slave traders got their start in this manner--Slatter, Woolfolk, and Purvis to name a few. An example of an ad from the early 19th century informed buyers of people 鈥渢o apply at Mr. Lilly鈥檚 Tavern, Howard Street鈥 and another directed buyers to 鈥淔owler鈥檚 Tavern near the New Market, Lexington Street.鈥 The latter of these might be William Fowler鈥檚 Sign of the Sunflower, which was located in this area.
Although the original intention of the market was to sell Maryland-grown produce, by the turn of the twentieth century, the market offered an international selection as thousands of immigrants moved to Baltimore, becoming both vendors and customers. The city kept the price to rent a stall at the market low to encourage aspiring business owners. This practice was particularly beneficial for immigrants who had few job opportunities upon entering the country. As a result, immigrant communities grew around Lexington Market and helped establish a diverse community in West Baltimore. The new products offered at the market contributed to the international fame it would attain at the turn of the century.
While the form of Lexington Market has changed dramatically over the decades 鈥 an early frame market shed was replaced in 1952 following a 1949 fire and the city significantly expanded the market in the 1980s 鈥 the community of vendors and locals continues to draw crowds of residents and tourists daily.
From 1935 until her retirement in 1970, Lillie Carroll Jackson was president of the Baltimore chapter of the NAACP and for much of this time her home on Eutaw Place was a hub of civil rights organizing and activism.
Born in 1889, Lillie Carroll was the seventh of eight children in her family. Her father was Methodist Minister Charles Henry Carroll. In 1935, she became the leader of the Baltimore Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She quickly grew chapter鈥檚 membership from 100 in 1935 to 17,600 in 1946, making Baltimore one of the largest chapters in the country.
Her advocacy efforts included supporting the 鈥淏uy Where You Can Work鈥 campaign to promote integrated businesses and boycott segregated ones (1931); leading efforts to register black voters and shift in city politics (1942); and pursuing the integration of Baltimore鈥檚 schools after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision (1954). Known as Dr. Jackson after receiving an honorary degree from Morgan State University in 1958, she also served on the NAACP鈥檚 national board. For the 35 years she led the Baltimore NAACP, she never earned a paycheck, using her rental properties as her sole source of income.
Lillie M. Carroll Jackson died in 1975 at 86 years old. In her will, she left her home, often the center of operations for her chapter, to her daughter Virginia Kiah for the construction of a museum. Virginia, an artist, quickly began turning her mother鈥檚 old house into a museum of Civil Rights. The museum opened in 1978.
The house, in which Jackson lived from 1953 to 1975, holds Civil Rights Movement photos, documents and memorabilia. The house stood as the first privately owned black museum to be named after a black woman. In honor of her mother鈥檚 wishes, Virginia kept the museum free of charge to ensure that it was accessible to everyone. After the museum closed in the 1990s, Morgan State University took over the management of the building. In 2012, Morgan State University completed a beautiful restoration of Jackson鈥檚 spacious Bolton Hill home on Eutaw Place and the building is now open as the Lillie Carroll Jackson Civil Rights Museum.
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Known for much of the last century as Lietuvi懦 Namai, Lithuanian Hall is familiar to more than just Baltimore鈥檚 Lithuanian immigrant community; in recent years local bands and promoters have turned 鈥淟ith Hall鈥 into a popular venue for the city鈥檚 thriving music scene.
Lietuvi懦 Namai first opened in 1914 in three West Barre Street rowhouses. A growing population of Lithuanian immigrants, including many who attended St. Alphonsus Church nearby on Saratoga Street, soon needed a larger hall for community gatherings. After raising funds from individuals, local businesses, and fraternal organizations, the handsome hall on Hollins Street, designed by architect Stanislaus Russell, opened to a full month of celebrations in February 1921. The building is made of Indiana limestone and tapestry brick with a carving of the Lithuania coat of arms on the entryway pediment. After its opening, the Lithuanian Educational Association, National Lithuanian Library and Lithuanian Orchestra all found homes in the building. Today, the hall takes a different approach and engages a broader community of residents than its original base of Lithuanian immigrants. The hall has incorporated as a non-profit and, on the first Friday of every month, the venue hosts a 鈥淪ave Your Soul鈥 party playing vintage soul and R&B music.
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Long before places like Sports Authority or Dick's Sporting Goods opened their doors, Little Joe's on the northwest corner of Howard and Baltimore was selling everything from camping equipment and fishing gear to bikes and saddles. In addition, Little Joe's (named for its proprietor, Joe Wiesenfeld, who was just shy of 5 feet) sold a variety of "sundries" and toys, including electric trains and, for a short time, cars and auto-related accessories. By the turn of the century, Wiesnefeld, who opened a bike shop at the corner of Baltimore and Paca Streets in the early 1890s, had expanded his business and moved the shop to this location. In 1909 Wiesenfeld opened an auto annex on West German Street , where his staff repaired and sold cars.
Wiesenfeld's goal on opening Little Joe's Sporting Goods was to sell everything that the multiple department stores in the area didn't and for years he did just that, offering the neighborhood access to goods that would otherwise not have been readily available. This location of Little Joe's was closed in 1925.
Built in 1845 at the center of what was a thriving Jewish community in East Baltimore, the Lloyd Street Synagogue was the first synagogue erected in Maryland and today is the third-oldest standing synagogue in the country.
In building the synagogue, the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation commissioned noted Baltimore architect Robert Cary Long, Jr. Long chose a Greek Revival style. Architect William H. Reasin expanded the building in 1861, maintaining the original fa莽ade and the classical style of the sanctuary. The building was home to the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation from its beginning through 1889, when it transitioned into a catholic church. St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic Church, one of the first Lithuanian "ethnic" parishes in the United States, owned and worshiped there through 1905.
In another flip, Shomrei Mishmeres HaKodesh, one of the leading Orthodox Jewish congregations of the Eastern European immigrant community, bought the building in 1905 from the Catholic church. The new congregation occupied the building until the early 1960s, when it moved out. The vacant building was threatened with demolition at that time and the Jewish Museum of Maryland was formed to purchase and care for this historic landmark. In 2008, the Museum began an ambitious $1 million restoration project with the help of the national Save America's Treasure's Program. The work restored the building to its 1864 appearance and created a multimedia exhibit, The Building Speaks, to interpret this history. The work also won a Historic Preservation Award from 糖心影视 in 2009.
Despite its modern building, the history of Lockerman-Bundy Elementary School dates back to the 1890s.
The school is named for Joseph Harrison Lockerman (1864-1923), a graduate of the Centenary Biblical Institute (now Morgan State University) who in 1911 became Vice Principal of the new Colored High and Training School for African American teachers (now Coppin State University). Two years later, the training school moved into the upper floors of the new Public School 100 located at 229 North Mount Street.
When the school relocated to Pulaski Street in 1976, the name expanded to honor Mrs. Walter A. Bundy (1904-1965). A graduate of Coppin State in 1918, Mrs. Bundy鈥檚 teaching career in Baltimore鈥檚 black schools spanned over four decades.
Baltimore鈥檚 Locust Point was a rapidly growing neighborhood between the Civil War and 1920. One major factor in the neighborhood鈥檚 growth was an immigration pier and depot built in 1867 by the B&O Railroad and the North German Lloyd Shipping Company. Over 1.2 million immigrants landed at the pier between 1868 and 1914, making Baltimore the third largest port of entry in the U.S. at the time (after New York and Boston). B&O extended their railroad tracks up to the pier for the many travellers who purchased a combination ship and rail passage. Most of the earliest immigrants came from Germany but, by the 1890s, a larger number of people came from the Russian and Austrian Empires. Seeing the ever growing number of immigrants, the local German United Evangelical Christ Church decided in 1904 to build a mission house, known as Immigrant House. The mission offered immigrants room and board, clothing, help in finding work, English lessons, and religious ministry. Sailors from the North German Lloyd ships could also stay there when their ships were in port. By 1916, the pastor reported that 3,710 people had stayed at the mission since it opened 12 years earlier. While 鈥淭he Great Wave of Immigration鈥 from Europe ended in Baltimore with the outbreak of the first World War, Immigrant House remained a boarding home for sailors until the 1930s and truck drivers until the 1950s. Since then, the building has been used for church offices, storage, daycare, and Sunday school. The original boarding rooms on the second and third floors remained unoccupied and unchanged, though in deteriorating condition. Baltimore City designated both the church and Immigrant House as local landmarks in 2006. The Baltimore Immigration Memorial, Inc. (BIM), formerly the Baltimore Immigration Project, was established to preserve and publicize the history of the 1.2 million immigrants who came here. In 2006, this group led the effort to design and install a sculpture garden, Liberty Garden, at the end of Hull Street on the grounds of what is now the property of Under Armour. The immigrants had disembarked at Piers 8 and 9, which were once located nearby. BIM and the Locust Point Community UCC have since worked together for the creation of the Baltimore Immigration Museum on the ground floor of Immigrant House on Beason Street, not far from the Liberty Garden. The museum鈥檚 initial exhibit tells the story of global immigration in the nineteenth century, with an emphasis on the U.S. and Baltimore between 1830 and 1914. The stories of Baltimore鈥檚 major immigrant groups are told, as well as the story of anti-immigrant movements of the past. Future projects at the Baltimore Immigration Museum will focus on migration and immigration since 1914, including the history of the migration of African Americans to Baltimore from 1914 to 1970, as well as the 鈥渘ew鈥 immigrants, both Latino and Asian, who have arrived in Baltimore since the liberalization of U.S. immigration laws in 1965.
Built in 1928, the Lord Baltimore Hotel is a beautiful example of an early twentieth-century high-rise hotel. Designed by prolific hotel architect William Lee Stoddart, it is reminiscent of such famous American hotels as New York's Vanderbilt Hotel or Chicago's Palmer House. The twenty-two-story steel frame building was the largest hotel building ever constructed in Maryland. However, the Lord Baltimore is also a reminder of the city鈥檚 history of racial discrimination and the long fight for integrated public accommodation. In 1954, the same year the Supreme Court鈥檚 decision in Brown v. Board of Education called for an end to segregated schools, black players from three American League teams with integrated rosters came to Baltimore to play against the Orioles. White players stayed at the Lord Baltimore, the Emerson, and Southern Hotel downtown. But for their black teammates, the only option was the African American-owned York Hotel in West Baltimore. A year later, in 1955, students at Johns Hopkins University moved the prom away from the Lord Baltimore to the at the Alcazar Hotel in Mount Vernon in protest to the hotel manager鈥檚 refusal to admit black students to the dance and his threat to 鈥渟top the dance if Negroes attended.鈥 By the late 1950s, after lobbying by Baltimore鈥檚 progressive Mayor Theodore McKeldin, the Lord Baltimore Hotel consented to rent rooms to black ballplayers and some conference attendees. In 1958, Baltimore hosted the All-Star Game and six black All-Stars, including Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson, registered at the Lord Baltimore. For visiting black spectators, however, the hotel was not an option. Jimmy Williams, an assistant editor at the Afro American, advised spectators to bring pup tents and box lunches, writing, 鈥淭he box lunches will be to ease the pangs of an aching stomach鈥 The pup tents will provide a place for them to rest their carcasses after the last door of the downtown hotels have been slammed in their face and the uptown hotels are filled.鈥 Williams predicted visitors would leave 鈥渏ust loving the quaint customs of Baltimore, which boasts of major league baseball and minor league businessmen.鈥 By the early 1960s, policies finally began to change. After hotel management realized they had rented rooms for the campaign office of segregationist presidential candidate George Wallace in 1964, the management refused to let them stay and the campaign was forced to move to a motel in Towson. In 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr., stayed at the hotel during a meeting of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, where he gave a lengthy press conference and received symbolic keys to the city from Mayor Tommy D鈥橝lesandro III. The hotel was one of the few historic buildings retained as part of the redevelopment of Charles Center and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.