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…
Organized in 1875 by Samuel H. Cummings at Gilmore and Mulberry Streets, the Harlem Park Methodist Episcopal Church relocated to Harlem Park in 1880 under the leadership of John F. Goucher. The church constructed a new building in 1906 under the…
At a ground-breaking ceremony for the Immanuel Reformed Church on June 24, 1922, 12 trustees, including Charles C. Zies, Sr. and John H. Weller, signed a contract for the construction of the new building. Plans filed a few days later for a white…
Perkins Square Baptist Church has been an institution on Edmondson Avenue since the mid-1950s occupying a grey stone church that began in 1913 as Emmanuel English Evangelical Lutheran Church. The two-story tall church was designed by local architect…
In 1967, the Baltimore Afro-American called the 2500 block of Harlem Avenue (which extends west from the church) ”a typical slice of Baltimore”:
"The 2500 block of Harlem Avenue is a microcosm of middle-class Baltimore. . . . A visit to the…
The neighborhood lacked a local school until 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 “white”…
Fort Carroll is a 3.4 acre artificial island and abandoned fort located within the shadow of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. The fort was designed by then Brevet-Colonel Robert E. Lee, and construction was started in 1848 by the U.S. Army Corps of…
Originally the summer home of industrialist and abolitionist Elisha Tyson in the early 1800s, 732 Pacific Street is a classic Federal style house built with native granite two feet thick. Among many other accomplishments, Tyson helped finance the…
The highly ornamented Mercantile Trust Building was constructed in 1885 by architectural firm Wyatt and Sperry. The architecture conveys a sense of impenetrability, characterized by its massive, heavy stonework and deep set windows and entrance. Ads…
This small building sits squarely inside the area decimated by the Great Baltimore Fire and surprisingly survived. It was built in 1901 for Alex Brown and Sons: the oldest investment banking firm in the United States. Noted architecture firm Parker…
Robert Garrett was the original owner of the thirteen-story Garrett Building. Among other things, Garrett was a banker, Olympian, collector of medieval manuscripts, and a leader in the development of recreational facilities in Baltimore. He was a…
The Vickers Building represents a shift in downtown Baltimore architectural design that occurred directly after the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 and is one of the largest buildings to utilize brick as a primary material in the Central Business…
Few places demonstrate the radical transformation of the Baltimore waterfront from the early 19th century through the present as vividly as the site of the Battery Babock, a short distance south of where Fort Look-Out once stood in Riverside Park.…
In 1885, Baltimore City set out to build the most beautiful Courthouse in the country. Fifteen years, and $2.2 million later ($56 million adjusted for inflation), that goal was realized. On January 6, 1900, the Baltimore Sun reported that the City of…
Once a bustling department store complex on North Gay Street, the Great House of Isaac Benesch and Sons has been vacant for over a decade as the Old Town Mall waits on the progress of long stalled revitalization efforts. Isaac Benesch started his…
Located on Hillen Street, the Null House is a rare eighteenth century home dating from around 1782. Once common throughout the city, only a handful of these small wood frame houses remain, largely in Fells Point. Named for the antique shop that…
Founded in 1799, Oldtown’s Independent Fire Company maintained their Independent No. 6 engine house at Gay and Ensor Streets for over fifty years. In 1853, the company tore down their original engine house and replaced it with the present home of…
The 1833 McKim Free School building is one of Baltimore’s most important landmarks with deep roots in the city’s history and an unsurpassed 175 year record of education and social service. Founder John McKim came to Baltimore as a young man,…
In 1919, the Governor of Maryland and the Mayor of Baltimore appointed a War Memorial Commission that initiated a nationwide architectural competition to design a memorial building dedicated to the 1,752 Marylanders who died in military service…
The Shot Tower, when it was built in 1828, was the tallest structure in the United States until 1846. Once there were three such towers in Baltimore; now there are only a few left in the entire world. The design of the 215-foot tall Phoenix Shot…
Built in 1899, the West Arlington Water Tower was originally used to supply water to the West Arlington neighborhood in northwest Baltimore just across the city line. The community developed quickly around it with the West Arlington Improvement…
The Clifton Park Valve House on St. Lo Drive in Clifton Park is a magnificent Gothic revival stone and tile-roofed structure built between 1887 and 1888. It was built to house the machinery used in the operation of Lake Clifton, which was once part…
The Roland Water Tower was built in 1905 as a 211,000-gallon water tank to supply residents to Hampden and nearby neighborhoods, part of a complicated water supply system that included the Western Pumping Station at Druid Lake. The design by William…
In 1936, Sidney Friedman was riding a train to Baltimore and carrying a charcoal grill. Earlier that week, Friedman had dined at Ray's Steak House in Chicago and ate his very first charcoal-grilled steak. He'd never had anything like it. He asked the…
The Duchess of Windsor, born Bessie Wallis Warfield, moved into a three story brownstone on 212 East Biddle Street with her mother in 1908. Wallis (who didn't like going by Bessie because she said it reminded her of a cow) was only 12 years old at…
At the close of the 18th century, the far eastern edge of Baltimore was marked by Harris Creek, a modest tributary of the Patapsco that spilled into the River near where Boston Street and Lakewood Avenue in Canton today. In an area of Baltimore that…
Today, from the rise within Riverside Park, established in 1875, a visitor can see the rowhouses and churches of South Baltimore densely packed around the park in every direction. During the War of 1812, this rise, long known as known as Look-Out…
The Edgar Allan Poe statue sitting in the Gordon Plaza at University of Baltimore has a colorful past. The statue was commissioned in 1911 by the Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Association of Baltimore and was the last work of renowned American sculptor …
On an auspicious afternoon in late September 1903, a crowd of Baltimoreans converged onto the intersection of Mount Royal Avenue and Lanvale Street to witness the unveiling of the William H. Watson monument. The monument, erected by the Maryland…
Ottmar Mergenthaler was only 18 years old when he immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1872 to work with his cousin August Hahl at his machine shop in Washington, D.C. Four years later, after Hahl moved his shop to Baltimore, inventor…
In 1863, the Baltimore City Council approved a $300,000 loan to construct a billion gallon capacity reservoir in the newly established Druid Hill Park. Though the new city waterworks project from Lake Roland to the Mount Royal Reservoir on the Jones…
Only long-time residents of Baltimore can remember the Hampden Reservoir, buried since 1960 under debris from the construction of the Jones Falls Expressway and used as Roosevelt Park. The Hampden Reservoir was completed in 1861 three years after…
The Mt. Royal Reservoir was once an essential element within an extensive system of waterworks built to deliver clean drinking water to a growing, thirsty city. In 1857, the Baltimore City Council passed an ordinance to provide additional water to…
In August 1933, F. Scott Fitzgerald moved with his family to 1307 Park Avenue. Fitzgerald had been forced out of his previous home in Towson due to a house fire attributed to his mentally ill wife, Zelda. Their rowhouse, a ten minute walk from the…
John McDonogh, a Baltimore-born merchant and philanthropist, was born in 1779 and died in 1850, bequeathing half of his estate to the City of Baltimore to educate children. However, since the public school system already existed in Baltimore, the…
The Gwynns Falls first saw industrial development as early as the late 1700s and, by 1808, the small industrial village began to form around an early paper mill along the water where Dickeyville sits today. Although few of these early stone…
Erected high on a hill above the Gunpowder River Valley, Perry Hall Mansion dominated life in northeastern Baltimore County in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Built in the 1770s by Harry Dorsey Gaugh, Perry Hall was named after…
The Mansion House, built by Revolutionary War Colonel Nicholas Rogers, has stood in what is now Druid Hill Park since 1801. The house is the third to stand in this location. Originally a castle known as “Auchentorolie,” built by Rogers’…
Built between 1856 and 1857 at a cost of $600,000, Camden Station is a grand reminder of the long history of the B&O Railroad in Baltimore. Designed by Niernsee and Neilson with contributions by architect Joseph F. Kemp, the station served as a…
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,…
Past the brick rowhomes that have come to define Baltimore, Emmanuel Episcopal Church, established in 1854, sits on the corner of Read and Cathedral Streets. At street level, only the abrupt appearance of rubble stone from brick indicates that there…
Constructed in 1882, the Orchard Street United Methodist Church is the oldest standing structure built by African-Americans in Baltimore. The church was established by Trueman Pratt, a free black born into slavery in Anne Arundel County, who began…
707 South Regester Street was built between 1760 and 1780 when Regester was known as Argyle Alley. Deed research tracing back to 1814 shows the house was owned by Joseph Brown until he sold it to Issac Stansbury in October of 1814. It was originally…
Designed by early Baltimore architect Robert Cary Long in 1845, the St. Alphonsus Church has been called "the German cathedral" for its Southern German neo-Gothic style. The church was originally established with a large German congregation and the…
Built in the late 1800s, the Mayfair Theatre, originally known as the Auditorium, was once considered one of the finest showhouses in Baltimore, if not the country. Though the building's ornate white stonework façade and grand marquee readily…
"There is hardly a building in Baltimore that doesn't contain something we made, even if it is only a nail," boasts Theodore Krug, heir to the oldest continuously working iron shop in the country. For more than 200 years artisans here have hammered…
As early as 1796, when the Golden Horse Inn stood at the crossroads of Franklin and Howard Streets, this spot was popular destination for Baltimore residents and visitors alike. The Inn, operated by W. Forsyth, was attached to a large stable to the…
In 1961, the cornerstone of the Baltimore Civic Center (as it was then called) was laid, enclosing a time capsule with notes from President John F. Kennedy, Maryland Governor Millard Tawes, and Baltimore Mayor Harold Grady. Located on the site of the…
During the War of 1812, Fell Street ran down a narrow stretch of land, with valuable water on both sides. William Price, who owned a shipyard at the east end of Thames, lived on Fell Street at 912 (built by 1802) and owned 903 to 907 (built 1779…
During the War of 1812, the Fell’s Point’s Market house, located at the site of the contemporary Broadway Market, served as an important gathering place. Twice a week, on market days, the streets teemed with shoppers, farmers, young boys and the…
If some sea captains downplayed their financial success, others put it on display for all to see. In 1810 Alexander Thompson acquired the grand four-bay-wide house at 1729 Aliceanna (built ca. 1780). Now altered, it was then 2½ stories tall. During…
Built around 1800, 1706 Lancaster was home Thomas Kemp, a 24-year-old shipbuilder from St. Michaels on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, from 1803 to 1805 on the eve of the War of 1812. During the war, many regarded Kemp as the most skilled builder of…
1627 Aliceanna Street, is a rare 18th century wooden house, built in 1797 and once home to "The Academy" run by schoolmaster Nicholas Leeke. Leeke's daughter, Mary, married a dashing young sea captain, Henry Dashiell, who was a privateer in the War…
713 South Ann Street is a rare wooden house surviving within a row from 711 to 715 South Ann Street. Built around 1800, the 1804 City Directory lists Patrick Travis, a sea-captain, as the resident of the house at the time. The earliest deed located…
612 and 614 South Wolfe Street are perhaps the best known wooden houses in the Fell’s Point area as they are two of the smallest wooden homes remaining. Ann Bond Fell Giles, widowed wife of Edward Fell, inherited both properties following the death…
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…
Davidge Hall on the University of Maryland Medical School Campus is the oldest medical facility building in the nation. The red brick structure is named after the school's founder and first dean, John Beale Davidge, designed by French architect…
With a gleaming black marble façade reading "Charles Fish and Sons Company" and Victorian brick arches above, the architecture of this building clearly points to a varied history. The surprising story of the building begins before the start of the…
Up near the top of this handsome Neoclassical detailed brick building at the corner of Fayette and Paca Streets is a stone stone entablature reading "1801 Baltimore General Dispensary 1911" - a visible reminder of this building's important past.…
The Appold- Faust Brothers Building at 307-309 West Baltimore Street is one of a handful of surviving cast-iron fronted buildings in Baltimore and one of the only structures in the city that can boast two iron facades on front and back. The…
In 1934, Carl Sandburg wrote to Sally Bruce Kinsolving, "The years go by and I don't forget ever the long evening of song with you...at your house and faces and stories and moments out of that visit to Baltimore. I'm hoping to drop in again…
A novelist, playwright, poet, and essayist, Gertrude Stein is remembered as a literary innovator who fearlessly experimented with language in the early twentieth century. Today, Gertrude Stein is still renowned as a magnet for those who would…
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…
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…
Carroll Park is Baltimore's third oldest city park and was originally part of the enormous Mount Clare estate owned by Charles Carroll, Barrister in the mid-18th century. The park was the site of Camp Carroll during the Civil War and, in the 30 years…
Pine Street Station, the handsome, slate-roofed High Victorian Gothic building was built between 1877 and 1878 and designed by architect Francis E. Davis. The red brick structure, which is trimmed with painted bluestone lintels and adorned with…
Adorned with graceful arches and elegant art deco lights the eight story Beaux Arts Hecht-May Co. building at the corner of Lexington and Howard streets (designed by Smith and May architects) was originally built in 1908 as an annex to the Bernheimer…
The Hebrew Orphan Asylum appears like a grand castle on a hill with rows Victorian Romanesque arched windows and turrets at every corner. The unique design is a credit to the architectural partnership of Lupus & Roby - composed of German architect…
Erected in 1879 as an investment property for Arunah Shepardson Abell, founder of The Baltimore Sun, the Abell Building was designed by famed Baltimore architect George Frederick - architect for Baltimore's City Hall, Hollins Market, and the Old…
When Samuel Posner moved his successful dry goods business to the corner of Lexington and Howard, architect Charles E. Cassell's gorgeous and ornate white Renaissance Revival building - complete with roaring lions and majestic wreaths and fluted…
In 1819, wealthy French merchant Louis Pascault, the Marquis de Poleon, constructed a row of eight houses on Lexington Street that now remain as the one of the earliest examples of the Baltimore rowhouse. Born in France, Pascault later moved to the…
Born near Cleveland, Ohio in 1857, John Jacob Abel received a Ph.B. from the University of Michigan in 1883. In 1893, after further training from Henry Newell Martin Johns Hopkins University and at various European University, the Johns Hopkins…
The Key Monument on Eutaw Place is a grand reminder of how Baltimoreans have kept the memory of the Battle of Baltimore and the War of 1812 alive over 200 years. Francis Scott Key was a Maryland lawyer who was on board the British vessel HMS Tonnant…
Woodrow Wilson came to this house as a Ph.D. candidate at Johns Hopkins University. From Eutaw Place he went on to become president of Princeton University, the governor of New Jersey and eventually President of the United States of America.
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 Johns Hopkins…
Born in Central City, Colorado, on November 9, 1871, Florence Rena Sabin, M.D. (1871-1953) was the youngest daughter of a mining engineer. After her mother's death from sepsis, Florence and her sister moved first to Chicago then to stay with her…
The Maryland Women's Hospital, now known as the Robert and Jany Meyerhoff House for the Maryland Institute College of Art, was a pioneering medical institution in the late 19th century that remained a landmark in Bolton Hill through the…
An icon on Eutaw Place, the former Temple Oheb Shalom is a reminder of the vibrant Jewish community that thrived in the late 19th century in what were then Baltimore's expanding northwest suburbs. Built in 1892, architect Joseph Evans Sperry modeled…
While 1311 Bolton Street is best known today as the former location for the Bolton Street Synagogue, the story of this handsome stone building begins back in 1875 as the Reformed Episcopal Church of the Redeemer. This former church was converted to a…
232 West Lanvale has a neat appearance that belies its age as the oldest house in Bolton Hill. Amazingly, it reportedly looks almost exactly the same today as it did when built in 1848. Originally part of a group of three Italianate houses facing…
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.…
One of the largest businesses on the West Side in the early twentieth century the Baltimore Bargain House -- a mail-order wholesale business that employed over a thousand people and earned profits in the millions that grew to become the fourth…
Though the Baltimore Sun heralded the structure at the southeast corner of Howard and Lexington as an Art Deco design icon from the time of its construction in 1934, this building's role as an early and vital witness to a historic, but long…
"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…
Known originally as the Hotel Kernan, the Congress Hotel was built in 1903 by James L. Kernan. Kernan was a savvy businessman who sought to capitalize on the ways in which immigration had influenced the tastes of wealthy visitors and Baltimore…
Built around 1842, the Mount Vernon Club is one of the oldest homes on Mount Vernon Place. Previously known as the Blanchard Randall House and the Tiffany-Fisher House, the home was built by William Tiffany, a wealthy Baltimore commission merchant.…
On April 19, 1861, just one week after the attack on Fort Sumter by Confederate forces marked the beginning of the Civil War, a train carrying Union volunteers with the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment pulled into the Philadelphia, Wilmington and…
While few remember the slogan of the Emerson Bromo-Seltzer Company - "If you keep late hours for Society's sake Bromo-Seltzer will cure that headache" - the iconic Bromo-Seltzer Tower has been a Baltimore landmark since its construction in 1911. At…
Officially dedicated on July 13, 1839 and born out of the garden cemetery movement, Green Mount Cemetery is one of the first garden cemeteries created in the United States. After seeing the beautiful Mount Auburn Cemetery in Connecticut in 1834,…
For over twenty years, the Copycat - named for the roof top billboard of the Copycat printing company - has offered studio space and living space for countless artists, musicians, and performers. The history of creativity in this local landmark has a…
On August 14, 1814, almost exactly one month before the Battle of Baltimore and the bombing of Ft. McHenry in the War of 1812, Rembrandt Peale opened "Peale's Baltimore Museum and Gallery of Paintings" on Holliday Street in downtown Baltimore.…
For Edgar Allen Poe, the author perhaps most famous for his poem “The Raven,” time spent in Baltimore defines both the beginning and end of his life. Born in Boston, Poe made his first trip to Baltimore in 1808, at just five weeks old, to visit…
On July 4, 1828, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the last living signer of the Declaration of Independence and a director of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, laid the cornerstone for the Carrollton Viaduct. He said at the time, "I consider this among…
Dedicated on December 4, 1870, Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church stands as a monument both to George Brown, whose wife Isabella McLanahan Brown supported the construction of the church in his memory, and the generations of Baltimoreans who have…
Designed by architect Edward L. Palmer, Jr. in 1925, the handsome Roland Park Apartments, now known as the Roland Park Condominium, is a significant example of Beaux Arts architecture in North Baltimore. The building was erected by the M.A. Long…
First established in 1857, the Maryland Club started in a residence designed by Robert Mills on the northeast corner of Franklin and Cathedral streets and many of the Club's members lived in the area around Mount Vernon Place. At the start of the…
First established in 1847 by a group of prominent businessmen, the Eutaw Savings Bank spent its first decade operating out of the Eutaw House Hotel located on the same site as the Hippodrome Theater. In 1856, the Eutaw Savings Bank purchased a lot…
Penn Station is a unique combination of a classic Beaux-Arts architectural design from architect Kenneth Mackenzie Murchison and a functional, adaptable train station that serves more than 855,000 guests a year as the eighth busiest station in the…
The Brewers Exchange, a gorgeous, three story terra cotta Renaissance Revival building designed by noted local architect Joseph Evans Sperry (who designed the Bromo Seltzer Tower, as well as many other Baltimore buildings) that stands at the corner…
The "gastronomic capital of the world" declared Ralph Waldo Emerson on a visit to Lexington Market. Established in 1782 on land donated by John Eager Howard, Lexington Market was an overnight success as local farmers flocked to the site to sell their…
Constructed across from the venerable Ford's Theater in 1911, the Empire Theater (as the Town was first called) was designed in the Beaux Arts style by Baltimore architects William McElfatrick and Otto Simonson. Although its advertising slogan was…
Erected in stages between 1890 and 1910, the former H.F. Miller & Son Company building consists of a 77,000 square foot brick manufacturing plant that occupies half of the city block bounded by 26th Street on the south, 27th Street on the north,…
Touted as "modern market in the country," and now considered an early prototype for suburban shopping centers, the North Avenue Market opened in 1928 with 12 retail stores and 22 lane bowling alley on the second floor at a cost of $1,850,000.The site…
In 1761, a group of Scots-Irish "Dissenters" (opponents of the Church of England) came to Baltimore Towne from Pennsylvania to escape the French and Indian War. They founded the First Presbyterian Church, appropriately named as it really was the…
Beginning in 1872, the mansion was the home of Robert Garrett, president of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, and his wife Mary Frick Garrett. After Robert Garrett's death, Mrs. Garrett married Dr. Henry Barton Jacobs and the couple added the ballroom…
Established in 1857, the Peabody Institute is the second-oldest conservatory in the United States and a landmark at the southeast corner of the Washington Monument. Born in 1795 in Massachusetts, George Peabody lived briefly in Washington, DC, fought…
A survivor that has endured decades of abandonment, the 1914 Lebow Building is an impressive example of early 20th century industrial architecture that is just starting a new future as the Baltimore Design School. While it takes its popular name from…
At the southwest corner of Chase and St. Paul in November 1912, the Algonquin Building Company completed a modern ten-story apartment house that neatly complements the historic 1903 Belvedere Hotel down the block. Architect William Nolting, of Wyatt…
At the northeast corner of Charles and Read Streets stands the beautiful Latrobe Apartment House. The name for the building comes from the original Latrobe House, built just after the Civil War and torn down in 1911 to make way for the new apartment…
The Walbert building stands out in the Station North skyline with a bright coat of paint and rich Beaux Arts details. The story of this landmark begins in 1907, when Charles J. Bonaparte–a great-nephew to Emperor Napoleon I of France, a prominent…
The Washington Apartment House at the northwest corner of Charles Street and Mt. Vernon Place is a one of the finest Beaux Arts apartment houses in Baltimore. After the controversial construction of The Severn in 1895, many Mt. Vernon residents were…
The Marlborough Apartments is an eleven-story landmark well-known for its architecture and as the home to the famous Baltimore art-collecting Cone Sisters.
Before the construction of the Marlborough, the property was the site of a large mansion…
"Huge and, alas! we must say ungainly," is how the Baltimore Sun described The Severn in 1907. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1972, few locals would still dismiss the grand Severn Apartment House as an intrusion on Mt. Vernon Place, but…
In 1869, the Freemasons finished a new Grand Lodge for the State of Maryland on Charles Street in downtown Baltimore, with each room more decorated than the last. Originally designed by Edmund G. Lind, who also designed the Peabody Institute in the…
Who knew that tucked away inside the Mount Pleasant public golf course off Hillen Road sits a remarkably well preserved 150 year-old Methodist chapel. Taylor's Chapel has its roots to the Taylor family, which is one of the oldest in Maryland,…
Founded in 1791, St. Mary's Seminary and University was the first Catholic seminary in the United States. It was granted a civil charter by the State of Maryland in 1805 and in 1822, Pope Pious VII established it as the first seminary in the U.S. to…
There are few places where you can stand in the middle of a room and almost everything you see is made or decorated by Tiffany: glass, paint, finishes, etc. St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church on St. Paul Street, with its entire interior designed…
"My library shall be for all, rich and poor without distinction of race or color, who, when properly accredited, can take out the books if they will handle them carefully and return them." These were the words of Enoch Pratt in 1882 when he gave a…
Old Otterbein Church, built in 1785, is one of the oldest churches still standing in Baltimore. With its classic brick and white trim tower (with bells brought over from Germany), the church shows off its landmark stature for countless Orioles fans…
In the 19th century, Baltimore was the world's leading supplier of cotton duck, a material that was used in items from uniforms and tents to sailcloth and parachutes. Much of it was made at a sprawling complex of mill buildings collectively called…
On June 16, 1808, Elizabeth Bayley Seton arrived at St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore on the same day that Bishop John Carroll, the first bishop in the Unites States, dedicated the seminary's newly built chapel. Elizabeth came to Baltimore from New…
In 1784 during the "Christmas Conference" at the Lovely Lane Meeting House in Baltimore, American Methodist was born. Surprisingly, this predated the organization of the Methodist community in England where it originated.
In 1784, English…
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…
Small in size but still nationally significant, Baltimore's Irish Shrine at 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,…
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…
With 48 rooms, a soaring portico, and a Tiffany designed glass canopy, Evergreen House stands out as one of Baltimore's best Gilded Age mansions. The house was originally built in 1857 by the Broadbent Family. John Work Garrett, president of the B&O…
Enoch Pratt was a wealthy Baltimore merchant and major benefactor of many Baltimore institutions, including the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore, the Sheppard Pratt Hospital, and of course the Enoch Pratt Free Library. He began to build a mansion…
With a Civil-War era mansion and a brand new visitor's center, Cylburn Arboretum is bustling with history and energy. Cylburn began as the private estate of Jesse Tyson, president of the Baltimore Chrome Works Company and a successful businessman.…
The Crimea Estate is the former summer home of Thomas DeKay Winans, a chief engineer of the Russian Railway between Moscow and St. Petersburg in the 19th Century. The estate features Winans' Italianate stone mansion, Orianda, as well as a gothic…
Founded in the 1850s as the Poole & Hunt Iron Works company, Clipper Mill went on to become one of the largest machine manufacturing complexes in the U.S. After a devastating fire in 1996, the complex of buildings rose from the ashes as a signature…
Founded in 1839, City College is the third oldest public high school in the United States. Through an act of the Baltimore City Council in 1866, the school became known as "The Baltimore City College." It relocated a number of times in buildings…
Step inside this grand residence and find 18-foot ceilings, a spiral staircase, and ornate chandeliers. Few Americans could have afforded the Carroll Mansion in the early 1800s when Charles Carroll, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of…
Opened in 1786 by Baltimore's First Presbyterian Church, the Westminster Burying Ground is the resting place for many of early Baltimore's most notable citizens, including merchants, mayors, and fifteen generals from the Revolutionary War and War of…
Built primarily between 1806 and 1821, the Baltimore Basilica was the first Cathedral erected in the United States. Bishop John Carroll, America's first bishop and a cousin of Charles Carroll of Declaration of Independence signing fame, led the…
Druid Hill Park was established on the eve of the Civil War by Baltimore Mayor Thomas Swann on October 19, 1860. Much of the park started as part of "Auchentorlie," the estate of George Buchanan, one of the seven commissioners who founded Baltimore…
Henry Thompson was born in 1774 in Sheffield, England and came to Baltimore in 1794, where he became a member of the Baltimore Light Dragoons. He was elected captain of this company in 1809, six years after completing a house called "Clifton" in what…
"Designed in 1890 by Charles H. Latrobe, then Superintendent of Parks, the Pagoda, was originally known as the Observatory. While known as the Pagoda because of its oriental architectural appearance, the design was intended to reflect the bold…
The Morgan Millwork Company, now known as the MICA Graduate Studio Center, is a product of Baltimore's once vibrant industrial development and a clear reflection of how industry has struggled in Baltimore over the past 50 years. J. Earl Morgan…
The Centre Theatre opened on a February evening in 1939 with a Hollywood-style opening as "a thousand invited guest walked through the glare of spotlights while newsreel photographs turned their cranks and candid camera fans sniped from the…
Occupying a busy corner at Charles and North, the magnificent Parkway Theater entertained audiences in Central Baltimore for decades with everything from vaudeville and silent movies to nightly live radio productions. Although abandoned for over a…
Built in 1890, Public School No. 32, now better known as home to the Baltimore Montessori School, is a rare historic community school building, one of scores built in the late 19th century to support the city's rapidly growing population. Like most…
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…
As early as the 1840s, a small oasis of green known as Perkins' Spring became a popular destination at the edge of the rapidly growing city. The park's unique value to local residents came from the fresh-water spring that poured out at a rate of 60…
"As much a part of me as my own two hands," is how Henry Louis Mencken described his house at 1524 Hollins Street and his personality can be seen in everything from the parquet floors to the garden tiles. In 1880, Mencken was brought by his parents…
Union Square began as part of Willowbrook, the John Donnell Federal-period estate, which he purchased in 1802 from Baltimore merchant and later Mayor Thorowgood Smith. In 1847, the Donnell family heirs donated the 2.5-acre lot in front of the manor…
Franklin Square Park is one of the oldest parks in the city, with its origins in the estate of Dr. James McHenry, who lived at a home known as Fayetteville located near Baltimore and Fremont Streets in the early 1800s. Born in Ireland, James McHenry…
Harlem Park started as one of the largest squares in West Baltimore, 9 ¾ acres, more than double the size of Franklin, Lafayette, or Union Square. The grounds of the park and much of the land around it had originally belonged to Dr. Thomas…
Since 1857, Lafayette Square has been Baltimore’s 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…
The Harlem Park Theatre was originally built as a church for a congregation that had outgrown the size of their existing building. Construction on this Romanesque-style building on Gilmore Street began in the summer of 1902. The building had a Port…
High on a hill at 811 West Lanvale Street, behind a chain link fence and past the overgrown yard, is the grand Upton – an architectural treasure by one of Baltimore's earliest architects that has witnessed nearly 200 years of change in the Upton…
Built in 1868, the Sellers Mansion (801 North Arlington Street) is a three-story Second Empire brick house with a mansard roof that rivaled its outer suburban contemporaries in size, quality of craftsmanship, and attention to detail. Its carved stone…
The Washington Monument in the elegant Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland was the first architectural monument planned to honor George Washington.
In 1815, a statue was designed by Robert Mills, who also designed the Washington…
Construction on the Battle Monument began on September 12, 1815, a year to the day after Baltimore soundly defeated the British in the War of 1812, and the monument endures as a commemoration of the attack by land at North Point and by sea at Fort…
