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The Baltimore General Dispensary

2019-02-11T22:53:38-05:00

Dublin Core

Title

The Baltimore General Dispensary

Subject

Medicine

Creator

Theresa Donnelly

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Lede

Up near the top of this handsome Neoclassical brick building at the corner of Fayette and Paca Streets is a stone entablature reading "1801 Baltimore General Dispensary 1911"—a visible reminder of this building's important past.

Story

Doors opened at the Baltimore General Dispensary on Fayette Street in February 1912 and is the only surviving building designed for Baltimore's oldest charity,

The Baltimore General Dispensary was formed in 1801 on West Lexington Street to provide medical care to Baltimore's poor residents. In its first year, the dispensary saw a little over 200 patients. Before official incorporation in 1808, over 6,000 Baltimore residents had sought help from the charity.

A second dispensary joined the first in 1826 and by the late nineteenth century the charity had established fifteen additional locations many affiliated with local hospitals. While the building is no longer owned by the group, the charitable work of the Baltimore Dispensary continues through a grant-making foundation providing funds to area hospitals for medicine in their outpatient departments.

Considered a model of its kind, this building featured a large dispensary center on the first floor; however, due to the racial segregation enforced in many local institutions at that time, the dispensary was separated for black and white patients. The rooms on the second floor for surgical and medical aid, including physical exams given by doctors, allowed the charity's poor patients a rare measure of privacy.

Street Address

500 W. Fayette Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

Appold-Faust Building

2019-06-25T21:37:45-04:00

Dublin Core

Title

Appold-Faust Building

Subject

Architecture

Creator

Dan Windmueller

Theresa Donnelly

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Story

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 two iron facades on front and back.

The building's first owner, George J. Appold, a prominent entrepreneur and owner of Appold and Sons (the city's leading tannery and leather dealer), commissioned builder Benjamin F. Bennet to construct this Italianate structure in 1870. Appold advertised the space as suitable for any business requiring space, light, and an independent entrance on Baltimore Street. With its Corinthian columns, arched windows, and graceful segmented bays, the building was an elegant addition to the area and remains one of the finest examples of iron façade construction in Baltimore.

John Faust, a German immigrant and shoe manufacturing pioneer bought the building from George Appold in 1875 for $78,000. Faust soon demolished two buildings behind the structure and added a cast iron-front on Redwood Street as the entrance warehouse for his shoe factory. Faust was the first shoe manufacturer south of the Mason Dixon line to use machinery to craft shoes.

Though the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 threatened the building it emerged unscathed—together with its neighbors on the south side of Baltimore Street. The building has still seen its fair share of fire and destruction. Just three years after the Great Baltimore Fire, the Baltimore Sun reported that the structure (which at the time housed two local auction firms—Grotjan, Lobe & Co. and Lobe, Winkler & Co.) experienced a fire that caused $95,000 worth of damage, injured 15 people, and killed Baltimore fireman Tillerman Gill, who perished when a poorly constructed portion of the top floor, collapsed.

The owners repaired the building and, in 1908, the Baltimore Shoe House, proudly known as "The Fair and Square House" moved in. Israel Levenstein, a Russian Jewish immigrant who founded the firm in 1895 had welcomed partner Joseph Lubin into the business in that same year. The firm sold shoes and boots in the Mid-Atlantic and the South, and as far west as Texas and Oklahoma. After workers had gone home on a brisk October night in 1911 the Appold-Faust Building once again caught fire. The fire began in the basement and though over $20,000 worth of merchandise was lost, the automatic fire-alarm box in the building alerted the fire department in time and the building itself suffered only light damage.

Various shoe wholesalers and a host of merchants (including Hochschild Kohn, who used it as a warehouse in the 1920s) occupied this site in the early years of the twentieth century. From 1941 to the 1970s, a riding store called The Trading Post operated out of the building and in 2006 it was sold to Faust Brothers, LLC and rehabilitated as office space.

Street Address

307 W. Baltimore Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

Carl Sandburg at the Old St. Paul's Rectory

2018-11-27T10:33:50-05:00

Dublin Core

Title

Carl Sandburg at the Old St. Paul's Rectory

Subject

Literature

Creator

Amelia Grabowski

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Story

In 1934, Carl Sandburg wrote to Sally Bruce Kinsolving, "The years go by and I don't forget ever the long evening of song with you... at your house and faces and stories and moments out of that visit to Baltimore. I'm hoping to drop in again soon."

On the night of Sandburg's February 1924 visit, like many other nights, the Kinsolving home, Old St. Paul's Rectory, became a sanctuary for poets and poetry lovers alike. As co-founder of the Maryland Poetry Society, Mrs. Kinsolving frequently welcomed a variety of acclaimed poets into her home, allowing members of the society to meet their literary idols. Carl Sandburg, a three-time Pulitzer-prize winner, poet, biographer, historian, journalist, novelist and musicologist, was just one of Mrs. Kinsolving's illustrious guests. Although he visited Baltimore only once or twice, Sandburg and Mrs. Kinsolving maintained a lifelong relationship through correspondence, encouraging each other in their work and exchanging poems and folk songs.

Old St. Paul's Church built the Georgian-style rectory, where Sandburg and the Kinsolvings spent the evening, as a home for the rector in 1791. Once standing at the northern edge of the city with a spectacular view of the harbor, the Old St. Paul's Church and Rectory is a testament to the growth of Baltimore—now located within the heart of central Baltimore, surrounded by contemporary development and its view of the harbor obscured long ago.

Described by H.L. Mencken as "indubitably American in every pulse-beat," Sandburg was born in Illinois in 1878. He quit school at age thirteen, and then worked a variety of odd jobs ranging from a farmhand to a traveling salesman to a milkman to a barber. He traversed the United States as a hobo and served as a soldier in the Spanish-American War in 1898. Through these experiences, Sandburg truly saw the United States, later capturing it both in his own writing and by anthologizing the folk songs he encountered. Sandburg's love of America did not blind him to its problems and he fought passionately against a variety of social injustices.

Sandburg was never a Baltimorean, but was inextricably tied to Chicago, working at the Chicago Daily News and praising the developing industrial city in his work—notably in Chicago Poems. However, his friends in Baltimore were never far from his mind, and their letters never far from his mail box, proving what he'd once written to Mrs. Kinsolving, that "the prairies and Chesapeake Bay are neighbors now."

Street Address

24 W. Saratoga Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

Gertrude Stein on East Biddle Street

2020-10-16T11:37:19-04:00

Dublin Core

Title

Gertrude Stein on East Biddle Street

Subject

Literature

Creator

Amelia Grabowski

Relation

Poetry Foundation. 2011.
Sander, Kathleen Water. Hopkins Medical News. Spring/Summer (2002).
Shivers, Frank R., Jr. Maryland Wits and Baltimore Bards. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985.
Rudacille, Deborah. Baltimore Style. (November 2008).

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Story

A novelist, playwright, poet, and essayist, Gertrude Stein is remembered as a literary innovator who fearlessly experimented with language in the early twentieth century. Today, Gertrude Stein is still renowned as a magnet for those who would profoundly change art and literature. In 1892, at age 18, newly-orphaned Gertrude and her brother Leo moved to Baltimore. Her experiences in Baltimore paved the way for her later successes, as she wrote in her biting 1925 piece "Business in Baltimore": "Once upon a time, Baltimore was necessary."

The siblings lived briefly with their Aunt Fanny Bachrach in Baltimore before moving to Massachusetts for college. In 1897, the duo truly settled in Baltimore, living at 215 East Biddle Street, marked by the traditional Baltimorean marble front steps. The unique environment of Mount Vernon introduced Stein to a variety of people and perspectives that would influence both her literature and her life.

The Steins' five-bedroom rowhome was luxurious, dictating a certain lifestyle. Like their neighbors, the Steins kept servants. Through her familiarity with the neighborhood servants, who generally were African American women, along with her experience caring for African American patients during clinical rotations, Gertrude developed an understanding of "black language rhythms" and a knack for reaistic characterization of African Americans, both of which later appeared in her writing.

Like their servants, Biddle Street residents also influenced Stein. The gossip that filled the parlors of Biddle Street and the affairs that occurred in the bedrooms above reappeared in several of Stein's works. For instance, Wallis Simpson of 212 East Biddle Street, future Duchess of Windsor, inspired Ida, while Stein's own relationship with May Bookstaver and the ensuing love triangle created by Bookstaver's lover, Mabel Haynes, provided the plot for the novel Q.E.D.��as well as the story "Melanctha."

Life in Baltimore influenced more than just Stein's literature. Her experiences, particularly while studying medicine at Johns Hopkins University, prompted her lifelong habit of challenging societal standards. She learned to smoke cigars, confronted sexist professors (thereby earning the nickname "old battle ax"), took up boxing, rejected feminine stereotypes and instead "went flopping around...big and floppy and sandaled and not caring a damn," as one male classmate remembered.

Stein left Baltimore in 1903 after leaving Hopkins following her third year of medical school. However, despite her 39-year absence, Stein claimed Baltimore as her "place of domicile" in her will, as, in her words, she was "born longer [in Baltimore] because after all everybody has to come from somewhere."

Watch our on Stein!

Street Address

215 E. Biddle Street, Baltimore, MD 21202

John Dos Passos at the Peabody Library

2018-11-27T10:33:50-05:00

Dublin Core

Title

John Dos Passos at the Peabody Library

Subject

Literature

Creator

Amelia Grabowski

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Story

Heralded as "the greatest writer of our time" by philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, John Dos Passos spent time in and out of Baltimore from his birth in 1896 and lived here from 1950 until his death in 1970. An acclaimed biographer and novelist, Dos Passos is best remembered for his experimental writing style, often emulating the techniques of the camera and the newsreel, particularly in his trilogy of novels, U.S.A.

While Sartre called him "the greatest," Baltimoreans just called him "John." Dos Passos worked in the George Peabody Library as well as the Enoch Pratt Free Library and Johns Hopkins University Library almost daily during his time in Baltimore. Although Dos Passos once described his ideal working conditions as only, "a room without any particular interruptions," the George Peabody Library is majestic—particularly the reading room, which has been called "the setting of a bibliophile's dream," and "the most beautiful room in Baltimore."

The library was a gift from entrepreneur George Peabody to the people of Baltimore for their kindness and hospitality, and remains free and open to the public as part of the Sheridan Libraries Special Collections at Johns Hopkins University. In the reading room, one can find the library's collection of more than 300,000 volumes housed in five tiers of ornamental cast-iron balconies that stretch from the marble floor to skylights 61 feet above. There too, one could find John Dos Passos.

Bald and bespectacled, Dos Passos hunched over his desk researching American culture and writing his own works. Often confused for a librarian, he helped library visitors locate books in the card catalog, understand antiquated text, and complete research papers.

Although Dos Passos never wrote a book set in Baltimore, the city provided the author with more than just rooms in which to work. Baltimore helped pique Dos Passos' literary interest. The author recalled as a boy, "I would hide in the shadows so that I wouldn't be sent off to bed. I'd listen till my ears would burst" to stories of old storytellers and watermen, stories in which Baltimore "was the center." Shortly before his death, he described Baltimore as a city that "imbues the inhabitants with a certain dignity" where "neighborhoods had a special flavor."

Official Website

Street Address

17 E. Mount Vernon Place, Baltimore, MD 21202

Karl Shapiro at the Enoch Pratt Free Library

2018-11-27T10:33:50-05:00

Dublin Core

Title

Karl Shapiro at the Enoch Pratt Free Library

Subject

Literature

Creator

Amelia Grabowski

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Story

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Karl Shapiro was a true Baltimorean. As a young man in the 1920s and 1930s, Shapiro fed his literary ambitions with the city's rich cultural history; for instance, writing love poems at Fort McHenry where Francis Scott Key was inspired to pen the Star-Spangled Banner. In 1939, Shapiro enrolled in the Enoch Pratt Library School at the library's central branch, an experience that would greatly influence his life and his writing.

Shapiro later expressed his gratitude to Enoch Pratt Free Library, by capturing it in the lines:
"Voltaire would weep for joy, Plato would stare.
What is it, easier than a church to enter,
Politer than a department store, this center,
That like Grand Central leads to everywhere?"

Open to all Baltimoreans since its 1894 founding, the city's first non-segregated cultural institution does indeed "lead to everywhere," thanks to the library's numerous resources and founder Enoch Pratt's firm belief in inclusiveness. The architecture of the 1933 Central Branch building exemplifies Pratt's philosophy. Designed to mirror a department store, library patrons, not just librarians, could access the books, and large exhibit windows advertised library news to passersby. Following Pratt's requirements, the building's entrance remained without stairs for the convenience of women pushing strollers. This revolutionary design went on to inspire library architecture nationwide.

Shapiro enjoyed studying to be a librarian; however, World War II intervened. "I couldn't take the final exam because I was drafted," Shapiro explained. "Because of my background of two years of college...they put me in the company headquarters office and gave me a typewriter." As the company clerk, Shapiro was never far from writing materials and had "endless amounts of empty time"–-everything a poet needs. He wrote prodigiously, sending his poems stateside to his Baltimorean fiancée, Evalyn Katz, who then published them.

Although 9,000 miles from home, the Pratt Library was never far from Shapiro's mind. He frequently wrote to his former colleagues, signing his letters with "Very best wishes to you and the Library." Meanwhile, the library also contributed to the war effort, housing various headquarters and providing basement air-raid shelters.

When the war ended in 1945, the library returned to business as usual, but Shapiro did not. Having left America only a student, he returned home an established poet. Shapiro published four books and received several prizes including the Pulitzer Prize during the war. Assuming a radically different life than the one he had left, Shapiro taught at several universities, and describes his role as "not really a professor, but a sort of mad guest." He also worked as the Poetry Consultant to the Library of Congress, a position known today as the Poet Laureate; edited poetry magazines; and of course, wrote poetry. All the while, Shapiro embodied the philosophy of Enoch Pratt, relentlessly fighting against prejudice and injustices both in his poetry and with his actions, until his death in 2000.

Official Website

Street Address

400 Cathedral Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

Carroll Park

2020-03-20T09:19:06-04:00

Dublin Core

Title

Carroll Park

Subject

Parks and Landscapes

Creator

Gwynns Falls Trail Council

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Story

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 site of Camp Carroll during the Civil War and, in the 30 years prior to becoming a park, the area surrounding Mt. Clare was leased from the Carrolls and became Southwestern Schuetzen Park—a private recreation area used by Baltimore's German immigrant community.

In 1890, the City purchased 20 acres of the former estate to create Carroll Park and in 1906 engaged the Olmsted Brothers to develop a master plan. The famous firm’s recommendations respected the historic character of the west side, including the Mt. Clare mansion, while providing for sports facilities on the east, in keeping with the trend toward more active recreation for urban dwellers.

The Carroll Park Golf Course, on a separate parcel farther west, became the focus of Civil Rights protests over segregation and was integrated in 1951; it features a 9-hole executive course. The Gwynns Falls Trail passes through the edge of the golf course and the park.

Official Website

Street Address

1500 Washington Boulevard, Baltimore, MD 21230

Housewerks

2018-11-27T10:33:50-05:00

Dublin Core

Title

Housewerks

Subject

Industry

Description

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. Over the past five years, Riddleberger and Clark have stabilized and restored the long vacant building (also known as Bayard Station) and have highlighted its many fine details. These include ornamental plaster and woodwork, fireplaces, ten-foot high Palladian windows, and granite walls on the lower level.

Riddleberger and Clark extensively researched the history of the building and proudly display early images throughout their store. In addition, they worked with the Pigtown neighborhood in 2006 to have the building included on the National Register of Historic Places. With more than a little sweat, the building now is a centerpiece in a quickly changing industrial part of South Baltimore.

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Subtitle

The Former Bayard Station Gas Valve Building

Story

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 and Clark have since stabilized and restored the long vacant building (also known as Bayard Station) and have highlighted its many fine details. These include ornamental plaster and woodwork, fireplaces, ten-foot high Palladian windows, and granite walls on the lower level.

Bayard Station was once the headquarters for the Chesapeake Gas Company of Baltimore City, which merged with several other companies eventually becoming BGE. During the station's heyday, the gas works spread over 14 acres. The complex included the Valve House (Housewerks); four large telescoping holding tanks, called "gasometers;" and a series of processing buildings, of which one remains today across Hamburg Street. The gas was manufactured, stored in the gasometers, and then piped into the valve house where it was compressed before being directed into the main lines of the city. (The pipe for the Hamburg Street Line is still visible in the cellar!)

Riddleberger and Clark extensively researched the history of the building and proudly display early images throughout their store. In addition, they worked with the Pigtown neighborhood in 2006 to have the building included on the National Register of Historic Places. With more than a little sweat, the building now is a centerpiece in a quickly changing industrial part of South Baltimore.

Official Website

Street Address

1415 Bayard Street, Baltimore, MD 21230

Mount Clare Station and the B&O Roundhouse

2020-10-16T11:53:08-04:00

Dublin Core

Title

Mount Clare Station and the B&O Roundhouse

Subject

Transportation

Creator

Nathan Dennies

Relation

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Subtitle

Oldest Railroad Station in the United States

Lede

Story

Mount Clare is considered to be the birthplace of American railroading. It holds the oldest passenger and freight station in the United States and the first railroad manufacturing complex in the country. The first Mount Clare Station building was erected in 1830 after Charles Carroll deeded the land to the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company. In May of that year, the first railroad was completed to Ellicott's Mills (now Ellicott City) at a distance of about 13 miles. The first passenger car to make the trip was the horse-drawn "Pioneer" which made the trip on May 25, 1830 in one hour and five minutes. On August 28 of that year, the first American locomotive, "Tom Thumb", made its debut run on the same route, but took ten minutes longer than the horse-drawn Pioneer. The manufacturing complex at Mount Clare became a leading innovator in locomotive technology. Phineas Davis and Ross Winans created the first commercially practical coal-driven American locomotives at the site. In 1850, the B&O erected an ironworks where the first iron railroad bridge was designed. The circular roundhouse was completed in 1884 and was at the time the largest circular building in the world. The Mount Clare Station is now part of the B&O Railroad Museum. The museum has the largest collection of 19th-century locomotives in the United States. Visitors can take take a train ride on the first mile of railroad tracks laid in the country.

Watch our on this site!

Official Website

Street Address

901 W. Pratt Street, Baltimore, MD 21223

Pine Street Station

2018-11-27T10:33:50-05:00

Dublin Core

Title

Pine Street Station

Subject

Criminal Justice

Creator

Dorothy Beyer

Theresa Donnelly

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Story

Pine Street Station, the handsome, slate-roofed High Victorian Gothic building was built between 1877 and 1878 and designed by architect Francis E. Davis. The red brick structure, which is trimmed with painted bluestone lintels and adorned with ornate pressed metal roof finials and hip ridges, served as a court and jail for the area west of Lexington Market from 1878 to 1951. Originally built to protect the area's growing number of banks and police the often raucous blocks of theaters and taverns around Lexington Market, the station underwent a major transformation in the mid-twentieth century.

In 1952, the station became Baltimore's Bureau of Aid and Prevention and was officially renamed "Pine Street Station," a name that city residents had already used for years. During its tenure as the Bureau of Aid and Prevention (BAP), the increasingly run-down brick building served as a refuge for homeless women and orphan children and housed a police boys club. Though Pine Street made a safe haven for the city's disenfranchised while operating as the BAP and, according to an article in the Afro-American, the cells were tidied up and painted gray and peach to better suit its new residents, the Baltimore Sun later criticized the station for its practice of locking young people up with hardened female criminals and for a staff that did not have adequate training to work with children.

Though all manner of prisoners landed in Pine Street over the years, the tumult of civil rights activism in the 1950s and 1960s brought a new sort of inmate to the station: local female college students. Continuing its tradition of serving as a women's jail, city police often brought young women from Morgan State, Goucher College, and Johns Hopkins University to Pine Street after mass arrests during the 1950s and 60s civil rights demonstrations in Baltimore. Pine Street Station shut its doors in 1971 and sat vacant for twenty years while a planned extension of I-70 threatened the structure with demolition. Local preservation groups saved the building thanks to efforts that halted the highway at Leakin Park just outside of the city. In 1991, the University of Maryland acquired the building from Baltimore City and it currently houses the university's security department.

Street Address

214 N. Pine Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

Hecht-May Company

2018-11-27T10:33:50-05:00

Dublin Core

Title

Hecht-May Company

Subject

Commerce

Description

Adorned with graceful arches and elegant art deco lights the eight story Beaux Arts Hecht-May Co. building at the corner of Lexington and Howard streets (designed by Smith and May architects) was originally built in 1908 as an annex to the Bernheimer Brothers Department store. In what must have been a first for Baltimore, the building initially featured a rooftop garden and hosted cow milking demonstrations. The store sold groceries, clothing, and a variety of household goods.

In 1923, Bernheimer Brothers merged with the Leader Department Store and four years later The May Company bought the combined Berheimer-Leader store and incorporated it as one of their outlets. In 1959, the May Co. purchased the Hecht Company and this building became the Hecht-May Company's main Baltimore location. Though this building's life as part of the Hecht Company began in the twentieth century, the story of the Hecht Company reaches far back to the mid-1840s.

Samuel Hecht, founder of the DC-based Hecht Company, emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1844 and worked as a peddler. Four of Hecht's five sons worked in the family business but one in particular - Moses Hecht - stood out as an early and persistent entrepreneur who proved critical to the family's success. Moses began working at one of Hecht's earliest Baltimore outlets, Hecht's Reliable on Broadway, at age 13 and went on to become the store's general manager within two years. He helped to bring the store record profits thanks to innovations like the one-price-per-item policy, guaranteeing everyone paid the same price for the same merchandise without needing to bargain with store employees.

Hecht's retail empire grew quickly and lasted for over 100 years. By the late 1800s, the Hecht Company operated a general store at Baltimore and Pine streets, a carpet store on Lexington, and an upscale store known as The Hub at the corner of Baltimore and Light Streets. When the 1904 Baltimore Fire destroyed The Hub's first location, the business relocated to Baltimore and Charles Streets - the site of the Mechanic Theatre today. At their Howard and Lexington location, Hecht's customers could purchase everything from sheets and towels to formal wear and pianos. The store featured an art gallery on the eighth floor and customers frequently punctuated their shopping trips with lunch in the Courtyard Restaurant or tea in the Skyline Tearoom.

In 1949 Hecht's opened a store in Annapolis and continued to open locations throughout the Baltimore-Washington area up until the 1970s. This store closed in the 1980s when Hecht's consolidated several locations. Renovated in 2007, the building is now home to a branch of Rite Aid and the upper stories house rental apartments.

Creator

Meghan Gilbert

Theresa Donnelly

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Story

Official Website

Street Address

118 N. Howard Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

Hebrew Orphan Asylum

2023-11-10T10:00:03-05:00

Dublin Core

Title

Hebrew Orphan Asylum

Subject

Philanthropy

Description

The Hebrew Orphan Asylum appears like a grand castle on a hill with rows Victorian Romanesque arched windows and turrets at every corner. The unique design is a credit to the architectural partnership of Lupus & Roby - composed of German architect and craftsman Edward Lupus and Baltimore born architect Henry A. Roby - but the building itself is a landmark to the history of philanthropy and social service in Baltimore's Jewish community.

In February 1872, the Hebrew Benevolent Society of Baltimore organized to establish an orphanage for the Jewish community and local German Jewish merchant William S. Rayner donated the handsome Calverton Mansion - an 1815 country home used most recently as the Baltimore Almshouse - as a home for the new organization. Regrettably, the building burned down in 1874 but, despite the set-back, the Hebrew Orphan Asylum rebuilt on the same site, opening their new building in 1876. William Rayner spoke at the dedication, reflecting his hopes and aspirations for the Hebrew Orphan Asylum: "the Jewish community should regard donations as an investment that would bear fruit; some of the children in the future would contribute to the welfare of the community, and the rest would serve as the contributor's advocates in heaven."

While a small group of wealthy German Jews first established and led the orphanage, a broad and diverse community of Jewish Baltimoreans supported the Hebrew Orphan Asylum with donations of all sorts and the Jewish children and families who depended on the Hebrew Orphan Asylum came from all across Europe. The history of the institution follows the history of the Jewish community in Baltimore, as the population at the orphanage grew rapidly along with the increased Jewish immigration from Europe during the late 19th and early 20th-centuries. Many older orphanages closed from the 1920s through the 1940s as care for dependent children moved away from large institutional homes towards foster care or smaller group homes and the Hebrew Orphan Asylum was no different, closing in 1923.

A group of local doctors converted the Hebrew Orphan Asylum to the West Baltimore General Hospital, later known as the Lutheran Hospital of Maryland which remained at the site through the late 1980s. The building has been abandoned for over a decade but 91��Ƶ and the Coppin Heights Community Development Corporation are engaged in a continuing campaign to preserve and restore this landmark of Baltimore's Jewish history.

Creator

Eli Pousson

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Story

The Hebrew Orphan Asylum appears like a grand castle on a hill with rows Victorian Romanesque arched windows and turrets at every corner. The unique design is a credit to the architectural partnership of Lupus & Roby - composed of German architect and craftsman Edward Lupus and Baltimore born architect Henry A. Roby - but the building itself is a landmark to the history of philanthropy and social service in Baltimore's Jewish community.

In February 1872, the Hebrew Benevolent Society of Baltimore organized to establish an orphanage for the Jewish community and local German Jewish merchant William S. Rayner donated the handsome Calverton Mansion - an 1815 country home used most recently as the Baltimore Almshouse - as a home for the new organization. Regrettably, the building burned down in 1874 but, despite the set-back, the Hebrew Orphan Asylum rebuilt on the same site, opening their new building in 1876. William Rayner spoke at the dedication, reflecting his hopes and aspirations for the Hebrew Orphan Asylum: "the Jewish community should regard donations as an investment that would bear fruit; some of the children in the future would contribute to the welfare of the community, and the rest would serve as the contributor's advocates in heaven."

While a small group of wealthy German Jews first established and led the orphanage, a broad and diverse community of Jewish Baltimoreans supported the Hebrew Orphan Asylum with donations of all sorts and the Jewish children and families who depended on the Hebrew Orphan Asylum came from all across Europe. The history of the institution follows the history of the Jewish community in Baltimore, as the population at the orphanage grew rapidly along with the increased Jewish immigration from Europe during the late 19th and early 20th-centuries. Many older orphanages closed from the 1920s through the 1940s as care for dependent children moved away from large institutional homes towards foster care or smaller group homes and the Hebrew Orphan Asylum was no different, closing in 1923.

A group of local doctors converted the Hebrew Orphan Asylum to the West Baltimore General Hospital, later known as the Lutheran Hospital of Maryland which remained at the site through the late 1980s. The building was abandoned for over a decade but 91��Ƶ and the Coppin Heights Community Development Corporation engaged in a decade-long campaign to preserve and restore this landmark of Baltimore's Jewish history. Today, the building is home to ��the Center for Health Care and Healthy Living.��

Watch our on this building!

Street Address

2700 Rayner Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21216

James M. Deems Music School

2019-05-09T12:48:03-04:00

Dublin Core

Title

James M. Deems Music School

Subject

Education

Creator

Elizabeth Pente

Theresa Donnelly

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Subtitle

A Local Composer at 426 W. Baltimore Street

Story

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 decade after the Civil War, the upper stories provided a home for the James M. Deems Music School established in 1867 by Civil War veteran and well-known composer General James Monroe Deems.

Born in Baltimore in 1818, Deems played music since early childhood—later declared a "prodigy" for his performances with a group organized by his father. He traveled to Dresden, Germany in 1839 to study musical composition and cello with J. J. F. Dotzauer, a famed German cellist and composer. After his return to the United States, Deems became an instructor at the University of Virginia but maintained his ties to Baltimore, convincing Baltimore schools to adopt his Vocal Music Simplified instructional book for music education in 1851. After a brief but active military career during the Civil War, Deems opened his music school on West Baltimore Street sharing the building with the Haydn Musical Association. Even after the school left Baltimore Street in 1877, Deems remained an active composer and educator through his death in 1901.

In the years after World War II, the condition of the block deteriorated as the decline of the clothing industry left many small commercial buildings vacant. Fortunately for this handsome landmark, the building was restored and opened as a PNC Bank branch in 2009.

Street Address

426 W. Baltimore Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

A.S. Abell Building

2020-10-16T13:09:31-04:00

Dublin Core

Title

A.S. Abell Building

Subject

Architecture

Industry

Creator

Tarin Rudloff

Theresa Donnelly

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Story

Erected in 1879 as an investment property for Arunah Shepherdson Abell, founder of The Baltimore Sun, the Abell Building was designed by famed Baltimore architect George Frederick—architect for Baltimore's City Hall, Hollins Market, and the Old Baltimore City College. Abell spared no expense in constructing the cast-iron framed, masonry façade building and worked to ensure that tenants included multiple, prominent businesses. Though the building quickly became known for its lavish construction, its ornate exterior belied the hard reality that workers within its walls faced. The corner of West Baltimore and Eutaw Streets made an ideal location for local industry along a main streetcar line, just a few blocks from a B&O Railroad station and close to the Baltimore harbor. The grandeur of the building's construction, its two hydraulic elevators, and its imposing size invited immediate recognition and praise in local and national publications. In late nineteenth century Baltimore, as across the country, most skilled professions had declined as craftsmen were replaced by machines that could produce more goods more quickly. Wages for the masses of largely immigrant, unskilled workers who came to cities like Baltimore seeking work in industries remained low and working conditions were unregulated and woefully unsafe. One of the industries that attracted thousands of workers to Baltimore was the clothing or needle trade. In the years following the Civil War, demand for ready-to-wear garments skyrocketed and Baltimore's garment district boomed in response. Strouse Brothers, one of Baltimore's largest clothing manufacturers operated out of this building in the late nineteenth century and was a prominent player in Baltimore's growing needle trade. Strouse ran what was then called an "inside shop"—a multistory factory outfitted with new machines and the latest in manufacturing technology—where workers (largely women) worked long hours to keep the factory's machines running, often earning barely enough to survive. While larger clothing manufacturers escaped the criticism directed to sweatshops by local reformers, producers like Strouse, even when unionized (the United Garment Workers organized in Baltimore in the 1890s), often sent piecework out to sweated workers in small shops or set up their own small, outside sweatshops to avoid paying higher wages or complying with worker demands for better conditions and shorter hours. When the clothing industry slumped after WWI, many of the gains achieved by Baltimore's garment unions eroded as the pursuit of ever-shrinking profits led many manufacturers to once again increase their reliance on sweatshops. Despite the fact that union strikes eventually brought new gains, Baltimore's once thriving garment trade was in sharp decline by the 1930s. Though there are still a small number of women sewing coats and uniforms in various downtown clothing shops, Baltimore's days as a center of ready-to-wear garment production are long gone. Luckily, this handsome brick building weathered the decline of the garment industry and years of neglect. PMC property group acquired the building in 2005 and it now houses well-appointed apartments that feature high ceilings, large windows, and a bit of Baltimore history.

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Official Website

Street Address

1 S. Eutaw Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

Stewart's

2018-11-27T10:33:50-05:00

Dublin Core

Title

Stewart's

Subject

Architecture

Commerce

Creator

Theresa Donnelly

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Story

When Samuel Posner moved his successful dry goods business to the corner of Lexington and Howard, architect Charles E. Cassell's gorgeous and ornate white Renaissance Revival building—complete with roaring lions and majestic wreaths and fluted columns—made a grand addition to the growing row of department store "palaces" on Howard Street in 1899.

The building played a prominent role in Baltimore's turn-of-the-century transition from smaller, specialized retailers to large, purpose-built department stores. Like many department stores across the country, Stewart's strove to provide a wide range of high quality goods to America's rising middle class and lured customers with its open layout, enticing displays, large plate glass windows, and by being, among other things, the first Howard Street store to install air conditioning in 1931.

Though the Stewart's name, etched in block letters at the building's crest, is still visible today, the store's ownership history is a bit less permanent. Within little over a year of the store's opening, The Baltimore Sun reported that Samuel Posner had sold the business to Louis Stewart and the Associated Merchants' Company (AMC), most likely as a result of financial difficulties resulting from high construction costs. Louis Stewart's turn at the helm of store was brief, too: in 1916 Stewart's was absorbed into a new firm, the Associated Dry Goods corporation (ADG), which consolidated several major U.S. retailing chains, including Lord & Taylor and J. McCreery's.

Many Baltimoreans have fond memories of shopping at Stewarts and recall making day-long excursions to the store. Stewart's, according to local columnist, Jacques Kelly, had "...an excellent men's furnishing department – ties and sweaters" and a wonderful selection of "... china and silver" and "yard good (dressmaking materials)." A high-class store with an elegant interior, Stewart's boasted two restaurants—the Georgian Tea Room and Cook Works—both popular with shoppers, as were the delicious vanilla marshmallow treats sold at the store's candy counter.

Stewart's opened their first suburban outlet on York Road in Towson in 1953 and several other suburban stores shortly thereafter. When the flagship store at Howard and Lexington closed in 1979, Stewart's held a week-long closing sale that brought in thousands of bargain-hungry shoppers. Stewart's was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999 and in 2007 Catholic Relief Services opened their offices in the first floor of the building.

Official Website

Street Address

226-232 W. Lexington Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

Pascault Row

2018-11-27T10:33:50-05:00

Dublin Core

Title

Pascault Row

Subject

Architecture

Description

In 1819, wealthy French merchant Louis Pascault, the Marquis de Poleon, constructed a row of eight houses on Lexington Street that now remain as the one of the earliest examples of the Baltimore rowhouse. Born in France, Pascault later moved to the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now known as Haiti). By the late 1780s, nearly 500,000 enslaved Africans labored at plantations on the island producing nearly half of the world's sugar and more than half of the world's coffee. In 1791, free blacks and enslaved people rose in revolt and Pascault joined thousands of white refugees fleeing the island for cities in the United States.

Pascault settled at Chatsworth, a large country mansion on Saratoga Street between Pine and Green, and profited from the quickly growing city's booming trade. After the city expanded in 1816, Pascault, together with carpenter and master builder Rezin Wight and merchant William Lorman, commissioned William F. Small to design this elegant row of Federal style houses adjacent to his estate. The dwellings soon attracted a host of wealthy residents, earning the row the distinction of being highlighted in an 1833 guidebook to Baltimore - the only row noted on the map.

The row soon became home to some of Baltimore's wealthiest families and remained a prestigious address for decades. Columbus O'Donnell, who was president of Baltimore's Gas and Light Company in the mid-nineteenth century and a director of the B & O Railroad (1839-1847) lived here with his wife, Eleanor, who was Louis Pascault's daughter. O'Donnell's mother, Sarah Chew Elliott O'Donnell, whose portrait hangs in Washington's National Gallery, lived in this row during the early 1820s. Her husband and Columbus' father, was John O'Donnell, a wealthy merchant and politician who had a momentous impact on Baltimore's international trade, particularly with China and Asia as a whole, and the man for whom Baltimore's O'Donnell Square is named.

By the 1970s, the iconic homes fell into disrepair. Using funds procured under the College Housing Loan Program, the University of Maryland, Baltimore, purchased the row in 1978 and renovated the historic buildings, transforming them into offices and student housing.

Creator

David Thomas

Theresa Donnelly

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Story

Official Website

Street Address

651 W. Lexington Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

John Jacob Abel at 1604 Bolton Street

2018-11-27T10:33:50-05:00

Dublin Core

Title

John Jacob Abel at 1604 Bolton Street

Subject

Medicine

Creator

Eli Pousson

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Subtitle

First Professor of Pharmacology in the United States

Story

Born near Cleveland, Ohio, in 1857, John Jacob Abel received a Ph.B. (Bachelor of Philosophy) from the University of Michigan in 1883 and his M.D. from Strasbourg in 1888. In 1893, after further training from Henry Newell Martin of the Johns Hopkins University and at various European University, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine recruited Abel to start a department of pharmacology becoming first full-time professor of pharmacology in the United States.

Among the most notable legacies of Abel's work is his research on adrenalin, insulin, and an apparatus that is widely regarded as a forerunner of the artificial kidney.

Street Address

1604 Bolton Street, Baltimore, MD 21217

Francis Scott Key Monument

2022-07-27T09:35:32-04:00

Dublin Core

Title

Francis Scott Key Monument

Subject

War of 1812

Public Art and Monuments

Creator

Johns Hopkins

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Story

The Key Monument on Eutaw Place is a grand reminder of how Baltimoreans have kept the memory of the Battle of Baltimore and the War of 1812 alive over two hundred years. Francis Scott Key was a Maryland lawyer and slaveholder who was on board the British vessel HMS Tonnant during the evening of September 13 and morning September 14, 1814, as part of a delegation to try to negotiate the release of prisoners. Key was stuck on board the British vessel to helplessly watch as the British Navy shelled Fort McHenry and Baltimore throughout the night.

At dawn, Key saw the Stars and Stripes still flying over the fort. That morning, the unsuccessful British allowed Key to return to shore, and on the return trip, he wrote a poem describing his experience the night before. The poem was quickly published in two Baltimore papers on September 20, 1814, and days later the owner of a Baltimore music store, Thomas Carr of the Carr Music Store, put the words and music together in print under the title "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Before his death in 1907, Baltimore resident Charles Marburg gave $25,000 to his brother Theodore to commission a monument to his favorite poet, Francis Scott Key. Theodore selected French sculptor Marius Jean Antonin Mercie known for monumental sculptures of Robert E. Lee (1890) in Richmond, Virginia, and General Lafayette (1891) in the District of Columbia. The Key Monument was added to Eutaw Place in 1911.

The monument was restored in 1999 after a multi-year fundraising campaign by local residents. In September 2017, the monument was spray painted with the words "Racist Anthem" and splashed with red paint to highlight Key's legacy as a slaveholder. The city quickly restored the monument.

Street Address

W. Lanvale Street and Eutaw Place, Baltimore, MD 21217

Woodrow Wilson at 1210 Eutaw Place

2018-11-27T10:33:50-05:00

Dublin Core

Title

Woodrow Wilson at 1210 Eutaw Place

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Story

Woodrow Wilson came to this house as a Ph.D. candidate at the Johns Hopkins University. From Eutaw Place he went on to become president of Princeton University, the governor of New Jersey and eventually President of the United States of America.

Street Address

1210 Eutaw Place, Baltimore, MD 21217

Howard Atwood Kelly at 1408 Eutaw Place

2018-11-27T10:33:50-05:00

Dublin Core

Title

Howard Atwood Kelly at 1408 Eutaw Place

Subject

Medicine

Creator

Eli Pousson

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Subtitle

Home of the "Wizard of the Operating Room"

Story

Born in Camden, New Jersey, in 1858, Howard Atwood Kelly attended the University of Pennsylvania, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1877 and his M.D. in 1882. In 1889, he became the first professor of gynecology and obstetrics at the Johns Hopkins University launching a 30-year career at the school.

Kelly is remembered—along with William Osler, Professor of Medicine, William Stewart Halsted, Professor of Surgery, and William H. Welch, Professor of Pathology—as one of the "Big Four" founding professors at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was called a "wizard of the operating room" and was an early user of radium to treat cancer.

Street Address

1408 Eutaw Place, Baltimore, MD 21217

Florence Rena Sabin at 1325 Park Avenue

2018-11-27T10:33:50-05:00

Dublin Core

Title

Florence Rena Sabin at 1325 Park Avenue

Subject

Medicine

Creator

Eli Pousson

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Subtitle

First Female Professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Story

Born in Central City, Colorado, on November 9, 1871, Florence Rena Sabin, M.D. (1871-1953) was the youngest daughter of a mining engineer. After her mother's death from sepsis, Florence and her sister moved first to Chicago, then to stay with her paternal grandparents in Vermont.

She earned a bachelor's degree in 1893 from Smith College, then went to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where she became the first female graduate. She returned to the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine a few years later on a research fellowship. She started teaching in the Department of Anatomy in 1902, with a promotion to associate professor in 1905 and finally full professor of embryology and histology in 1917, becoming the first female full professor at the college.

She introduced techniques for staining living cells and played an important role in the reform of Colorado's health laws. Her statue still stands in the U.S. Capitol.

Street Address

1325 Park Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21217

Meyerhoff House

2018-11-27T10:33:50-05:00

Dublin Core

Title

Meyerhoff House

Subject

Medicine

Description

The Maryland Women's Hospital, now known as the Robert and Jany Meyerhoff House for the Maryland Institute College of Art, was a pioneering medical institution in the late 19th century that remained a landmark in Bolton Hill through the 1960s.

When the hospital first opened at John and Lafayette in the early 1880s, it was only the second women's hospital in the nation. The hospital closed in the 1960s when the institution combined with the Presbyterian Eye, Ear and Throat Charity Hospital to form the Greater Baltimore Medical Center in Towson. In 2001, MICA renovated and rehabilitated the building as a dormitory for over 200 students, along with dining facilities, art studios and more.

Creator

Eli Pousson

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Subtitle

Former Maryland Women's Hospital now Student Dormitory

Story

The Maryland Women's Hospital, now known as the Robert and Jany Meyerhoff House for the Maryland Institute College of Art, was a pioneering medical institution in the late nineteenth century that remained a landmark in Bolton Hill through the 1960s.

When the hospital first opened at John and Lafayette in the early 1880s, it was only the second women's hospital in the nation. The hospital closed in the 1960s when the institution combined with the Presbyterian Eye, Ear and Throat Charity Hospital to form the Greater Baltimore Medical Center in Towson. In 2001, MICA renovated and rehabilitated the building as a dormitory for over 200 students, along with dining facilities, art studios and more.

Official Website

Street Address

140 W. Lafayette Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21217

Eutaw Place Temple

2019-05-09T21:16:40-04:00

Dublin Core

Title

Eutaw Place Temple

Subject

Religion

Architecture

Creator

Eli Pousson

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Story

An icon on Eutaw Place, the former Temple Oheb Shalom is a reminder of the vibrant Jewish community that thrived in the late nineteenth century in what were then Baltimore's expanding northwest suburbs. Built in 1892, architect Joseph Evans Sperry modeled the Eutaw Place Temple after the Great Synagogue of Florence, Italy. Since 1960, the building is home to the Prince Hall Grand Lodge that has boasted such notable members as Thurgood Marshall and Eubie Blake.

A small group of twenty-one young German Jews established the Oheb Shalom congregation in 1853 to provide an alternative to the Orthodox Baltimore Hebrew Congregation (1830) and the Reform Har Sinai (1846). The congregation moved to Eutaw Place in 1892 and remained through their 1960 when they moved into a midcentury modern synagogue on Park Heights Avenue in Pikesville and completed the move to in 1960. Temple Oheb Shalom has played a significant role in American Jewish life through the history of the rabbis and cantors who have led the congregation, most notably Rabbi Benjamin Szold who led Oheb Shalom through 1892 and whose daughter, Henrietta Szold, was the founder of Hadassah.

In 1960, Temple Oheb Shalom left Eutaw Place for Pikesville and the Prince Hall Grand Lodge, under the leadership of Samuel T. Daniels, purchased the building. Among the members of The Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Maryland are Baltimore-born Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and James Hubert "Eubie" Blake, one of the most significant figures in early-20th-century African American music. In 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. visited the lodge to campaign on behalf of President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Official Website

Street Address

1305 Eutaw Place, Baltimore, MD 21217

1311 Bolton Street

2018-11-27T10:33:50-05:00

Dublin Core

Title

1311 Bolton Street

Subject

Religion

Architecture

Description

While 1311 Bolton Street is best known today as the former location for the Bolton Street Synagogue, the story of this handsome stone building begins back in 1875 as the Reformed Episcopal Church of the Redeemer. This former church was converted to a residence in 2005 thanks to a three year creative reuse project by the current owners. Designing kitchens, bathrooms and living spaces in this magnificent and unconventional building meant working with stained glass windows, high ceilings, and spaces that were meant originally for public worship.

The cornerstone laying ceremony in October 1875 was attended by Bishop George David Cummings, who founded the Reformed Episcopal Church in 1873. The architect hired for the building, Charles Cassell, was a native of Portsmouth, Virginia who trained as a naval architect and arrived in Baltimore not long after the Civil War. Cassell, who helped found the Baltimore Chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 1870, also designed the former Stewart's Department Store on Howard Street, the Stafford Hotel in Mt. Vernon, and the chapel at the University of Virginia.

A handful of different churches and community organizations occupied the building from the 1930s through the 1980s. Finally, in 1986 the Bolton Street Synagogue was founded in Bolton Hill as an unaffiliated synagogue serving Baltimore's diverse Jewish community. The synagogue remained in Bolton Hill for 17 years before moving to Cold Spring Lane in 2003. The building found its new use in 2005 and remains a landmark to the long history of churches and creative adaptive reuse in Bolton Hill.

Creator

Eli Pousson

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Story

Street Address

1311 Bolton Street, Baltimore, MD 21217

William H. Howell, Ph.D. at 232 West Lanvale Street

2018-11-27T10:33:50-05:00

Dublin Core

Title

William H. Howell, Ph.D. at 232 West Lanvale Street

Subject

Architecture

Medicine

Literature

Description

232 West Lanvale has a neat appearance that belies its age as the oldest house in Bolton Hill. Amazingly, it reportedly looks almost exactly the same today as it did when built in 1848. Originally part of a group of three Italianate houses facing towards downtown Baltimore, the home offered a country retreat to early northwest Baltimore residents. The owners added the bay window on Bolton Street 25 years after the house was built, salvaged from Charles Howard's mansion (where Francis Scott Key died) after the building was torn down to make way for the Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church. One of the longest residents in the house, Dr. William Henry Howell, rented the home for forty years as he taught medicine at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Howell is best remembered for his discovery of the anti-coagulant heparin.

By the 1960s, the charming cottage had attracted its own literary community, including Maryland poet and scholar William F. Stead, who died there in 1967 at the age of 82. Stead was a friend of T.S. Eliot, William Yeats, and many other British poets thanks to decades spent living in England. His host at the home was Mrs. Edward C. Venable (nee Nancy Howard De Ford), a Maryland native, descendant of both John Eager Howard and Francis Scott Key, and a published poet and author. She married her husband, himself a well-known writer, in 1924 and the pair spent every summer in France returning to Lanvale Street in the fall. Among Mrs. Venable's friends was Tennessee Williams, who patterned one of his stage heroines after her: Violet Venable in Suddenly Last Summer.

Creator

Eli Pousson

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Story

Street Address

232 W. Lanvale Street, Baltimore, MD 21217

John Street Park

2021-02-22T09:34:34-05:00

Dublin Core

Title

John Street Park

Subject

Urban Renewal

Parks and Landscapes

Description

For such a small park, this green block on John Street has had a large impact on the history of Bolton Hill. In the early 1950s, a group of local residents organized to establish the park, one of the first "vest pocket" urban parks in the country. Dedicated in 1955, the park was maintained by the Village Garden Club, now the Bolton Hill Garden Club, which took on the work of maintaining plantings and fencing. The Club started an annual spring plant sale, which continues to this day, to help pay for the upkeep of the park, joining the club's traditional Christmas Greens sale, which included decorations at the Women's Hospital on Lafayette Avenue.

The residents involved in the creation of the park built on their efforts and began advocating more broadly for the Mt. Royal area to be designated one of the city's first urban renewal areas under the Federal Housing Act of 1954. Their small success on John Street led to transformative changes across the area in the 1960s and 1970s with the demolition of many rowhouses and alley houses to make way for new high-rise apartment buildings and modern townhouse developments.

Creator

Eli Pousson

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Story

For such a small park, this green block on John Street has had a large impact on the history of Bolton Hill. In the early 1950s, a group of local residents organized to establish the park, one of the first "vest pocket" urban parks in the country. Dedicated in 1955, the park was maintained by the Village Garden Club, now the Bolton Hill Garden Club, which took on the work of maintaining plantings and fencing. The Club started an annual spring plant sale, which continues to this day, to help pay for the upkeep of the park, joining the club's traditional Christmas Greens sale, which included decorations at the Women's Hospital on Lafayette Avenue. The residents involved in the creation of the park built on their efforts and began advocating more broadly for the Mt. Royal area to be designated one of the city's first urban renewal areas under the Federal Housing Act of 1954. Their small success on John Street led to transformative changes across the area in the 1960s and 1970s with the demolition of many rowhouses and alley houses to make way for new high-rise apartment buildings and modern townhouse developments.

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Street Address

John Street, Baltimore, MD 21217

Baltimore Bargain House

2020-10-16T11:53:51-04:00

Dublin Core

Title

Baltimore Bargain House

Subject

Commerce

Creator

Johanna Schein

Theresa Donnelly

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Subtitle

Wholesale History at the Nancy S. Grasmick Building

Story

One of the largest businesses on the West Side in the early twentieth century the Baltimore Bargain House—a mail-order wholesale business that employed over a thousand people and earned profits in the millions that grew to become the fourth largest wholesalers in the county. Driven by the devotion of Jewish Lithuanian immigrant Jacob Epstein, the Baltimore Bargain House became a hub for Southern Jewish merchants and a local business community. When firm's grand showroom at West Baltimore and North Liberty Streets opened in 1911, a crowd of 500 local businessmen, the Mayor of Baltimore, and the Governor of Maryland all attended the dedication. After spending years himself as an itinerant peddler, traveling throughout Western Maryland, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania, Jacob Epstein first opened a small wholesale store in Baltimore in 1881. Epstein focused his attention on the American South, working specifically with Jewish peddlers and merchants. In the early 1900s, Epstein treated hundreds of merchants to annual visits to Baltimore to restock and view new merchandise. Arriving from North Carolina, Tennessee, and across the South, these merchants helped grow a successful and extensive business in Baltimore. Between 1881 and 1929 the Baltimore Bargain House was one of the most significant businesses in Baltimore, with gross sales over $34 million in 1921 alone, comparable to over $410 million today. To operate the Baltimore Bargain House, Epstein also built a local community of employees, which included over 1,600 people. The workforce was relatively diverse, comprising of immigrants from various countries as well as industry experts from across the nation. Many workers remained employed at the Baltimore Bargain House for decades. Although remarkable for his considerable business acumen and the success of the Baltimore Bargain House, the business' founder, Jacob Epstein was also well known for his extensive charitable donations to local Jewish groups and to institutions like the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Watch our on this building!

Street Address

6 N. Liberty Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

Read's Drug Store

2018-11-27T10:33:50-05:00

Dublin Core

Title

Read's Drug Store

Subject

Civil Rights

Description

Though the Baltimore Sun heralded the structure at the southeast corner of Howard and Lexington as an Art Deco design icon from the time of its construction in 1934, this building's role as an early and vital witness to a historic, but long over-looked Civil Rights sit-in makes the Read's Drug Store building truly noteworthy. Five years before the better known Greensboro, South Carolina sit-in protests at Woolworth's, students and citizens made civil rights history on this spot.

William Read started his Read's Drug Store chain at this corner, but the current building, designed by prominent Baltimore architects Smith & May, was built by Arthur Nattans bought the business from Read in 1899. Nattans grew the Read's chain to over forty locations by the early 1930s and planned the downtown location as a flagship store - a modern and well-appointed building, detailed with ornate terra cotta panels depicting sailing ships and chromed railing with swimming dolphins on the interior balcony elements commemorating the 300th anniversary of founding of the Maryland colony.

Like many downtown lunch counters in the early 1950s, the Read's chain maintained a strict policy of racial segregation. Discontent with the widespread policies of segregation and discrimination downtown led the Baltimore chapter of the Committee on Racial Equality (CORE) to start a campaign to end segregation at lunch counters on Lexington Street from Kresge's at Park Avenue to McCrory's right next door to Read's. At the same time, students from Morgan State University began working to desegregate the Read's Drug Store's Northwood Shopping Center location, just outside of Morgan's campus.

On January 20, 1955, CORE and Morgan state joined forces and a group of student activists from Morgan staged simultaneous "sit-in" demonstrations at the Howard & Lexington and Northwood Read's locations. According to an article in the Baltimore Afro American, an unnamed Read's official called Morgan State and pleaded with the school to call the protests off because the stores were losing business. School leaders and protesters held firm and within hours a Read's official announced that Read's Drug Store would end segregated lunch counters across all of their establishments. The front page headline for the Afro American on January 22 read, "Now serve all," with the announcement directly from Read's Drug Stores President Arthur Nattans Sr., "We will serve all customers throughout our entire stores, including the fountains, and this becomes effective immediately." Five years before the iconic Woolworth's sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina, Baltimore's Morgan State students and CORE activists led one of the first successful student-led sit-in protests in the nation.

Creator

Eli Pousson

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Story

Street Address

127 N. Howard Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

Hutzler's

2018-11-27T10:33:50-05:00

Dublin Core

Title

Hutzler's

Description

"If you wanted the good stuff, you went to Hutzler's," said Governor William Donald Schaefer and for generations of Baltimoreans, Hutzler's represented the height of downtown shopping, simply the place to shop. Many Marylanders still have fond memories of taking a streetcar down to Howard Street to shop at Hutzler's - the grande dame of Baltimore department stores with the richly detailed 1880s Palace building the modern 1930s Tower building next door.

Founded in 1858 as a single storefront at the corner of Howard and Clay streets by German-Jewish peddler Moses Hutzler and his son Abram, the store soon expanded to two additional Howard Street storefronts. Abram welcomed his brothers Charles and David into the retail operation in 1867 and the business incorporated as the Hutzler Brothers Company in the early twentieth century. The store carefully cultivated an image as not only a purveyor of fine goods, but a destination in itself. Hutzler's prided itself on being a place where shoppers could spend an entire day, complete with lunch in The Colonial or the Quixie, a haircut in the Circle Room Beauty Salon, and a shoeshine at the Shoe Fixery on the 8th floor.

The magnificent "palace" building on Howard Street reflects the reputation for class with a ornate Nova Scotia gray stone façade designed by the firm of Baldwin and Pennington. The store continued to grow in the 20th century with the construction of the Art Deco "tower" building in 1932 (which gained five additional stories in 1942) designed by architect James R. Edmunds, Jr.

Hutzler's claimed many innovations in Baltimore retailing including the widespread institution in 1868 of the now standard "one-price policy," which replaced a system of bargaining that favored the loudest or boldest bidder. Hutzler's offered an early liberal returns policy and was the first department store in Maryland to boast a fleet of delivery trucks. Like many department stores across the nation, Hutzler's sought to employ the latest technology; they installed Baltimore's first escalator in this building in the early 1930s.

In 1952, Hutzler's expanded to the Baltimore suburbs, opening a store Towson, Maryland, which was quickly followed by eight additional suburban outlets. Despite their forward-looking expansion, competition from national retailers and the continued decline of downtown business forced the 132 year-old family-owned business to close in 1990.

Creator

Theresa Donnelly

Sydney Jenkins

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Story

"If you wanted the good stuff, you went to Hutzler's," said Governor William Donald Schaefer and for generations of Baltimoreans, Hutzler's represented the height of downtown shopping, simply the place to shop. Many Marylanders still have fond memories of taking a streetcar down to Howard Street to shop at Hutzler's - the grande dame of Baltimore department stores with the richly detailed 1880s Palace building the modern 1930s Tower building next door.

Founded in 1858 as a single storefront at the corner of Howard and Clay streets by German-Jewish peddler Moses Hutzler and his son Abram, the store soon expanded to two additional Howard Street storefronts. Abram welcomed his brothers Charles and David into the retail operation in 1867 and the business incorporated as the Hutzler Brothers Company in the early twentieth century. The store carefully cultivated an image as not only a purveyor of fine goods, but a destination in itself. Hutzler's prided itself on being a place where shoppers could spend an entire day, complete with lunch in The Colonial or the Quixie, a haircut in the Circle Room Beauty Salon, and a shoeshine at the Shoe Fixery on the 8th floor.

The magnificent "palace" building on Howard Street reflects the reputation for class with a ornate Nova Scotia gray stone façade designed by the firm of Baldwin and Pennington. The store continued to grow in the twentieth century with the construction of the Art Deco "tower" building in 1932 (which gained five additional stories in 1942) designed by architect James R. Edmunds, Jr.

Hutzler's claimed many innovations in Baltimore retailing including the widespread institution in 1868 of the now standard "one-price policy," which replaced a system of bargaining that favored the loudest or boldest bidder. Hutzler's offered an early liberal returns policy and was the first department store in Maryland to boast a fleet of delivery trucks. Like many department stores across the nation, Hutzler's sought to employ the latest technology; they installed Baltimore's first escalator in this building in the early 1930s.

In 1952, Hutzler's expanded to the Baltimore suburbs, opening a store in Towson, Maryland, which was quickly followed by eight additional suburban outlets. Despite their forward-looking expansion, competition from national retailers and the continued decline of downtown business forced the 132 year-old family-owned business to close in 1990.

Street Address

200 N. Howard Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

Schuler School of Fine Arts

2020-10-21T10:09:37-04:00

Dublin Core

Title

Schuler School of Fine Arts

Creator

Nathan Dennies

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Subtitle

Hans Schuler's Home and Studio

Story

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 monument to George Washington in the United States. And during a time when Washington DC was recovering from the devastation of the War of 1812, Baltimore was erecting monuments to its triumph. Baltimore was also home to great sculptors. William Rinehart got his start in Baltimore owing to the patronage of William Walters. After an illustrious career, Rinehart endowed his estate to the Maryland Institute College of Art for the teaching of sculpture. Hans Schuler attended the Rinehart School of Sculpture, having emigrated to the United States at a young age from Germany with his parents. Upon graduation, he moved to Paris to study at the Julian Academy on a scholarship. In 1901, he became the first U.S.-based sculptor to win the Salon Gold Medal for his sculpture "Ariadne." It was in Paris that Schuler met William Lucas, an agent of Henry Walters, son of William Walters. Walters, a collector of fine art, purchased "Ariadne" for his gallery, now the Walters Art Museum. In 1906, Schuler returned to Baltimore and established a studio at 7 E. Lafayette Avenue, where he would become the city's leading sculptor and contribute to Baltimore's legacy as the Monumental City. Schuler's studio was designed by architect Howard Sill in an eclectic style, combining elements of several architectural styles and including architectural elements sculpted by Schuler himself. Sill designed the interior to accommodate the large scale of Schuler's work. The studio had one floor with a 24-foot ceiling. Large double doors allowed for the moving of large monuments. In 1922, a crane was installed inside. For six years, Schuler lived in an apartment near the studio with his wife, Paula, and daughter, Charlotte. By 1912, Schuler was established enough to hire Sill's apprentice, Gordon Beecher, to design a two bay wide, three bay deep, and two stories tall residence attached to the studio and capped with a mansard roof. As with the studio, Schuler sculpted architectural elements for the residence. Schuler received many commissions during his lifetime. One important patron was Theodore Marburg, a diplomat who, when he was not advocating for the League of Nations, was advocating for city parks and public art in Baltimore. Marburg founded the Municipal Art Society and would go on to save Schuler's career after nearly ruining him. His commision for a figure of Johns Hopkins hit a dead end after the university refused to take it. Schuler's compensation covered materials and little more, and the loss of income almost led to him selling his house. Schuler recovered and commissions came regularly until the United States entered World War I. Schuler considered working in a munitions factory, but Marburg intervened and provided more commissions, saving Schuler's career. Schuler became director of the Maryland Institute of Art in 1925. During his tenure he continued to work on commissions in his personal studio. He died in 1951 at the age of 77. His son, Hans, Jr., had been his full-time assistant, and like his father, worked at the Maryland Institute of Art. In the years that followed, the Institute began to lean more towards modern art in its teaching. A firm believer in the traditional techniques passed down from his father, Hans, along with his wife Ann, also a teacher at the Institute, formed the Schuler School of Fine Arts in 1959. The school trains students in the techniques of the Old Masters and offers courses in drawing, painting and sculpture and is located in the Schuler studio and residence that Hans Schuler, Sr. built. Both buildings remain historically intact with few changes.

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7-9 E. Lafayette Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21202

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