Robert Poole's Gift to Hampden Readers

Enoch Pratt Free Library Branch No. 7 opened its doors on July 2, 1900, 17 years after industrialist Robert Poole and fellow businessmen established Woodberry’s first community library. In 1899, Poole donated the land, the books from the old library, and $25,000 towards erecting the new branch of Enoch Pratt Free Library on Falls Road.

The doors at Branch No. 7 of the Enoch Pratt Free Library opened to patrons on July 2, 1900, seventeen years after industrialist Robert Poole and fellow businessmen established Woodberry’s first community library. In 1899, Poole donated land across the street from his Maple Hill estate, the books from the old library, and $25,000 towards the construction of the new building on Falls Road.

The library’s architect Joseph Evans Sperry designed a number of significant buildings along with partner John Wyatt. The firm’s work including the Bromo Seltzer Tower and the Mercantile Trust and Deposit Building. The neoclassical design of the library was a departure from the Romanesque style of the original six library branches, designed by Sperry's former boss, architect Charles Carson. Poole's foundry located down the hill in Woodberry provided the ionic columns for the library. More famously, in the 1850s, the foundry cast the columns of the peristyle of the U.S. Capitol Building dome.

In order to increase circulation in the busy mill town, the library advertised the new branch with slips placed in workers' pay envelopes. The library also carried reference books on textile manufacturing as requested by residents. When the mills were at their busiest, the library had to find new ways to attract visitors. The library also faced competition from new sources of entertainment to Hampden such as a bowling alley, pool room, and movie theater. Up until 1915, the library shared the building with Provident Savings Bank. When the bank moved to 36th Street, the library tore down the wall that had separated the the reading room from the bank to create a new auditorium for lectures.

One of the more elaborate ways the library attracted visitors was the 1917 Garden Exhibit and Harvest Exhibition. During the Garden Exhibit in the spring, librarians handed out packets of seeds to patrons and nurtured a garden of their own behind the library. In an annual report, the branch manager noted that the staff found gardening surprisingly interesting. They were taken in by the excitement of coming to work and seeing plants that had grown as much as an inch taller overnight. The Harvest Exhibition took place in the fall, offering residents a miniature county fair with lectures on canning and gardening and contests for the best crops.

In 1936, Works Progress Administration (WPA) funds were used to double the size of the Hampden Library. Today, the library remains both an architectural landmark and community resource for area residents.

3641 Falls Road, Baltimore, MD 21211

The highly ornamented Mercantile Trust Building was constructed in 1885 by architectural firm Wyatt and Sperry. The architecture conveys a sense of impenetrability, characterized by its massive, heavy stonework and deep set windows and entrance. Ads at the time boasted that the building strong enough "to resist the invasion of armed force." The hardened building survived the 1904 Baltimore Fire, but sustained damage when bricks from the Continental Trust Building fell through the skylight, setting fire to the interior. Despite this, the building's survival reaffirmed what the bank had been saying all along in its ads. The Mercantile Trust was Baltimore's first "department store bank," a concept spearheaded by Enoch Pratt. In years before, customers had to go to different banks to get loans, access savings, or open a checking account. Mercantile Trust ended this by introducing Baltimore to one-stop banking. The bank was also involved in raising capital to rebuild many cities in the South during Reconstruction. Later, the bank acted as co-executor for the estate of Henry Walters and as a trustee for the endowment that established the Walters Art Collection. Mercantile Trust occupied the building for almost 100 years. The company left in 1983 and the building has been a nightclub, and more recently, the new location of the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company.

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200 E. Redwood Street, Baltimore, MD 21202

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.

1305 Eutaw Place, Baltimore, MD 21217

There are few places where you can stand in the middle of a room and almost everything you see is made or decorated by Tiffany: glass, paint, finishes, etc. St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church on St. Paul Street, with its entire interior designed by the Tiffany Company of New York, is one of them.

In the 1890's, the St. Mark's congregation engaged architect Joseph Evans Sperry (who would later go on to design Baltimore's Bromo Seltzer Tower, among other notable buildings) to help them build a new church. Sperry came up with a Romanesque design that is known for its heavy stones, arched doors and windows, and short columns. Romanesque design comes from central and western Europe, where many of St. Mark's congregants also traced their lineages. To this day, an Estonian congregation called EELK Baltimore Markuse Kogudus continues to use St. Mark's for worship each month. In 1898, the church was completed and since then has been one of Baltimore's outstanding examples of Romanesque architecture.

On the inside, St. Mark's engaged the Tiffany Glass Decorating Company, under the direction of Rene de Quelen (Tiffany's head artist), to come up with a plan that was equally fitting to the grand architecture. De Quelen used a Byzantine approach, with deep colors, lots of jewels, and many mosaics. Louis Comfort Tiffany, son of Tiffany's founder and then head of the company, had studied art in Paris and had spent time in Spain and North Africa where he learned about this approach to decorating, and is thought to have helped direct de Quelen in his approach. The interior boasts Tiffany windows and Rubio marble inlaid with mother of pearl for the altar, pulpit, and lectern.

1900 Saint Paul Street, Baltimore, MD 21218