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…

Before the corner of N Charles and W Eager was a CVS, it was a Baltimore institution: Club Hippo. For more than 35 years, Club Hippo was a refuge for Baltimore’s queer community. The dance venue was…

The Clifton Park Valve House on St. Lo Drive in Clifton Park is a magnificent Gothic revival stone and tile-roofed structure built between 1887 and 1888. It was built to house the machinery used in…

Clifton Park is Baltimore’s fourth oldest country landscape park after Druid Hill, Patterson, and Carroll Parks. Around 1800, Baltimore merchant Henry Thompson purchased the rural property and began…

In 1885, Baltimore City set out to build the most beautiful Courthouse in the country. Fifteen years, and $2.2 million later ($56 million adjusted for inflation), that goal was realized. On January 6,…

In 1936, Sidney Friedman was riding a train to Baltimore and carrying a charcoal grill. Earlier that week, Friedman had dined at Ray's Steak House in Chicago and ate his very first charcoal-grilled…

Chase Brexton Health Care was founded in 1978 as a gay men's STD screening clinic. The clinic operated as program of the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Baltimore from 1978 until 1989. In 1989,…

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…

With a gleaming black marble façade reading "Charles Fish and Sons Company" and Victorian brick arches above, the architecture of this building clearly points to a varied history. The surprising story…

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…

A fire erupted on the morning of February 7, 1904, in the dry goods firm of John E. Hurst & Co., on what is now Redwood Street. The blaze spread wildly out of control, consuming central Baltimore.…

The first headmaster of the Calvert School, Virgil Hillyer, built Castalia between 1928 and 1929, naming it after the spring at the foot of Mount Parnassas in Italy that is said to have been the…

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…

Step inside this grand residence and find 18-foot ceilings, a spiral staircase, and ornate chandeliers. Few Americans could have afforded the Carroll Mansion in the early 1800s when Charles Carroll,…

The story of the Emerson Mansion began in 1895 when Captain Isaac Emerson commissioned the building as a home for his family. Captain Emerson lived at this location up to 1911 when he and his wife…

The sepia-toned Canton railroad transfer bridge rises out of the harbor near the Canton Waterfront Park like an industrial Arc de Triomphe. It is one of three such structures—remnants of an early…

Founded in 1847, the Canton Methodist Episcopal Church was the first church established in Canton. The Canton Company donated land for the congregation’s first and second church buildings, because the…