All Stories: 530
Stories
Congress Hotel
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…
Hackerman House
Built around 1848 for Dr. John Hanson Thomas, the great-grandson of John Hanson, President of the Continental Congress, The Hackerman House represented the height of elegance and convenience in the mid-nineteenth century. Renowned guests include the…
Mount Vernon Club
Previously known as the Blanchard Randall House and the Tiffany-Fisher House, the home was built by William Tiffany, a wealthy Baltimore commission merchant. The building is a fine example of the Greek Revival architectural style and set a high…
President Street Station
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…
Five and Dimes on Lexington Street
In contrast to the high-end shopping at Stewart's or Hochschild-Kohn's on Howard Street, West Lexington Street offered goods of all kinds at affordable prices thanks to a row of five-and-tens from Read's Drug Store down to…
Bromo Seltzer Tower
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…
Green Mount Cemetery
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,…
Copycat Building
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…
Peale Museum
On August 15, 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.…
Edgar Allan Poe House
Edgar Allan Poe, writer, poet, inventor of detective fiction, is probably most famous for his poem “The Raven.” He spent time in Baltimore off and on through his entire life. Though born in Boston, he first arrived in Baltimore on a family visit to…
Carrollton Viaduct
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 and remarked, "I consider this among the…
Public School No. 103
Built in 1877, this historic school on Division Street originally served only white students until 1910 when the building was first used for black students from Public School No. 112. In March 1911, the school was officially designated Public School…
Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church
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…
Roland Park Apartments
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…
Maryland Club
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…
Preston Gardens
Built between 1914 and 1919, Preston Gardens is a linear park along Saint Paul Street. Few people know that Preston Gardens was once the site of a thriving black community up through the early twentieth century. Black lawyers, religious leaders, and…
Baltimore City Hall
Although it imitates the arrangement of the U.S. Capitol with a central dome and symmetrical wings, the Baltimore City Hall is covered in French architectural elements, including banded rustication, arched windows, and a crowning Mansard roof. How…
Baltimore Equitable Society
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
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 as the eighth busiest station in the United States. Originally known…
Brewers Exchange
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…
Lexington Market
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.…
Maryland State Medical Society (MedChi) Building
In January 1799, the Maryland Legislature approved a petition for a charter to incorporate a society of physicians in Maryland to be known as the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of the State of Maryland. As written, this special act of the Maryland…
Everyman Theatre
Constructed across from the venerable Ford's Theater in 1911, the Empire Theatre (as the Everyman was first called) was designed in the Beaux Arts style by Baltimore architects William McElfatrick and Otto Simonson. Although its advertising…
Miller's Court
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,…
Charles Theatre
The Charles Theatre began not as a movie house but as a street car barn and powerhouse designed by architect Jackson C. Gott and built in 1892. The building then became a popular dance club hosting national acts such as Tommy Dorsey and the Glenn…
North Avenue Market
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 twelve retail stores and twenty-two lane bowling alley on the second floor at a cost…
First & Franklin Presbyterian Church
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…
Garrett-Jacobs Mansion
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…
Peabody Institute
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,…
Baltimore Design School
A survivor that has endured decades of abandonment, the 1914 Lebow Building is an impressive example of early twentieth century industrial architecture that is just starting a new future as the Baltimore Design School. While it takes its popular…