Doors Open Baltimore
On Saturday, October 22, 2016, the Baltimore Architecture Foundation, in partnership with AIA Baltimore, will present the third annual Doors Open Baltimore! Learn about Charm City’s fascinating history through its architecture and the people who design and preserve it by visiting over fifty buildings.
Doors Open Baltimore is a self-guided event, and sites can be enjoyed by foot, bicycle, public transit, or car. Participants are encouraged to take advantage of Baltimore’s public transit services such as the free Charm City Circulator.
Follow Doors Open Baltimore on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Use the #dob2016 hashtag to join the conversation!
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The Maryland Center for Historical and Culture (formerly the Maryland Historical Society)
The Maryland Center for History and Culture (MCHC) collects, preserves, and interprets the history, art, and culture of Maryland. Originally founded as the Maryland Historical Society in 1844, MCHC inspires critical thinking, creativity, and community by exploring multiple perspectives and sharing national stories through the lens of Maryland. As the oldest continuously operating nonprofit cultural institution in the state, MCHC houses a collection of 7 million books, documents, manuscripts, and photographs, and 350,000 objects in its museum and library located in Baltimore. MCHC also serves as a leading center of Maryland history education for people of all ages.
Enoch Pratt House
Enoch Pratt was a wealthy Baltimore merchant and major benefactor of many Baltimore institutions, including the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore, the Sheppard Pratt Hospital, and of course the…
Aisquith Street Meeting House: Baltimore's Oldest House of Worship
The Meetinghouse is the oldest surviving house of worship in Baltimore. Among those who worshipped here were Elisha Tyson, Johns Hopkins, Moses Sheppard, Phillip E. Thomas and the Tyson, Ellicott and McKim families.
AIABaltimore at 11 1/2 W. Chase Street
Founded in 1871, the Baltimore Chapter of The American Institute of Architects is the third oldest in the country. AIABaltimore serves as the voice of the architecture profession in the Baltimore…
Jim Rouse Center of the American Visionary Art Museum
Formerly home to a whiskey barrel warehouse and the offices of the Baltimore Copper Paint Company, the Jim Rouse Center of the American Visionary Art Museum serves as a prime example of adaptive reuse in the City of Baltimore.
Old Mount Washington Library: Long-time home to Baltimore Clayworks
Baltimore Clayworks occupies the former Mount Washington Branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library that opened at Smith and Greeley Avenues on January 5, 1921. Originally known as Branch 21, the building…
Locust Point Immigrant House: Christian Mission Turned Immigration Museum
Baltimore’s Locust Point was a rapidly growing neighborhood between the Civil War and 1920. One major factor in the neighborhood’s growth was an immigration pier and depot built in 1867 by the B&O…
Baltimore Museum of Industry
In the late 1970s, Mayor William Donald Schaefer proposed the creation of a museum to tell the story of Baltimore industry across two centuries of American history. Even before they the new museum…
Baltimore Streetcar Museum
Baltimore welcomed public mass transit in 1859 as the city ballooned to 170,000 people and the need for affordable transportation swelled. As transit technology raced ahead from horse drawn carts to…
War Memorial Building: An Architectural Monument to Maryland's Military Dead
In 1919, the Governor of Maryland and the Mayor of Baltimore appointed a War Memorial Commission that initiated a nationwide architectural competition to design a memorial building dedicated to the…
Basilica of the Assumption
Built primarily between 1806 and 1821, the Baltimore Basilica was the first Cathedral erected in the United States. Bishop John Carroll, America's first bishop and a cousin of Charles Carroll of…
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,…
Carroll Mansion
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,…
Cathedral of Mary Our Queen
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.…
Church & Company: A new use for the old Hampden Presbyterian Church
Workers laid the cornerstone of the Hampden Presbyterian Church in 1875 and dedicated the building two years later. The sturdy structure is made of Texas Limestone, named for the unincorporated town…
Henry Thompson's Clifton Mansion
Henry Thompson was born in 1774 in Sheffield, England and came to Baltimore in 1794, where he became a member of the Baltimore Light Dragoons. He was elected captain of this company in 1809, six years…
Corpus Christi Church: A Mount Royal Landmark by architect Patrick Keeley
Corpus Christi Memorial Church was built in 1891 in memory of Thomas and Louisa Jenkins by their children. Their goal was to build the most exquisite church in Baltimore. Patrick Keeley, the foremost…
The Patterson
The first Patterson Theater to occupy 3136 Eastern Avenue opened in 1910. In 1918, Harry Reddish purchased the building to renovate and redecorate it. He reopened it two years later and renamed it the…
Davidge Hall: The Maryland School of Medicine
Davidge Hall, on the University of Maryland Medical School Campus, is the oldest medical facility building in the nation. The red brick structure is named after the school's founder and first dean,…
The Duchess of Windsor at 212 East Biddle Street
The Duchess of Windsor, born Bessie Wallis Warfield, moved into the three-story brownstone at 212 East Biddle Street with her mother in 1908. It was the first home they could call their own as they…
Eubie Blake National Jazz Institute and Cultural Center
The Eubie Blake Blake Cultural Center has owned and operated from a historic building at 847 N. Howard Street since 2000, but the history of the organization dates back to to the 1960s. In the late…
Appold-Faust Building
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…
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,…
Saint James' Episcopal Church
Founded in 1824, St. James’ Episcopal Church is the nation’s second oldest African Episcopal congregation and the first Episcopal church organized by African Americans south of the Mason-Dixon line.…
Housewerks: The Former Bayard Station Gas Valve Building
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…
Howard Peters Rawlings Conservatory: Glass Greenhouses for the histroic Druid Hill Conservatory
Established in 1888 as the Druid Hill Conservatory, the Howard P. Rawlings Conservatory has grown from the original Palm House and Orchid Room to include three greenhouses, two display pavilions, and…
Institute of Notre Dame
The Institute of Notre Dame is a Baltimore landmark that has educated young women for over 150 years.
Irish Railroad Workers Museum: Labor and Immigration at 918 and 920 Lemmon Street
Small in size but featuring a nationally significant story, Baltimore's Irish Railroad Workers Museum on Lemmon Street offers a rare glimpse of immigrant home life in America in the middle of the 19th century.
Lillie Carroll Jackson Civil Rights Museum
From 1935 until her retirement in 1970, Lillie Carroll Jackson was president of the Baltimore chapter of the NAACP and for much of this time her home on Eutaw Place was a hub of civil rights organizing and activism.
Lithuanian Hall: Lietuvių Namai to Lith Hall
Known for much of the last century as Lietuvių Namai, Lithuanian Hall is familiar to more than just Baltimore’s Lithuanian immigrant community; in recent years local bands and promoters have turned “Lith Hall” into a popular venue for the city’s thriving music scene.
Lovely Lane United Methodist Church
In 1784 during the "Christmas Conference" at the Lovely Lane Meeting House in Baltimore, American Methodist was born. Surprisingly, this predated the organization of the Methodist community in England…
Maryland Art Place
The Maryland Art Place is a local cultural institution occupying a five-story Richardsonian Romanesque industrial building on the west side of Baltimore’s Downtown. The building on Saratoga Street…
McKim's Free School
The 1833 McKim Free School building is one of Baltimore’s most important landmarks with deep roots in the city’s history and an unsurpassed 175 year record of education and social service. Founder…
Meadow Mill
Meadow Mill was built by industrialist William E. Hooper in 1877 during one of the most prosperous periods for industry in the Jones Falls Valley. Designed by architect Reuben Gladfelter, it represented the finest of Baltimore mill design. A striking belfry, landscaped paths, and tidy gardens signaled Hooper’s prominence among business leaders.
Montgomery Park: Award-winning Reuse of the Montgomery Ward Warehouse
Built in 1925, the eight-story tall Montgomery Ward Warehouse and Retail Store is one of nine monumental distribution centers built by the Montgomery Ward mail order company in cities around the United States.
Motor House: Former "Load of Fun" Building on North Avenue
Built in 1914 for Eastwick Motors, Baltimore’s first Ford dealership, 120 West North Avenue has been home to a surprising array of owners and occupants. After its days with Eastwick (a proud supporter…
Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church
Completed in 1872 as a “Cathedral of Methodism,” the Norman-Gothic Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church was a signature achievement for the noted Baltimore architects Thomas Dixon and Charles L.…
Druid Hill Park Superintendent's House
The Superintendent’s House in Druid Hill Park dates to 1872 and was designed by architect George Frederick (who also designed City Hall). It was built using local “Butler Stone” from Baltimore County…
Peabody Heights Brewery
The site of Peabody Heights Brewery, also home to RavenBeer, Public Works Ale, and Full Tilt Brewing, was the site of Oriole Park from 1916 to 1944. Before this, the ballpark was home to the Baltimore…
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…
Phoenix Shot Tower
The Shot Tower, when it was built in 1828, was the tallest structure in the United States until 1846. Once there were three such towers in Baltimore; now there are only a few left in the entire world.…
R. House
R. House was built on the southwest corner of the intersection of Remington Avenue and West 29th Street in 1924 as the Eastwick Motor Company garage. Up until the 1920s, most of Baltimore’s car…
Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African-American History & Culture
The 82,000 square-foot Reginald F. Lewis Museum opened in 2005 and immediately made history as the first major building in downtown Baltimore designed by African American architects—a joint effort…
Robert Long House
Just around the corner from the busy shops and restaurants of Thames Street is the Robert Long House at 812 South Ann Street, the very image of a handsome eighteenth century colonial residence and one…
Saint Ignatius Church
Stretching along Calvert Street between Madison and Monument Streets, stands a massive Italianate palace, built for the Society of Jesus, a Catholic religious order. Decorating the facade are arched…
Saint John's in the Village: A Waverly Landmark since 1843
The Episcopalian congregation of Saint John's Church has worshiped together on the same site in Waverly since 1843. At that time the area was the small village of Huntingdon, Maryland: a collection…
Mother Seton House
On June 16, 1808, Elizabeth Bayley Seton arrived at St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore on the same day that Bishop John Carroll, the first bishop in the Unites States, dedicated the seminary's newly…
Schuler School of Fine Arts: Hans Schuler's Home and Studio
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…
Sharp Street Memorial United Methodist Church
The congregation at Sharp Street Memorial United Methodist Church began in 1787, the first African American Methodist congregation in Baltimore. By 1802, the congregants had purchased their first…
S.S. John W. Brown
During World War II, the SS John W. Brown belonged to a fleet of 2,700 Liberty Ships transporting war materiel and allied troops across dangerous waters. Today, the ship is one of just two Liberty Ships still sailing and serves as a unique memorial museum ship based out of Baltimore.
Flag House
In this small brick house on East Pratt Street, Mary Young Pickersgill designed and fabricated the Star-Spangled Banner. Pickersgill was assisted by her mother, niece and a Black indentured servent,…
Union Mill
Originally known as Druid Mill, Union Mill was built between 1865 and 1872. At the time, it was the largest cotton duck mill in the United States. A unique feature of the mill's construction is the…
Walters Art Museum
The Walters Art Museum, so named for William Walters and his son Henry, began as a private art collection. Born in 1819, William was the first of eight children. At age 21 he moved to Baltimore and…
Whitehall Cotton Mill
Before the rise of textile mills, the fast-flowing water of the Jones Falls instead powered gristmills supplying Baltimore's lucrative flour trade. Whitehall Mill was established as a gristmill in the…
9 North Front Street: Former Home of Baltimore Mayor Thorowgood Smith
9 North Front Street is the former residence of Thorowgood Smith, a successful merchant and Baltimore’s second mayor. Built around 1790, the Federal style residence served as Smith’s home between 1802…Tour curated by: Baltimore Architecture Foundation | Learn more on the Doors Open Baltimore website.