/items/browse?output=atom&tags=Commercial%20buildings <![CDATA[Explore 91ÊÓƵ]]> 2025-03-12T11:43:46-04:00 Omeka /items/show/123 <![CDATA[Charles Fish and Sons]]> 2018-11-27T10:33:50-05:00

Dublin Core

Title

Charles Fish and Sons

Subject

Medicine

Creator

Shae Adams
Theresa Donnelly

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Story

With a gleaming black marble façade reading "Charles Fish and Sons Company" and Victorian brick arches above, the architecture of this building clearly points to a varied history. The surprising story of the building begins before the start of the American Civil War with the foundation of the nation's first dental school by local doctors Horace Hayden and Chapin Harris. The School of Medicine at the University of Maryland in Baltimore had rejected their efforts to start a dental school within their institution, perhaps agreeing with the many who saw early dentists as "Ignorant, incapable men whose knowledge was composed of a few secrets which they had purchased at fabulous prices from other charlatans." In 1840, Hayden and Harris turned to the Maryland State Legislature to obtain a charter for an independent dental college—the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery.

Popular from the start, over the next forty years the college outgrew four locations finally moving to the corner of Eutaw and Franklin Streets in 1881. The new building stood as a testament to the growth of the science of dentistry and the professionalization of dentists. The Baltimore College of Dentistry occupied this building until 1915, when it became part of the University of Maryland and moved operations to the main campus a few blocks south.

In 1942, Charles Fish and his family moved their furniture and clothing business to 429 Eutaw Street and etched his name on the lustrous art deco storefront. A Jewish Russian immigrant, Fish arrived in the United States as a teenager in 1909 and lived in Virginia for years before moving to Baltimore. As early as 1945, Fish and Sons were noted for their nondiscriminatory policies, which earned them a spot on the Afro-American Newspaper's list of "orchids"–-businesses that welcomed all shoppers, regardless of color. Unlike many of their neighbors, who held fast to "final sale" and "no returns" policies for African Americans in pre-civil rights Baltimore (and thus were listed as "onions" on the Afro-American's pages), Fish and Sons proudly served and hired all Americans, regardless of color. Fish and Sons continued to operate their business at the corner until 1980.

Street Address

429 N. Eutaw Street, Baltimore, MD 21201
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/items/show/83 <![CDATA[Five and Dimes on Lexington Street]]> 2018-11-27T10:33:49-05:00

Dublin Core

Title

Five and Dimes on Lexington Street

Subject

Commerce

Creator

Theresa Donnelly

Curatescape Story Item Type Metadata

Subtitle

McCrory's, Kirby-Woolworth, and Schulte United

Story

In contrast to the high-end shopping at Stewart's or Hochschild-Kohn's on Howard Street, West Lexington Street offered goods of all kinds at affordable prices thanks to a row of five-and-tens from Read's Drug Store down to Kresge's on the other side of Park Avenue.

McCrory's at 227-229 West Lexington stands out with a colorful early twentieth century tile facade built over a structure that likely dates back to late nineteenth century. John Graham McCrorey started the chain in Scottsdale, Pennsylvania in 1882 and soon expanded with locations across the country. Noting McCrorey's reputation as a smart and thrifty businessman, in 1887 The New York Times reported that he had legally changed his name, dropping the e, because he did not want to pay the cost of the extra gilt letter on his many store signs. McCrory's on Lexington Street opened in the late 1920s and was one of over 1,300 McCrory's outlets operating around the country by the 1950s.

The more modest Kirby-Woolworth Building east of McCrory's began as two buildings put up by two close competitiors - Frederick M. Kirby and the H.G. Woolworth & Co. In retrospect, the reunion of the two buildings feels inevitable as Kirby and Woolworth pioneered the five-and-ten cent store business together in the 1870s and early 1880s, opening a store together in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania in 1884 before parting ways in 1887. The two buildings came up side by side on Lexington Street in 1907 and likely combined into a single structure after the merger of H.G. Woolworth & Company and F. M. Kirby & Company in 1912.

Schulte United Five and Dime offers a unique façade with shining gold eagles and incised lettering along the top of the building. The building began as the Eisenberg Underselling Store, later known as the Eisenberg Company, with the determined motto that they offered "prices that are irreproachable everywhere." By 1928, 600 employees worked for the Eisenberg Company at several locations throughout the city. Within a few years, however, Schulte United – established by David A. Schulte, a "tobacco store potentate," who decided to enter the five-and-dime business in 1928 with the ambitious goal of investing $35,000,000 in 1,000 stores around the country – purchased the store on Lexington Street.

Street Address

200 W. Lexington Street, Baltimore, MD 21201
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