Doors opened at the Baltimore General Dispensary on Fayette Street in February 1912 and is the only surviving building designed for Baltimore's oldest charity, The Baltimore General Dispensary was formed in 1801 on West Lexington Street to…

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…

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,…

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…

Carroll Park is Baltimore's third oldest city park and was originally part of the enormous Mount Clare plantation owned by Charles Carroll, Barrister in the mid-eighteenth century. The park was the site of Camp Carroll during the Civil War and,…

Tracey Clark and Ben Riddleberger purchased the 1885 gas valve building, historically known as the Chesapeake Gas Works, in 2005 to house their architectural salvage business—Housewerks. Riddleberger and Clark have since stabilized and restored the…

Mount Clare is considered to be the birthplace of American railroading. It holds the oldest passenger and freight station in the United States and the first railroad manufacturing complex in the country. The first Mount Clare Station building was…

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…

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…

Spinning wheel manufacturers, cigar makers, tailors, hat makers, multiple banks, and a music school all occupied this site—often at the same time—going back to the early nineteenth century. During the decade after the Civil War, the upper stories…

Erected in 1879 as an investment property for Arunah Shepherdson 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. (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…

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 two hundred years. Francis Scott Key was a Maryland lawyer and slaveholder who was on board the…

Woodrow Wilson came to this house as a Ph.D. candidate at the 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 the Johns…

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…

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 nineteenth 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 nineteenth century in what were then Baltimore's expanding northwest suburbs. Built in 1892, architect Joseph Evans…

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…

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 largest…

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…

Baltimore is a city known for its sculptures. John Quincy Adams famously toasted "Baltimore—the monumental city" during a visit in 1823. The moniker is well deserved. Baltimore possess the first monument to George Washington in the United States.…