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Zell Motor Car Company Showroom: A Stylish Dealership and Showroom on Mount Royal Avenue
The Zell Motor Car Company Showroom on East Mount Royal Avenue was built in 1909 and expanded in 1915. The design, by local architect Edward H. Glidden, remains a unique reminder of Baltimore’s early…
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,…
Sphinx Club
Light and music onced poured out the windows and door of the Sphinx Club on Pennsylvania Avenue but only club members (and musicians) could get inside to enjoy the drinks and entertainment. Today, the…
Warden’s House, Baltimore City Jail
The Warden's House on Monument Street is a remarkable work of architecture and a unique reminder of the history of justice and injustice in Baltimore. The Warden's House was erected between 1855 and…
Trinity Baptist Church: A Center of Civil Rights Activism in the Early 20th Century
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…
Arena Playhouse: A Historic Showcase for Black Playwrights and Performers
The Arena Playhouse at 801 McCulloh Street has been occupied by the Arena Players, an African American theater troupe, since December 1961. Established in 1953 as an outgrowth of the “The Negro Little…
Severn Teackle Wallis Statue: The Municipal Art Society's Memorial to a Maryland Lawyer
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…
Former Fells Point Branch, Enoch Pratt Free Library: Branch No. 19 and the Education-Based Latino Outreach (EBLO) Center
Built in 1922, the former Enoch Pratt Free Library Branch No. 19 at 606 South Ann Street was one of a large number of branch libraries that opened in the early twentieth century. Between 1908 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…
Babe Ruth Birthplace & Museum: Original Emory Street Home of the "Sultan of Swat"
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…
Billie Holiday Statue: Monument by James Early Reid on Pennsylvania Avenue
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…
John Stuban at 911 Tyson Street: Activist Founder of ACT UP Baltimore
John Stuban moved from New York City to Baltimore, Maryland in 1987 and settled in a small rowhouse on Tyson Street. That same year, a group of New York City activists founded ACT UP (AIDS Coalition…
Oakenshawe Green Space: A Former Parking Lot Turned Community Open Space
In October 1987, the members of University-Birkwood Association celebrated nearly fifteen years of work on a former parking lot turned green space on Barclay Street. Earlier that year, the small civic…
Masjid Ul-Haqq: Former Home to the Nation of Islam in Baltimore
Mosque No. 6, the predecessor of the Masjid Ul-Haqq, first moved into their present building on Wilson Street around 1958. The two-story brick building had most recently housed a automotive garage but…
I Am an American Day Parade: Immigration and the Making of the East Baltimore Documentary Photography Project
East Baltimore's "I Am An American Day" parade is captured in a unique 1981 news program from WJZ-TV and a book of documentary photographs showing the people and places of East Baltimore in the late…
Interstate 395 and Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard: Cal Ripken Way and the Former Harbor City Boulevard
The little-known history of Baltimore's Interstate 395 (I-395) and Martin Luther King Boulevard, Jr. Boulevard offers a reminder of the years of contentious planning efforts that ended with the…
Martick's Restaurant
Martick’s Restaurant Francais on Mulberry Street is a place of fond memories where Baltimore enjoyed fine food, lively music, and art for nearly a century.
The once-famous restaurant started in 1917…
Upton
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…
Harlem Theatre
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…
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…
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…
Edna St. Vincent Millay at Emmanuel Episcopal Church
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…
James M. Deems Music School: A Local Composer at 426 W. Baltimore Street
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…
Mitchell Family Law Office
As the legal office for Maryland’s first female Black lawyer, Juanita Jackson Mitchell, and her husband, Clarence Mitchell Jr., an NAACP lobbyist, this office served as a major site for civil rights…
Juanita Jackson and Clarence Mitchell, Jr. House
Few often realize that much of the civil rights successes in Maryland and nationally were started by a couple that lived here at 1324 Druid Hill Avenue--Juanita Jackson Mitchell and Clarence Mitchell.…
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…
Gunpowder Copper Works: Early Industry on the Gunpowder Falls
The Gunpowder Copper Works, a once-prominent factory located along the Great Gunpowder Falls near Glen Arm, Maryland is the second oldest copper works in the United States. The factory operated from…
Fort McHenry
Fort McHenry's history began in 1776 when the citizens of Baltimore Town feared an attack by British ships. An earthen star fort known as Fort Whetstone was quickly constructed. The fort, like…
Parks Sausage Factory
The first African American owned company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, Parks Sausage Company, was headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland. Parks Sausage was successful because of its…
George McMechen House
Although the famed African American lawyer and civil rights advocate George McMechen is remembered fondly for his service to the community, he is best remembered for living on McCulloh Street. In June…