All Stories: 545
Stories
Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery
Constructed of tooled Indiana limestone, glass, steel, concrete, and granite, the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery is at the center of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County campus both literally and figuratively. Since the library first…
Baltimore Musicians' Union 543
The Baltimore Black Musicians Union opened a meeting hall and boarding house at 620-622 Dolphin Street around the 1940s. Due to the discrimination of Baltimore's downtown hotels at that time, traveling black musicians would stay overnight in the…
Zell Motor Car Company Showroom
The story of the Zell Motor Car Company starts in 1902 when Arthur Stanley Zell established the business—the first automobile distributor in Maryland started by one of the first people in Maryland to own a car. Before joining the automotive…
Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument
This sculpture is depicts Glory, an allegorical figure that looks in this sculpture like an angel, holding up a dying Confederate soldier in one arm while raising the laurel crown of Victory in the other. The dying soldier holds a battle flag.…
Roger Brooke Taney Monument
The Roger Brooke Taney Monument is not explicitly a Confederate monument. However, Taney is most famous for his decision in the Dred Scott case, which advanced slavery in America and is tied to the Confederate cause. Taney served as the chief…
Rev. Harvey Johnson and Amelia Johnson House
As African Americans in Baltimore sought to redefine themselves in the 1880s -- politically, geographically, socially -- the city’s black pastorate served as a vital source of leadership. None of this group stood taller or closer to the vanguard the…
Fire Museum of Maryland
The Fire Museum of Maryland is one of the largest fire museums in America. Located in Lutherville, just north of Baltimore City, the Museum is a leading institution in preserving, restoring, and interpreting the history of the urban fire service in…
Warner T. McGuinn House
A native of Goochland County, near Richmond, Virginia, Warner T. McGuinn was born less than two years before the Civil War in November 1859. His parents, Jared and Fannie McGuinn, sent him to public school in Richmond and then he went on to graduate…
Dr. John E.T. Camper House
639 N. Carey Street is the former residence of Dr. J.E.T. Camper. In 1942, Baltimore NAACP official Dr. J. E. T. Camper and Juanita Mitchell worked with the Citizens Committee for Justice (CCJ), to lead 2,000 people from 150 groups on a march on…
Freedom House
1234 Druid Hill Avenue had a story unlike any other. When builders erected the house in the nineteenth century it was one of many handsome Italianate rowhouses in the northwestern suburbs of the city. In 1899, as the neighborhood changed from white…
Harry Sythe Cummings House
A neglected brick rowhouse at 1318 Druid Hill Avenue was once the residence of Baltimore’s first black City Councilman Harry S. Cummings.
Harry S. Cummings, his wife Blanche Teresa Conklin and their two children Louise Virginia and Harry Sythe…
Juanita Jackson and Clarence Mitchell, Jr. House
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…
Mitchell Family Law Office
An accomplished lawyer and activist, Juanita Jackson Mitchell organized the Citywide Young People's Forum in the 1930s to push for more opportunity for black youth during the Great Depression. Clarence Mitchell, Jr. served as the long-time lobbyist…
Polish Home Club
The Polish Home Club, known then as the Polish Home Hall, opened to six hundred members of the Polish community on August 11, 1918, in an area of Fell's Point known as “Little Poland.” Baltimore’s Polish population grew rapidly in the late…
Dickey Memorial Presbyterian Church
The church, built in 1885, continues to serve as a focal point for the village's holiday celebrations such as Christmas caroling, a Fourth of July parade, and community potlucks.
William J. Dickey, who lived in the village, was a devout…
AIABaltimore at 11 1/2 W. Chase Street
Founded in 1871, the Baltimore Chapter of The American Institute of Architects is the third oldest in the country. AIABaltimore serves as the voice of the architecture profession in the Baltimore metropolitan area. The chapter consists of nearly…
Loudon Park Cemetery
James Carey originally sold the generous country estate that became Loudon Park Cemetery in 1853. The new owner, James Primrose, built a stone wall with an ornamental railing at the cemetery entrance and enlisted an engineer to map out lots for…
Sharp Street Memorial United Methodist Church
The congregation at Sharp Street Memorial United Methodist Church began in 1787, the first African American Methodist congregation in Baltimore. By 1802, the congregants had purchased their first building on Sharp Street between Lombard and Pratt…
Sudbrook Park
Sudbrook Park is one of only three examples in the country of Frederick Law Olmsted’s “perfect” suburban community. The other two, Riverside in Chicago and Druid Hills in Atlanta, would make him a pioneer in landscape architecture. Frederick Law…
Lillie Carroll Jackson Civil Rights Museum
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…
Highfield House
The Highfield House is an outstanding example of International Style architecture totaling 265,800 square feet in fifteen stories. The Highfield House apartment building was designed by Architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and was constructed by the…
Church & Company
Workers laid the cornerstone of the Hampden Presbyterian Church in 1875 and dedicated the building two years later. The sturdy structure is made of Texas Limestone, named for the unincorporated town in Baltimore County where the quarry is located.…
Walters Art Museum
The Walters Art Museum, so named for William Walters and his son Henry, began as a private art collection. Born in 1819, William was the first of eight children. At age 21 he moved to Baltimore and entered the wholesale liquor trade. He prospered in…
Munsey Building
The Munsey Building was erected by and named after the publisher, Frank Munsey, who had purchased the Baltimore News to add to his publishing empire. Though he wanted the paper, he did not like the five-year old building that housed it. So, he had a…
Crown Cork & Seal on Eastern Avenue
When Baltimorean William Painter invented the bottle cap in 1891, it didn’t take long for beverage companies (beer brewers in particular) to realize its value, and for Painter to realize he needed to build significant manufacturing facilities to…
The Patterson
The first Patterson Theater to occupy 3136 Eastern Avenue opened in 1910. In 1918, Harry Reddish purchased the building to renovate and redecorate it. He reopened it two years later and renamed it the “New Patterson”. The Patterson Theater housed a…
Robert Long House
Just around the corner from the busy shops and restaurants of Thames Street is the Robert Long House at 812 South Ann Street, the very image of a handsome eighteenth century colonial residence and one of the oldest homes in Baltimore. However, this…
Congressman Parren Mitchell House
1805 Madison Avenue was built around 1886, when the property was first advertised in the Baltimore Sun as available to rent for $35 per month. In July 1888, Benjamin and Rosetta Rosenheim purchased the home and moved in with their two young…
Etting Cemetery
The Etting Family Cemetery is the oldest existing Jewish cemetery in Baltimore. Solomon Etting (1764-1847) came to Baltimore from York, Pennsylvania in 1790. Solomon was active in defending the city in the War of 1812. He made his fortune in…
St. Vincent Cemetery
St. Vincent Cemetery opened in 1853 on a 5-acre parcel located on the country estate of philanthropist Johns Hopkins, which was then located just outside of Baltimore City in today's Clifton Park. Parishioners at St. Vincent De Paul Church had…