Former "Load of Fun" Building on North Avenue

Built in 1914 for Eastwick Motors, Baltimore’s first Ford dealership, 120 West North Avenue has been home to a surprising array of owners and occupants. After its days with Eastwick (a proud supporter of Amoco gasoline and its American Oil Company Baltimore roots), the building changed hands several times. Subsequent dealers sold cars from mostly forgotten manufacturers including Graham Page, Desoto, and Plymouth. By the mid 1930s, Kernan Motors owned the building and sold Nash, Willys, and Jeep vehicles.

As North Avenue transitioned from a corridor for car dealerships, the building became vacant several times before finally becoming home to the Lombard Office Furniture company in the late 1970s. The business sold well-used metal office furniture.

In 2005, the building became an arts center that included the Single Carrot theatre, a gallery, and studios. The name of the space came about by creatively deleting letters from the existing signage. So, “Lombard Office Furniture” became “Load of Fun” Gallery.

Unfortunately, 120 West North Avenue required major renovations to meet the necessary building codes. BARCO, an arts-based development group, acquired the building in 2013 and began making the necessary changes in order to reopen as a hub for the arts. In 2014, the Baltimore Sun quoted project director Amy Bonitz on the unique historic elements of the building:

"The beauty is nobody has messed up the interior. Some of the wonderful features we've uncovered include the original [auto] showroom with a mezzanine where the managers could oversee the work happening throughout the first floor, including the rooms where the sales agreements were finalized.The front facade also contains beautiful leaded-glass windows with large, pivot windows that will be fully restored. The third floor is also a wide-open space with large skylights where mechanics used to work on cars. We will be saving and preserving the old freight elevator that brought the cars up to the upper floors for servicing as well."

The Motor House held a grand reopening in January 2016 with space for performances, artists, a cafe, and gallery.

120 W. North Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21218

Former Factory and Former Art Space

For years, the Bell Foundry operated as a cooperatively run arts space that took its name and its building from the historic McShane Bell Foundry. But, since December 2016, the building has stood vacant. After the "Ghost Ship" warehouse fire in Oakland, California, the city cracked down on code violations in local DIY art spaces and evicted the tenants at the Bell Foundry.

Henry McShane started the McShane Bell Foundry at Holliday and Centre Streets in 1856. By the late nineteenth century, when the business expanded to Guilford Avenue (then known as North Street) the firm had already produced tens of thousands of bells and chimes, shipping them out to churches and public buildings across the country.

In 1935, the Henry McShane Manufacturing Company sold the foundry to William Parker, whose son continues to operate the business today. The McShane Bell Foundry moved in 1979 to Glen Burnie, Maryland, where their total production is over 300,000 bells made for cathedrals, churches, municipal buildings, and schools in communities around the world—including the 7,000-pound bell that hangs in the dome of Baltimore's City Hall. The firm is the only large Western-style bell maker in the United States and one of a handful of bell manufacturers around the world.

The entrance to the former foundry is now on Calvert Street. For years, the Bell Foundry was a thriving art space including the building and the adjacent grounds, where there is a community garden and a communal skate park. The basement was used for shows and rehearsal space. The Castle Print Shop was located upstairs along with rehearsal space for the Baltimore Rock Opera Society. Outcry over the evictions in December 2016 prompted the creation of the Safe Art Space Task Force to address the broader issue of safety in underground art spaces. Unfortunately, no immediate repairs were available for the Bell Foundry and, in April 2017, the building's owners put it up for sale.

1539 N. Calvert Street, Baltimore, MD 21202

For over twenty years, the Copycat - named for the roof top billboard of the Copycat printing company - has offered studio space and living space for countless artists, musicians, and performers. The history of creativity in this local landmark has a long history extending back to the construction of the Copycat Building in the 1890s as a factory complex for Baltimore's Crown Cork & Seal Company.

Maryland native William Painter invented the "crown cork" bottle cap - a predecessor of the bottle cap still common today - at Murrill & Keizer's machine shop on Holliday Street in 1891. A prolific inventor with over 85 patents, Painter established the Crown Cork & Seal Company in 1892 and started producing both bottle caps and bottling machines. The business quickly outgrew their factory on East Monument Street and moved north to Guilford Avenue in September 1897 into a grand six-floor factory with handsome Victorian details.

As with all industrial enterprises in Baltimore, their growth was driven by the labor of thousands of men, women and children who worked at the factory and frequently organized to seek improved conditions and wages. In 1899, for example, 65 boys between the ages of 13 and 18 employed feeding the machines that placed the cork seals into the caps went on strike. Company officials remained unconcerned, remarking that the "places of any who may not come back will be easily filled by other boys." The firm continued to expand, adding a machine shop (now known as the Lebow Building) next door on Oliver Street in 1914, and building new factory buildings in Highlandtown where they moved in the 1930s.

The building on Guilford Avenue remained in use by a wide range of tenants from the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s through a whole host of over twenty industrial enterprises occupying the building in the 1960s. In 1983, Charles Lankford purchased the building and converted the industrial space to art studios. Soon artists began illegally converting their studio spaces into apartments and by the mid-1980s, the Copycat began to host a vital community of local artists and musicians. The building remains an anchor in the Station North Arts and Entertainment District - rezoned as "mixed-used" to accommodate the diverse tenants - and offers a unique perspective on the history of industry in central Baltimore.

1501 Guilford Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21202

A survivor that has endured decades of abandonment, the 1914 Lebow Building is an impressive example of early twentieth century industrial architecture that is just starting a new future as the Baltimore Design School. While it takes its popular name from the Lebow Brothers Clothing factory that occupied the building from the 1950s through 1985, the Lebow Building actually shares a common history with the Copycat Building next door and the artist-owned Cork Factory – all three were built by Baltimore's Crown Cork & Seal Company.

Founded by prolific inventor William Painter in 1892, the Crown Cork & Seal Company centralized their operations on the 1500 block of Guilford Avenue in a new Romensque six-story warehouse in May 1897. William Painter died in 1906 but the business continued to grow and the Lebow Building was built in 1914 to serve as a machine shop. The design by architect Otto G. Simonson featured vast expanses of glass – windows made up nearly 75% of the exterior facade – and a unique ventilation system. Simonson had arrived in Baltimore in 1904 to work as the superintendent for the construction of the U.S. Custom House located at South Gay and East Lombard Streets. Born in Dresden, Germany, Simonson immigrated to Hartford, Connecticut at age 21 and worked for many years in the office of supervising architect of U.S. Treasury Department in the early 1880s, eventually becoming the superintendent of construction of public buildings.

The builder, Herbert West, had supervised the construction of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York before moving his architectural career to Baltimore in the aftermath of the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 to focus on developing fireproof buildings. West became a leader in the local architectural community and helped to develop city building codes as president of the Building Congress and Exchange of Baltimore.

By the 1920s, the Crown Cork & Seal Company provided a full half of the world's supply of bottle caps. Between two and three hundred people worked at the machine shop and employees benefited from amenities including an outdoor rooftop recreation area for ladies and a separate area for men in the building's courtyard. In 1930, however, the company began to consolidate operations at their 35-acre factory complex in Highlandtown.

In 1950, the machine shop was leased to Lebow Brothers Clothing Company – a preeminent manufacturer of men's clothing at the time and especially well-known for their coats and suits. In 1982, private developer Abraham Zion purchased both the company and the building. However, Lebow Clothing ceased manufacturing and the building was shuttered in 1985.

In 2013, the abandoned building was transformed into the Baltimore Design School. The school focuses on creating a collaborative and progressive educational environment. The former loading dock is now an outdoor performance space for fashion shows. Salvaged equipment from the clothing factory is exhibited in the former freight elevator to honor the building’s previous life. The project met the Secretary of Interior Standards for historic preservation and received state and federal tax credits and is a LEED Silver certified green building.

1500 Barclay Street, Baltimore, MD 21202

The Walbert building stands out in the Station North skyline with a bright coat of paint and rich Beaux Arts details.

The story of this landmark begins in 1907, when Charles J. Bonaparte—a great-nephew to Emperor Napoleon I of France, a prominent local lawyer and, at the time, attorney general under President Theodore Roosevelt—first announced plans for the building.

Acting as the trustee for the Walter R. Abell estate, which owned the property, Bonaparte commissioned the construction of an eight-story fireproof apartment house at the northwest corner of Charles Street and Lafayette Avenue. Working from a design by Baltimore architects Wyatt & Nolting, builder James Stewart & Co. soon completed the building at a cost of $190,000, with a fire-proof steel frame, pressed brick, and ornamental terra cotta details. The first floor featured several offices, designed for physicians or dentists, along with a large dining room. The largest and most luxurious apartments in the new building rented for as much as $900 or $1,000 per year (equivalent to over $23,000 today).

Baltimore native James B.N. Wyatt and William G. Nolting organized their partnership of Wyatt & Nolting in 1887. Wyatt was a close neighbor to The Walbert since 1876, when he designed and built a home for himself and his mother at Maryland and North Avenue across from the contemporary MICA Graduate Studio building. Charles Bonaparte also commissioned the firm to design his own home–Bella Vista–built in 1896 in Baltimore County. Wyatt & Nolting went on from the Walbert to design the Algonquin Apartments at St. Paul and Chase in 1914, along with scores of other projects across the city.

The Walbert was later converted into an office building and remained in the ownership of Crane and Crane for years while falling into some disrepair. Fortunately, the building underwent a substantial renovation in the mid-1980s through a partnership led by Howard Brown of David S. Brown Enterprises and it remains in good condition today.

1800 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

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