In 1894, William G. Scarlett founded the William G. Scarlett Seed Company. Born in Baltimore in 1873, George D. Scarlett was a true entrepreneur who chased the American dream. At twenty-one, George Scarlett began working in the seed industry by “importing seeds from various parts of the world and exporting dried apples." Under the management of George Scarlett, the company expanded its inventory; selling grass, grain, and bird seeds. A Baltimore Sun article stated that “his [George Scarlett’s] business mushroomed principally through his own efforts and at one time was the largest east of the Mississippi River." Although the William G. Scarlett Seed Company expanded opening branches in other cities, Baltimore remained the company headquarters.
The Scarlett Seed Company remained in the family as George D. Scarlett passed over the company reins to his sons Raymond G. Scarlett and William G. Scarlett. As eccentric as his father, Raymond Scarlett was not only the company president, but also a badminton champion. An adamant badminton enthusiast, Raymond Scarlett founded the junior national badminton championship tournament. William George Scarlett succeeded his brother Raymond in running the company. Following in the unique footsteps of his father and brother, in addition to managing the family business, William Scarlett joined the Army Counter Intelligence Corps, also known as the CIC, during WWII.
After the company vacated the property, in the 1980s, the site was developed into retail space, office space, and condominiums. Today, the Scarlett Seed Company Property is now known as Scarlett Place, paying tribute to the bird-seed businessmen.
In the twentieth century, Pier 8 in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and then Broadway Pier in Fells Point used to be the launching point for the steamboats of the Wilson Line. The Wilson Line extended from Philadelphia to Wilmington to Baltimore and ran a line of excursion boats out of Baltimore after WWII. The “Bay Belle,” one of the Baltimore excursion boats, carried passengers on day trips to places such as Betterton Beach.
Although the Wilson Line steamboat company advertised sunny trips to the beach and fun at resorts, this was overshadowed by the company’s practice of segregation. In July of 1944, a group of African American teenagers from Philadelphia were separated from white passengers on the Wilson Line ship the Maybelle. According to an article from the Baltimore Afro American, Wilson Line employees placed a rope across the dance floor to separate white and black passengers, and even went so far as to close their game room to prevent integration. In 1950, the company continued discriminatory practices by refusing to sell tickets to four African American patrons: Helena Haley, Charles Haley, Loncie Malloy, and Prunella Norwood. The four patrons sued the Wilson Line and as a result the company was ordered to end its discriminatory practices by the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1951.
The shadow of segregation extended from the steamboat line to the beaches. For example Ocean City, one of the most popular beach attractions today, once banned African Americans from enjoying its sunny shores. Elizabeth Carr Smith and Florence Carr Sparrow, two African American sisters, fought back against segregation by founding Carr’s Beach in 1926 and Sparrow’s Beach in 1931. Both sisters inherited pieces of land from their father on the Annapolis coast facing the Chesapeake Bay. Carr’s and Sparrow’s beaches were known for ample entertainment and hosted many famous African American performers such as Billie Holiday, James Brown, and Ray Charles. For many African Americans along the east coast, Carr’s and Sparrow’s Beaches provided a safe vacation spot.
In the face of discrimination, the African American community rallied in order to fight for their civil rights. As a result of the power of the black community, the ICC forced the Wilson Line to adopt integration and beaches desegregated.
General Ship Repair maintains the rich shipbuilding tradition so long associated with the South Baltimore neighborhoods of Federal Hill and Locust Point. Charles “Buck” Lynch founded the company in 1924, moved to this location in 1929, lost the company to bankruptcy during the Great Depression and managed to buy it back at auction. Today, the fourth generation of the Lynch family operates the company at one of the last remaining industrial sites along Key Highway.
General Ship has repaired a variety of vessels through the years, including schooners, steamships, paddle wheelers, and supertankers. Among the notable vessels that have been worked on recently are the Pride of Baltimore II and Mr. Trash Wheel. Workers perform maintenance work on ships in dry docks at this site in addition to sending crews out to other facilities. As of 2020 the facility, which includes a 17,300 square foot shed and two 1000-ton floating docks, repairs mostly workboats. The company serves as the tug and barge repair facility for the Port of Baltimore. The machine shop on site allows General Ship crews to weld and fabricate steel parts here.
Key Highway was once home to a variety of industries including molasses production, oil reprocessing, canning, and locomotive repair. While access to the waterfront remains more limited here than around other parts of the Inner Harbor, residential and mixed-use development has boomed in South Baltimore for the past decade. The Lynch family has considered relocating the business for the past few years, selling the waterfront property to be redeveloped into luxury housing. However, as of October 2020, General Ship Repair remains a bastion of shipbuilding in South Baltimore. What do you predict the Locust Point peninsula will be known for in the 21st century?
The Key Highway Yards along the southern side of the Inner Harbor played a pivotal role in Baltimore’s shipbuilding industry from the 1820s until 1982. Passersby today see almost no traces of this industrial history at the upscale Ritz Carlton and HarborView communities. One of the only remnants of shipbuilding along this stretch of Baltimore’s waterfront lies underneath the 30-story HarborView Towers, completed in 1992: the dry docks used for ship repair were converted to become a parking garage.
Boatbuilding brothers William Skinner Jr. and Jeremiah Skinner moved from Dorchester County to Baltimore in the 1820s to establish the Skinner yard at the base of Federal Hill. William later sold his share of the company to his brother and purchased his own shipyard on Cross Street specializing in sailing ships and steamboats. The Skinners contributed greatly to the city’s prominence in American shipbuilding, with William remembered as having built the first Baltimore clipper ship. The for this site describes the Skinner yard as “the largest and most important of the period.”
William’s descendants carried on the family business and consolidated other small shipyards, eventually creating a 35-acre complex at Key Highway. Business boomed during the Civil War and continued through the turn of the century. Although World War I brought another wave of activity to these shipbuilding operations, the company went into receivership and Bethlehem Steel Company acquired this yard in 1921.
During the Bethlehem era, this was known as the “upper yard.” The “lower yard” referred to the shipyard adjacent to Fort McHenry, which is still in operation today. Workers at Bethlehem’s shipyards at Locust Point as well as Sparrows Point and Fairfield—together the largest ship repair operation in the United States—participated in the. Baltimore shipyards churned out a record-setting number of Liberty and Victory Ships between 1941-1945. The Key Highway yards repaired over 2,500 ships during WWII.
Enjoying a stroll along the harbor today, one could almost miss the fact that this place was once a hub of heavy industry, lined with massive equipment and bustling with workers. Although the shipyards are no longer visible at this location, you can experience this chapter of history at the Baltimore Museum of Industry. The 1942 Clyde Model 17 DE 90 whirley crane outside the museum, restored and painted bright green in 2019, worked on Pier 3 between the 1940s-1980s. Can you imagine the sense of awe one would have experienced seeing a whole fleet of these massive cranes hard at work along the shipyard?
Imagine a horde of Christmas elves attacking a chorus line of Roman legionaries. Now, if you wish to see this fever-dream in person, take a trip to A.T. Jones & Sons on N. Howard Street. They have a warehouse filled with costumes from any period of history.
Alfred Thomas Jones started renting out costumes in 1868. He arrived in Baltimore from North Carolina in the spring of 1861. He was there to collect a $500 prize for a painting he submitted to a contest sponsored by the predecessor of the Maryland Institute College of Art (Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts). He was unable to return to N.C., however, after fighting broke out at the start of the Civil War. So, he settled into a new life as a teacher at the art school that awarded his prize.
Jones began buying costumes as a hobby in 1868. He purchased Confederate and Union army uniforms as well as parade and masquerade ball costumes. These costumes served Mr. Jones well as he was able to rent them for masquerade balls, a popular form of high society entertainment in the late 19th century. A costume from one season could be altered and rented the next.
Perhaps the largest of the masked balls of the late 19th century was the Oriole Pageant, sponsored by the Order of the Oriole. The first of these pageants was held in 1880 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the settlement of Baltimore. The following year the society outdid itself with a three-day affair that included a parade through the city (illuminated with electric lights), concerts, a parade of boats in the harbor, and, of course, a masked ball. The B&O Railroad added extra cars to accommodate the crowds attending the festivities. All of these events required costumes, some of which were rented out by Mr. A.T. Jones.
The costume rental business included supplying local theatre companies. Many of the famous actors of the 19th century depended on the Jones family. Edwin Booth, the most illustrious of a Maryland family of actors, gave Jones some of his own props and costumes, such as a sword used in Hamlet and pound-of-flesh scales from Merchant of Venice.
The most loyal and long lasting customer of A.T. Jones & Sons is the Gridiron Club, a journalistic organization in Washington, D.C., made up primarily of news bureau chiefs. It was founded in 1885 and has been renting costumes annually since 1888 for their white-tie banquet that includes satirical skits directed at politicians and journalists. Some of the costumes for this event have been worn by John Glenn, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and news reporter Bob Schieffer.
A.T. Jones began by renting costumes for parades, pageants, and theatrical productions, as well as formal wear to young men who could not afford to purchase them. Through the next century and a half, his descendants and successors have adapted to the times and changing demands. From A.T., the shop went to his son, Walter Jones, Sr., then Walter’s widow, Lena, then their son, Walter “Tubby” Jones, Jr. The shop was eventually purchased by a long-time employee, George Goebel. His son Ehrich joined the business and has expanded the market to include opera and theatre companies throughout the United States. The inventory now includes everything from Aida to Elf the Musical.
The one costume that is of great demand every year is for Santa Claus. Ever since the first department store version of the fat, jolly, white-bearded old man made its appearance in the 19th century, there has been a run on large red suits with white trim every December. A.T. Jones is always ready to meet the demand from department stores and charitable organizations for Santa costumes.
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Clifton Park is Baltimore’s fourth oldest country landscape park after Druid Hill, Patterson, and Carroll Parks. Around 1800, Baltimore merchant Henry Thompson purchased the rural property and began transforming the farmhouse into a federal style mansion called Clifton. In 1841, Johns Hopkins purchased the estate and hired William Saunders, a Scottish immigrant and professional horticulturist, to improve the grounds. Hoping his eponymous university would one day relocate to Clifton, Hopkins left it to the school.
During the Hopkins trustees’ tenure at Clifton, the landscape gardens were not well-maintained. Baltimore City condemned part of the estate to build a reservoir (now the site of a high school) and the impressive American gothic style valve house. In 1894 when the value of stock in the B&O Railroad plummeted, the trustees sold Clifton to Baltimore City for $1 million to raise operating expenses for the university.
In 1895, the Baltimore Park Commission began making improvements for a public park and invested in the rehabilitation of various gardens and roadways. The Olmsted Brothers 1904 report recognized Clifton as one of the city’s major parks that would anchor the system. The firm recommended that a comprehensive plan be prepared for Clifton, but instead, the Park Commission retained them to design a series of projects over the course of nine years.
The first project was an athletic ground in the southern part below the railroad, where an Olmsted era stone wall still remains. The Olmsted Brothers also designed a swimming pool, which at the time was the largest concrete swimming pool in the country. In addition, they planned a band shell, which was damaged by fire significantly in 1947. A renovated and stripped band shell stands in its place today. Later additions to the park that are also historically significant include Baltimore’s first public golf course (1916) and Mothers’ Garden (1928), originally dedicated to “The Mothers of Baltimore.”
Following decades of abuse, Clifton’s Italianate villa is stabilized and the current tenant, Civic Works, is restoring the interior.
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Today, Wyman Park is a complex of highly-contrasting park spaces, half-hearted links, and a variety of associated urban edges. The 1904 Olmsted Brothers report singled out the Wyman Park section with its “old beech trees and bold topography” as “the finest single passage of scenery in the whole valley.”
By 1888, the Wyman Brothers had dedicated a part of their large estate to public uses. The center of the estate would become the new campus of Johns Hopkins University. The school’s trustees subsequently gave the remainder of the land to the City as a public park.
In the 1910s, each section of park received specialized attention from the Olmsted Brothers firm. Although the larger stream valley section was interrupted by railroad tracks and sewer lines, the Olmsted designs treated it as a natural reservation with pedestrian paths and a meandering parkway.
In contrast, the plan manipulated Wyman Park Dell into a miniature version of a signature Olmsted pastoral park. Over the years, indifferent landscaping, lack of additional parkway treatments and large parking lots contributed to the erosion of any sense of connectedness between the two main park spaces.
Some of the Wyman land was sold back to Hopkins in the 1960s. Buildings began to fill in smaller green spaces in the area. Both main sections of Wyman Park remain valuable natural preserves for their surrounding neighborhoods and the city as a whole.
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In south Baltimore, Latrobe Park still has traces of Olmsted design elements. Originally only 6 acres in size, this park was created to serve the working class neighborhoods on the Locust Point peninsula. Unlike much larger plans for Patterson and Clifton Parks also begun in 1904, what distinguishes Latrobe Park was the amount of active recreation that had to fit in a tight space.
In 1904, the Board of Park Commissioners retained the Olmsted Brothers firm to provide a plan that would accommodate a children’s play area, a men’s running track, and a small women’s fitness section. A broad promenade would overlook the park with trees and plantings while a grand stair with a fountain at its base would be the central entrance. In the middle of a wide lawn a grove of trees would provide a shaded haven for the public to sit and relax, or listen to band concerts. This design combined old sensibilities of parks as natural retreats with new ideas that parks could promote recreation.
Construction began in 1905 and much of the Olmsted design materialized. Over the years, the park has grown and added tennis courts and a baseball field. Today, a berm constructed for the I-395 Fort McHenry Tunnel obscures the view of the water, but the shipping cranes of the marine terminal are visible. Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in Latrobe Park. Through great community effort, neighbors upgraded the playground and planted trees.
Like many old family-owned businesses, Lakein’s Jewelers was started by a newly arrived immigrant, 29-year-old Isadore Lakein, who arrived in the United States from Russia in 1912 with his wife Anna and their son Samuel. A second son, David, was born in 1915. Isadore started his jewelry business the year after arriving in the U.S. when he began selling a variety of goods door-to-door in the Fell's Point neighborhood of Baltimore. Lakein offered customers the option to pay in installments, and would return to collect regular payments. By 1929, he opened a store at 515 S. Broadway. His sons, Samuel and David, joined him in the enterprise.
Attention to detail and care for customers is imperative to the success of any small family business and Lakein’s is no exception. In a 2019 interview, present-day owner Warren Lakein shared how a customer had recently stopped in the shop, now located in Hamilton, to pick up a watch he left for repair—three years earlier. Despite the delay, the customer still found the repaired watch waiting and ready for pick up at the counter. The Lakein family applies the same customer-centered approach to the repair of watches of all kinds, whether it is a basic Timex, an expensive Rolex, a rare antique, or a sentimental treasure.
The threat of theft is present at all jewelry stores and Lakein’s has seen some losses. One old wrong was made right several years ago, when a plain manila envelope arrived at the store with no return address. The envelope contained a wedding band and an unsigned note reading: “I shoplifted it from your store about forty years ago, and I’m very sorry for that.”
The tradition of layaway and door-to-door service stayed with the family for generations. The business grew to include four locations in Baltimore including shops at 3221 Greenmount Avenue, the corner of Erdman Avenue and Belair Road, and at 5400 Harford Road in Hamilton. Isadore retired to Florida and started another location there before his death in 1962.
Warren Lakein, a current owner of Lakein’s Jewelers of Hamilton and grandson of the founder, grew up behind the Harford Road store in a small stucco house and recalled making house calls with selections of rings for people who requested something special. Lakein's continues to offer layaway accounts for up to eight months. Hundreds, if not thousands, of local Baltimoreans still shop at Lakein’s to buy special gifts for sweethearts or parents. Payments were made regularly for as little as one dollar per week back in the 1960s and 1970s. For some fortunate shoppers, those friendship and “going steady” rings led to engagement and wedding rings—including some still in use forty or fifty years later.
Customers have maintained their loyalty to the store for generations. Some customers own Lakein’s jewelry from forty to eighty years ago that has been handed down by their parents or grandparents. One customer received his grandmother’s engagement and wedding rings, which he later gave to his wife. They were purchased at the original store’s location just a few years after it opened on S. Broadway in 1929.
Lakein’s Jewelers is a remarkable reminder of the opportunities Baltimore offered to European immigrants in the early twentieth century. A hard-working door-to-door salesman from Russia could open a store in Fell's Point and grow the business over time to five locations. Regrettably, it also shows the challenges small businesses have faced in recent decades. Most of the stores have closed, including the original Broadway location, which closed in 2005. Fortunately, due to a loyal clientele and dedicated owners, Lakein’s Jewelers of Hamilton is still going strong.
In April 1942, less than six months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, a group of Elkridge residents established a new volunteer fire department. The new fire department was one of many initiatives in U.S. cities and towns encouraged by the Office of Civilian Defense at the outset of World War II. Elkridge residents worried that their town’s location between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, as well as the town’s proximity to several wartime industrial sites, made them a possible target for an aerial bombardment.
The founding of the department was a grassroots effort from the beginning. A group of local women led the initial fundraising campaign. The B&O Railroad Company donated the fire bell. Using second-hand parts and donated equipment, volunteers took a dilapidated 1934 Brockway Ford (dilapidated from years sitting idle in a cow pasture) and transformed it into a fully operational fire truck for just $500.
Operating out of a one-bay garage in a former Ford Automobile dealership, the first few road tests for the new truck did not go smoothly. A tire blew out on the first trip and the engine dropped a rod on its second trip. Nonetheless, the volunteers managed to get the truck fully operational just seven months after the formation of the department. The volunteers named the truck “Daisy.”
The Federal Civilian Defense Organization officially recognized the department as part of national preparedness and declared Daisy the “best homemade fire truck in America.” The volunteers’ efforts were even dramatized and broadcast live on a national NBC radio show.
It was a challenge to fully staff the department during World War II because so many local men were fighting overseas. To compensate, the department struck a deal with the local high school. The school agreed to allow the older boys who maintained at least a C grade average to skip class in order to help fight fires.
While only men and boys were allowed to fight fires, women volunteered as dispatchers during the department’s first few years. Women volunteered on the ambulance from the beginning and, in the early 1970s, the department changed policies to allow women to enlist as firefighters as well.
The original building underwent several renovations over the last seventy-five years. The fire hall on Old Washington Road was renovated and expanded in 1948. Today, the Elkridge V.F.D. operates out of a new, larger location, built to accommodate the growing needs of the community. Built in 2014, the new facility on Rowanberry Drive encompasses more than thirty-five thousand square feet, houses twenty-three firefighters—both paid and volunteer—and cost more than sixteen million dollars. The department’s original building is currently being repurposed as a community center.
The handsome Victorian on Elkridge’s Main Street now known as the Brumbaugh House was built around 1870 and began serving as a doctor's office in the nineteenth century. The home’s most famous resident, Dr. Benjamin Bruce Brumbaugh, started his own sixty-year-long career working and living at the house in 1919. Dr. Brumbaugh served thousands of Elkridge residents over the decades and the house continues to tell his story today. Since 1985, the Elkridge Heritage Society has operated the house as a small museum to share the long history of medical care in their community.
Born on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Brumbaugh graduated from the University of Maryland Medical School with degrees in both pharmacy and medicine. When the United States entered World War I, Brumbaugh enlisted as a doctor for the U.S. Army. He was stationed at Fort Meade in Anne Arundel County where three infantry divisions trained before deployment to Europe. Brumbaugh tended to many of the 400,000 servicemen who passed through Fort Meade during the war.
After his discharge the military at the war’s end in 1918, a former advisor from the University of Maryland shared the news that Elkridge needed a temporary doctor. The town’s regular practitioner Dr. Ericson had suffered a stroke and was unable to work. When his predecessor passed away two months later, Dr. Brumbaugh took over the practice permanently.
For nearly fifty years, Brumbaugh worked alongside his wife, Miriam Smith, who was herself a doctor’s daughter up until her death in 1958. Over much of that time, Dr. Brumbaugh charged just $2 for an office visit or $3 for a house call. Over the years, Dr. Brumbaugh (or Dr. B as many of his patients called him) became something of a local celebrity with an office full of patients from the early morning to late evening. He did not raised his fees until 1969—but then it only went up by a dollar. In a 1970 Sun interview, Brumbaugh explained:
“I’d rather treat them for free of charge than have them think I’m overcharging. I was never out for the almighty dollar. I work just to keep alive, not for what I can get out of it.”
That same year, the community recognized his fifty years of service to the Elkridge community. Nearly four hundred neighbors and long-time patients pooled $3,900 in donations to buy the doctor a brand-new Mercury sedan. Howard County even changed the name of a road off Main Street to Brumbaugh Street in his honor.
Dr. Brumbaugh served three generations of Elkridge residents and continued working until he was ninety years old. By one resident’s estimation, he brought “thousands” of Elkridge babies into the world. Dr. Brumbaugh never kept count but reportedly delivered ten children for one family alone. There are many area residents who still proudly call themselves “Brumbaugh Babies.”
The year after Dr. Brumbaugh’s death in 1985, the Elkridge Heritage Society and local Rotary Club bought the home to preserve the doctor’s office and waiting room. A group of volunteer residents helped turn the second floor into an apartment to help pay the mortgage on the new local history museum. Fortunately, their efforts have preserved Doctor B’s story for residents and visitors to continue to appreciate today.
Artist Jim Sanborn’s first public sculpture, the Patapsco River Project was created as part of the Baltimore Sculpture Symposium sponsored by the city and administered by the Department of Housing and Community Development during the summer of 1977. Four artists were commissioned to each create gateway pieces for the city. The only other surviving gateway piece from the symposium is the Atlantic Blue Roller Column by Dominick Cea on Russell Street.
This early work reveals Sanborn's long-standing interest in Mayan culture, the temples of Guatemala in particular. Abstract and horizontal, the work stands at the far edge of an open field directly fronting the Patapsco River, extending almost 80 feet along the water’s edge. Ten pyramidal shapes are aligned symmetrically, five on either side of an opening that contains a pool and allows a view of the river. In the pool, there is a grate made of aluminum. Light streams through the open space and is reflected on the grate and in the pool. Resting on top of the flattened pyramids made of concrete is one continuous lintel of weathering steel. The lintel carries four more pyramidal shapes, again symmetrically placed, two on each side of the central opening, and again flattened.
The Department of Housing and Community Development assisted the artists at every turn, providing honoraria, materials, equipment, and assistants. For Patapsco River Project, Curtis Steel contributed between 12,000 and 15,000 pounds of Mayari-R steel, the city contributed and poured the concrete, and Edward Renneburg & Sons sheared the steel for free. Sanborn estimates that it might have cost him $100,000 to assemble the piece independently. Since 1977, Sanborn's sculpture has been displayed at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. His best known commission is an enigmatic cryptographic sculpture, entitled Kryptos, that was unveiled at the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia on November 3, 1990.
In 1977, the concrete was bright white, the steel was a beautiful velvety brown, and the grass was green and lush. Unfortunately, very little maintenance has taken place since the work was first installed and few people are aware of the work or Sanborn's national reputation. Despite the neglect, the silhouette of the piece was and still is impressive today.
Martick’s Restaurant Francais on Mulberry Street is a place of fond memories where Baltimore enjoyed fine food, lively music, and art for nearly a century.
The once-famous restaurant started in 1917 as a small grocery store established by Harry and Florence Martick, both Jewish Polish immigrants. The Federal style corner building is even older—dating back to at least 1852—and the Martick family continued to live above the shop raising a family of five children. Following the end of Prohibition, the store (which may have already been operating as an illegal speakeasy) turned into a bar later known as Martick’s Tyson Street Tavern. After Harry’s death in the the 1940s, Florence’s five children pitched in to keep the business going. Morris Martick turned the family bar into a unique institution reportedly attracting what journalist Alan Feiler called “a mix of artists, musicians, journalists, working Joes and assorted self-styled bohemians, beats and hipsters” in the 1940s.
But, by the 1960s, Morris Martrick was ready for a change. After a failed run for state legislature, Morris traveled to France where he studied French cooking and attracted a chef. Returning to Baltimore, he renovated and re-opened the bar as Martick’s Restaurant Francais in 1970. The restaurant’s reputation grew eventually attracting celebrity guests that include Baltimore-born filmmaker John Waters, actor Nicolas Cage and actress Barbara Hershey. The restaurant closed in 2008 and Morris Martrick passed away in 2011 at eighty-eight years old.
For over sixty years, tall broadcasting towers have stood high above the old homes in Baltimore’s Woodberry neighborhood. The two tallest towers now standing onTelevision Hill beam out the signals of four television stations and three radio stations across the city and surrounding area. A third smaller tower relays municipal police, fire and rescue personnel communications.
Of course, this area wasn’t always called TV Hill. It may be hard to believe but there wasn’t always television. Before test patterns and Saturday morning cartoons, the area was known as Malden Hill. In the summer of 1948, only twenty thousand or so Baltimore families (and only one in ten households in the United States) owned televisions. The first two stations in the city— WMAR-TV and WBAL-TV—offered fuzzy reception at best for most local viewers.
By the end of 1948, however, WAAM–TV (Channel 13),owned by Baltimore businessmen and Brothers Ben and Herman Cohen, had started construction on a new station and new transmission tower. The station picked Malden Hill, 334 feet above the surrounding landscape, to give their signal a better chance of reaching Baltimore televisions. With this advantage, the station's new 530-foot tower stood 864 feet above sea level andWAAM–TV had the first television studio in Baltimore designed specifically for this still new technology. On November 1, 1948, the station went on the air and the next day stayed on the air for twenty-three hours straight covering incumbent Democrat Harry S. Truman surprise win over Republican Thomas E. Dewey in the 1948 presidential election.
Flash forward nine years and WAAM-TV had changed both call letters and ownership. In May 1957, the station sold to Westinghouse Broadcasting Company and was renamed WJZ-TV. The competing WBAL-TV’s studios and broadcast tower had already relocated to Malden Hill several years earlier. Still, despite being home to two of Baltimore’s three television stations, only a few folks called it TV Hill until 1958 when a new tower began to rise.
TV reception could be a bit tricky in those pre-cable and satellite days of rooftop antennas or set top “rabbit ears.” WJZ and WBAL chose the elevated ground in Woodberry for their transmitter towers as a partial solution, but broadcast engineers knew that even higher towers could improve both reception and station coverage. Though air traffic concerns imposed an upper limti on how high a station could build, both stations had room to grow.
But neither WJZ nor WBAL could afford the expense of a new tower on their own, especially when the stations sought to go as high as the law allowed. The solution was a partnership between the neighboring stations to build one gigantic tower topped with two separate transmitter masts. When Baltimore’s oldest TV station, WMAR, heard of this plan, station managers decided they wanted in. WMAR worried that if viewers could get two stations by pointing their antennas in one direction they wouldn’t bother making adjustments to tune in to WMAR—especially if their broadcast looked worse than the competition coming from the new tower.
Baltimore’s three TV stations struck a unique deal to share one gigantic tower, a tower topped with three separate transmitter masts, a first at the time. The stations would all have improved coverage and picture quality at a cost they couldn’t have borne alone. Baltimore area television viewers could take a “set it and forget it” approach to their antennas.
Construction began in October of 1958 and continued through the spring. In 1997, Fred Rasmussen recalled on the history of the tower for the Baltimore Sun describing the 500 tons of nickel-chrome alloy steel used to build a structure covered with 2 1/2 tons of paint. The tower was stabilized by guy-wires made from three miles of steel wire rope anchored by 33-foot square concrete slabs buried 16 feet deep. Together the tower base and cable anchors required a remarkable 2,250 tons of concrete. Finally, in a ceremony on August 9, 1959, Governor J. Millard Tawes joined station managers to throw the switch and turn on the broadcast.
At the time of its completion, the giant $1.125 million “candelabra tower” on what was then known to everyeone as TV Hill, was the tallest free-standing broadcast tower in the United States. A 270-foot addition in 1964 brought the top to 1315 feet above sea level. Today, however, the tower isn’t even the tallest in the neighborhood. A second tower completed on a nearby hill in 1987 by Cunningham Communications holds that honor, at 1,549 feet above sea level.
The newer tower is a single mast structure, and though both hills and the three towers they support are now collectively known as TV Hill, there’s still only one candelabra tower.
The little-known history of Baltimore's Interstate 395 (I-395) and Martin Luther King Boulevard, Jr. Boulevard offers a reminder of the years of contentious planning efforts that ended with the construction of these roadways in the early 1980s. I-395, known as Cal Ripken Way since 2008, is a little over one mile long and connects the northbound lanes of I-95 to Howard and Camden Streets near the southern end of downtown Baltimore. Originally known as Harbor City Boulevard, Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard was before it was renamed in honor of the famed civil rights activist in 1982.
The Sun reported on the opening of both new highways in early December of that same year:
An early Christmas presents awaits motorists commuting to downtown Baltimore from the south. Today, three major segments of new highway open near Interstate 95, alleviating years of traffic congestion in the always busy and now-revitalized areas of South and Southwest Baltimore.
Commuters used to the morning backup at the Russell street off-ramp from I-95 can opt for I-395, an $82 million northbound spur that will take them straight to Howard Street just west of the Convention Center. Those wishing to go farther north can select te 2.3-mile stretch on the Harbor City Boulevard, a direct route to the University of Maryland professional schools, the State Office Building complex near Bolton Hill, the new Meyerhoff Symphony Hall and the Lyric. The new boulevard cost $67 million.
While debates over a building a "bypass" road encircling the city's commercial downtown dated back to the 1950s or earlier, the most influential plan for Baltimore's highway system, known as 3-A, was created in 1969 by the Design Concept Team.
The city established the team three years earlier in an effort to restart stalled highway building efforts. Anti-highway activists continued to fight the proposal through the 1980s leading the city to convert the proposed boulevard from a sunken highway to the at-grade route used today. In March 1980, the Sun reported on the experience of Emily Makauskas and her neighbors on the "stately 800 block Hollins Street" who fought to change the plans and "saved their block." The city planned to line the boulevard with "small parks, bicycle paths, brick sidewalks and trees" but an article in April noted that the improvements "may not placate some area homesteaders who are concerned about the road's affect on their neighborhoods."
In June 1982, as the road built by James Julian, Inc. neared completion, reporter Charles V. Flowers celebrated the new views of public and private housing developments visible from Harbor City Boulevard. Flowers explained that the area "once contained what were slums as depressing as any in Baltimore" but now "a walk along the boulevard should convince Baltimoreans that the city is upgrading itself in sections other than the Inner Harbor." William K. Hellman, the city's transportation coordinator, shared his satisfaction with the highway in November, remarking:
The boulevard is a collector and distributor road, and will do two things. It will move people in and out of downtown more efficiently and it will get traffic that need not be in the downtown area to go around it... it will be a perfect route for people going to the baseball games at Memorial Stadium. They won't have to go up Charles street until they're north of downtown.
The original name of Harbor City Boulevard was a submission to a contest sponsored by then Mayor William Donald Schaefer. Schaefer initially opposed efforts to rename the road after Martin Luther King, Jr. citing the cost of producing new signs. The renaming campaign ultimately won out thanks to the advocacy of state delegate Isaiah "Ike" Dixon, Jr. Dixon had first introduced similar legislation to rename the Jones Falls Expressway after King a full eleven years earlier. This successful effort was supported by city council member and civil rights activist Victorine Q. Adams who introduced the name change before the City Council. Over thirty years later, few drivers likely recall the divisions over the name and the highways are considered a fixture of the busy urban lanscape.