Constructed in 1908, Lutherville Colored School No. 24 is a simple two-room schoolhouse located on School Lane. Today, the building operates as a small museum of Maryland’s Black history and the appropriately named School Lane is a dead-end street…

The origins of this two-story frame church on Jefferson Avenue began in 1861 when a group of Black Baltimore County residents established the Saint James African Union First Colored Methodist Protestant Church. Today, the church is known as the St.…

On July 21, 1817, Captain Benjamin C. Howard’s First Mechanical Volunteers formed up early in town and marched six miles to the North Point battleground. Accompanying them were wagons conveying the monument blocks to be assembled and dedicated on…

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 around 1811 to 1858 turning blocks of copper into…

The Baltimore County Almshouse officially opened in 1874 as a public home for the county's indigent, elderly, and infirm residents. The Almshouse and its predecessors were the ancestors of today’s nursing homes, mental health hospitals, homeless…

The Baltimore Manual Labor School for indigent boys, also known as the Arbutus Farm School, was established in 1841. The school emerged from of a larger social movement developing in urban Victorian society at the time. Amidst the energetic fervor…

By 1990, administrators at University of Maryland, Baltimore County faced a problem. The student body had outgrown the University Center within just a decade of its opening. They considered the solution of building a new activity space to make two…

The Joseph Beuys Sculpture Park was established in April 2001 as part of a larger tree-planting effort that supported projects across the Baltimore region. Designer Renee van der Stelt, project coordinator for UMBC’s Fine Arts Gallery, now the…

In the summer of 1976, Marc O’Carroll, a student and artist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), designed and installed the Mnemonic sculpture next to the campus’ Fine Arts Building. The sculpture, a collection of steel trees…

In 1990, Catonsville resident Charlie Kucera discovered an illegal garbage dump at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County where the bwTech@UMBC Research and Technology Park is located today. The university cleared away the contents of the dump…

University of Maryland, Baltimore County shares in a unique American college phenomenon of open or green spaces. Campus open spaces—places set aside for students, faculty and staff to gather informally or formally—help to shape a sense of community…

When the University Center, known on campus as “the UC,” opened its doors in 1982 it definitively moved student life to the academic center of UMBC’s campus with a goal of cultivating a cohesive, unified community for students, faculty, and staff.…

Visitors and students driving onto the University of Maryland, Baltimore County campus often wonder about the unexpected white silo that stands near the entrance to I-95. The silo is one of few remaining reminders of Spring Grove Hospital which was…

On a blustery winter day in December 1987, a small crowd of spectators gathered around the Field House at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). They had assembled for the unveiling of a life-size bronze sculpture of the young…

When freshmen students arrived for the opening of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County campus in September 1966, the university had only three buildings: Lecture Hall, Gym I, and Academic I. UMBC had to locate all of its classes and…

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…

Dedicated in March 1965, the North Point branch of the Baltimore County Public Library is a sharp example of modernism in the southeastern suburbs. The building was designed by the local firm of Smith and Veale, a partnership of architects Thomas…

Bethlehem Steel owned and operated Sparrow’s Point as a company town near the expansive mill complex from the 1890s through the early 1970s. In 1916, however, Bethlehem Steel departed from the model of company-owned housing when it commissioned the…

Tucked away in the southeastern corner of Baltimore County, and separated from the rest of Sparrow’s Point by a creek, Turner Station is where many African American workers at Bethlehem Steel and nearby factories lived with their families from the…

Fort Carroll is a 3.4 acre artificial island and abandoned fort located within the shadow of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. The fort was designed by then Brevet-Colonel Robert E. Lee, and construction was started in 1848 by the U.S. Army Corps of…

On the morning of September 12, 1814, five thousand British troops landed outside of Baltimore and marched on the city of Baltimore with a plan to capture the city. Major General Robert Ross, a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars who had burned the White…

John McDonogh, a Baltimore-born merchant and philanthropist, was born in 1779 and died in 1850, bequeathing half of his estate to the City of Baltimore to educate children. However, since the public school system already existed in Baltimore, the…

Erected high on a hill above the Gunpowder River Valley, Perry Hall Mansion dominated life in northeastern Baltimore County in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Built in the 1770s by Harry Dorsey Gough, Perry Hall was named after…

Taylor's Chapel has its roots to the Taylor family, which is one of the oldest in Maryland, stretching back to the 1600s. As brothers, John Taylor was one of the first commissioners of Baltimore County and Thomas Taylor ("Colonel Taylor" at the…