All Stories: 402
Stories
Saint James A.U.M.P. Church
The origins of this two-story frame church on Jefferson Avenue began in 1861 when a group of Black Baltimore County residents established the Saint James African Union First Colored Methodist Protestant Church. Today, the church is known as the St.…
Billie Holiday Statue
The Billie Holiday Monument on Pennsylvania Avenue commemorates the life and legacy of the famed "Lady Day" who was born as Eleanora Fagan in Baltimore on April 7, 1915.
Billie Holiday's childhood was difficult. Both of her parents were teenagers…
Babe Ruth Birthplace & Museum
On February 6, 1968, the city paid $1,850 to buy four vacant, vandalized rowhouses on Emory Street—an unusual birthday celebration for famed Baltimore native Babe Ruth. Exactly seventy-three years earlier, George Herman “Babe” Ruth, Jr. was born at…
Round Falls
Hampden Falls, now known as Round Falls, was once part of a dam servicing Rock Mill. Completed in the early nineteenth century and rebuilt several times, it became a popular subject for local artists.
The mill was razed in 1930 by Baltimore City…
Saint Mary's Seminary Chapel
The Seminary Chapel at the St. Mary's Spiritual Center is a historic gem. Completed in 1808, the chapel was designed by Maximilian Godefroy, the architect of many historically important structures in Baltimore including the Battle Monument and…
Maryland Penitentiary
The Maryland Penitentiary on Eager Street was completed in 1897, as part of a national prison building boom prompted by reform efforts. The building was designed by architect Jackson C. Gott.
Gott served as one of eight founding members of…
Maryland Institute College of Art
The Maryland Institute College of Art was chartered on January 10, 1826 as the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts. Within months, the new school began offering classes and other programs at "The Athenaeum," a lecture…
Severn Teackle Wallis Statue
The Severn Teackle Wallis Statue by French sculptor Laurent-Honoré Marqueste was dedicated on January 9, 1906 in the south square of Mount Vernon Place in front of the new building of the Walters Art Gallery. Today, the statue stands in the east…
Grace & St. Peter's Church
The first true brownstone building in Baltimore, today’s Grace & St. Peter’s Church opened its doors in 1852 as Grace Church on Park Avenue in Mount Vernon. Architecturally, it was the first church built of stone in the city and with stained…
Trinity Baptist Church
Trinity Baptist Church at the corner of Druid Hill Avenue and McMechen Street tells the story of Baltimore's connections to the national civil rights movement and radical Black activism in the early twentieth century.
One of the church's influential…
Walter Sondheim Residence
1621 Bolton Street is the childhood home of Walter Sondheim, Jr.: a local business executive and civic leader who is best known for his role as president of the Baltimore City School Board as the city first sought to put an end to racially…
Center Stage
Just a few blocks away from the Peabody, stretching along Calvert Street between Madison and Monument Streets, stands another massive Italian palace, built for another educational institution.
The patron here was the Society of Jesus, a Catholic…
South Baltimore Learning Center
The Southern District Police Station at the corner of East Ostend and Patapsco streets was constructed in 1896. The building was designed by local architect Jackson Coale Gott. Born in 1829, Gott established his own firm in 1863, joined the American…
First Unitarian Church of Baltimore
The First Unitarian Church of Baltimore has stood at the corner of Charles and Franklin Streets for over two centuries. Inside the 1818 landmark, visitors can find beautiful Tiffany glass and original furnishings designed by the architect and…
Leadenhall Baptist Church
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…
Walters Bath No. 2
Walters Bath No. 2 opened in 1901 serving residents living in the busy industrial neighborhoods of southwest Baltimore. The construction of the bathhouse was supported by Henry Walters, art collector and philanthropist. Despite living in New York,…
Maryland School for the Blind
The Maryland School for the Blind (MSB) was established in 1853. Formal education for blind people in the U.S. and western Europe was still a relatively recent invention. In 1765, Henry Dannett established the first school with this mission in…
Detrick and Harvey Machine Company
While Baltimore is remembered for the city’s role in fabricating ships and railcars, the companies that made the large machines required to build those ships and railcars have largely been forgotten. The Detrick & Harvey Machine Company buildings…
St. Thomas Aquinas Church
In the mid-nineteenth century, Catholic residents of Hampden belonged to the St. Mary of the Assumption parish in Govans, a distant walk from the burgeoning neighborhood. Since the industrial mill village had been built by the owners of the mills…
School 33 Art Center
School 33 Art Center was established in 1979 as a center for contemporary art in South Baltimore. Formerly known as Public School 33, Baltimore City erected the brick and brownstone building in 1890. It operated as an elementary school up until 1975…
Columbus Monument
The Columbus Monument is a forty-four foot tall brick and cement obelisk standing in a small park at Harford Road and Walther Boulevard. The monument to Christopher Columbus was erected by French consul, Charles Francis Adrian le Paulmier Chevalier…
The Children's Zoo
A giant carrot, a house made of cheese, and barnyard chickens were among the attractions that greeted visitors to the Baltimore Zoo’s new Children’s Zoo when it opened in Druid Hill Park in 1963. “Most children’s zoos are full of fairy tale stuff,…
The Three Sisters Ponds
At the edge of the Disc Golf Course in Druid Hill Park where the greens give way to weeds and woods, you might notice a set of stone steps that lead nowhere. Trace their path downward through the wild overgrowth and you can pick out remnants of a…
Maryland Zoo's Animal Hospital
Disc golfers playing on Druid Hill Park’s course sometimes toss their Frisbees accidentally over the Maryland Zoo’s perimeter fence. The discs land alongside a flat, understated red-brick building whose bland exterior contrasts with a fascinating…
Maryland Zoo's Reptile House
On August 5, 1948, Mayor Thomas D’Alessandro and other Baltimore City dignitaries came by motorcade to Druid Hill Park for the official opening of the Baltimore Zoo’s new Reptile House. They pulled up in front of a small, yellow-brick building a…
The Maryland Building
When the first official World’s Fair in the United States – the Centennial Exhibition – closed in Philadelphia in November 1876, the Maryland delegation chose not to abandon their state exhibit hall. Instead, the wooden building (described as “a…
Maryland Zoo's Perimeter Fence
Visiting any zoo in the world today, you expect to find it surrounded by a fence. It might seem difficult, then, to imagine that for nearly a century there was no fence around the Baltimore Zoo. The zoo was open to anyone who visited Druid Hill…
Mansion House Lawn
"Buttercups bloom and children play joyously amid the grasses and sunshine," waxed one Sun reporter poetically of the Mansion House lawn. Since the park's founding in 1860, the grassy hillside attracted thousands upon thousands of visitors for music…
Union Baptist Church
Union Baptist Church traces its origins to 1852 and a group of fifty-seven worshipers meeting in a small building on Lewis Street. It was the fifth oldest African American congregation in Baltimore and financed entirely by African Americans. The…
Old Town National Bank
The classically styled Old Town National Bank building at 221 N. Gay Street was constructed in 1924 as a bank headquarters. The first floor still retain an array of historic details, including a two-story lobby, cornice and parapet wall, grand…