Since 1951, the Edmondson Village Branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library at the corner of Edmondson Avenue and Woodridge Road has served as a treasured community institution for nearby residents and readers. The building's Colonial Revival architecture reflects the design of the adjacent Edmondson Village Shopping Center whose developers, Jacob and Joseph Meyerhoff, originally donated the space for the library.
The first proposal to build a library in the area came a different developer, James E. Keelty, who erected thousands of the rowhouses in the area between the 1920s and the 1940s. In 1927, James Keelty offered to donate the lot at the northwest corner of Edmondson Avenue and Edgewood Street to build a new branch library. He even planned to "erect a library building on the lot and give the city its own time in which to pay for the structure." His generosity won support from the area's City Council member, Thomas M.L. Musgrave, who remarked:
People living in the Ten Hills, Rognel Heights and Hunting Ridge sections have been trying to get a branch of the Pratt Library for some time, and it now looks like all they need is the cooperation of the city and the library trustees to supply it immediately.
But the gift came with one big condition. Keelty also wanted the city's permission to put up a new building at the southwest corner for "moving pictures, stores and bowling alleys" at a time when residents in Baltimore's segregated white residential neighborhoods fiercely opposed most commercial development. Likely responding to this opposition, Mayor Broening vetoed the proposal in July 1928 and the library was never built.
Fortunately, local residents, led by members of the Edmondson suburban group of the Women’s Civic League, stepped up to the challenge of creating a library for their community. In 1943, local residents from Ten Hills and Edmondson Village came together to start a lending library they called the Neighborhood Library Group. The effort grew quickly and the organizers asked the developers of Edmondson Village Shopping Center to donate a space for the community. The Enoch Pratt Free Library took charge of the small “library station” and, with strong support from neighborhood residents, opened a small Colonial Revival branch library in 1951. Renovated between 2008 and 2010, the library remains a beloved and vital destination for readers and other library users today.
“This is a new and finely located ‘place for the dead,’” The Iris reported in 1846. Early plans included a chapel and a residence for a cemetery superintendent. Lots were priced at the “extremely moderate” cost of $5 for an 8’ by 10’ area.
Just three years later, in December 1849, the Maryland Assembly passed "An Act to Establish the Western Cemetery" allowing the Trustees of the Fayette Street Methodist Episcopal Church to open a "public" or nondenominational 55-acre cemetery west of the city in Baltimore County. Like Green Mount Cemetery, Western tried to create a park-like open space for visitors to stroll as well as greive.
Early burials at the cemetery included both city and county residents from a range of backgrounds. In 1858, the Sun reported on the burial of William Fairbank, a Baltimore County resident who worked as a conductor on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad between 1830 and 1850 and as the keeper of the bridge on the Baltimore and Washington Turnpike. In the fall of 1861, a number of Union soldiers stationed in Baltimore, likely including soldiers recovering from injuries taken at the Battle of Bull Run (or First Manassas) in July 1861, died from typhoid fever and were interred at the Western Cemetery.
In 1915, Baltimore City acquired a portion of the cemetery property for the construction of Ellicott Driveway. This required the closure of the “the railroad crossing at the Cemetery lane entrance to Western Cemetery” and an agreement between Baltimore City, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and the officers of the cemetery company.
The cemetery continued to serve as a popular place of internment for military veterans and police officers during the 20th century. In July 1926, the Sun reported on a huge crowd of “several thousand persons” who attended the burial of Patrolman Webster E. Schumann, noting, “A full firing squad of eight men from Camp Meade fired three volleys into the air and a bugler sounded ‘taps’ as the services for the war veteran ended.”
After World War II, the cemetery, along with nearby Leakin Park, took center stage in West Baltimore’s highway fights. Relatives of the interred joined forces with environmental activists and local residents in opposing the extension of a proposed highway through Leakin Park and into the city. Fortunately, Mayor Thomas D'Alesandro responded to this effort and, in 1969, encouraged state highway designers to consider a new route for the Rosemont section of the East-West Expressway to bypass Western Cemetery.
Established in 1922, Olivet Baptist Church has occupied the historic Edgewood Theatre since the late 1960s. Built in 1930, the Edgewood Theatre was designed by one of the city’s most prominent theatre architects—John J. Zink.
Born in Baltimore in 1886, Zink graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1904 and started work with architect William H. Hodges and the local architecture firm Wyatt & Nolting. He began working on theatres when he joined architect Thomas W. Lamb in designing the famous Hippodrome Theatre on Eutaw Street and the Maryland Theatre in Hagerstown, Maryland. Over the next few decades, Zink and his partners designed over 200 movie theatres in cities up and down the east coast including over thirty in the Baltimore-DC area including the Senator Theatre on York Road and the Town Theatre (now known as the Everyman).
In the Edgewood Theatre's heyday, the marquee featured a tall electric sign (a near twin of the Patterson designed by Zink on Eastern Avenue). Like many smaller neighborhood theatres, the business began to struggle in the 1950s and, after a brief second life as an art house theatre in 1962, ended its life as a movie house. That same year, Bishop Wilburn S. Watson joined the Olivet Baptist Church then located in a modest building on Riggs Avenue. In the late 1960s, Bishop Watson led the effort to purchase the former theatre on Edmondson Avenue and convert the building into a new sanctuary for the congregation.