Once a bustling department store complex on North Gay Street, the Great House of Isaac Benesch and Sons has been vacant for over a decade as the Old Town Mall waits on the progress of long stalled revitalization efforts. Isaac Benesch started his business shortly after the Civil War with a furniture store operating out of a single rowhouse. In the 1880s, as dry goods dealers like Hutzler's built their “grand emporiums” on the west side, Benesch acquired nearby rowhouses and began to rebuild them into a department store.

By 1911, his business included three large 4-story buildings, dominating the 500 block of N. Gay Street. The store at 549-557 Old Town Mall, an Italianate brick building with large windows, still features an elegant copper sign band across the facade, proclaiming the “Great House,” perhaps added by Philadelphia architect Louis Levi in 1914. Next door at 565-571 North Gay Street is a four story, two bay Renaissance Revival building, of brick with terra cotta ornamentation designed by architect Charles E. Cassell and built in 1904 by William H. Porter. Cassell had a long list of major projects in Baltimore, including the grand Stewart’s Department Store at Howard and Lexington Streets, built in 1900. Benesch’s likely hoped Cassell could bring the same architectural magnificence to his work on the east side. More buildings went up in the 1920s with a warehouse at 600 Aisquith Street by the J.L. Robinson Construction Company, virtually unchanged from its 1925 construction.

Unlike those westside department stores, however, Isaac Benesch established an early reputation for serving all customers—black and white. One 1898 account from the Afro-American newspaper stated, “Isaac Benesch & Sons very much appreciate the large volume of colored trade which they have, coming from all parts of the city.” In 1926, when few department stores hired African Americans as salesmen, Benesch hired Josh Mitchell to sell automobile tires—and featured him in advertisements. In the 1940s, the Afro-American gave Benesch an “orchid” for “serving all alike.”

In the 1970s, several of the original buildings were demolished as the block was redeveloped for the pedestrian-only “Old Town Mall.” The Great House had closed a few years earlier, in the early 1960s, and was run as Kaufman’s Department Store until 1997.

549-557 Old Town Mall, Baltimore, MD 21202

When Samuel Posner moved his successful dry goods business to the corner of Lexington and Howard, architect Charles E. Cassell's gorgeous and ornate white Renaissance Revival building—complete with roaring lions and majestic wreaths and fluted columns—made a grand addition to the growing row of department store "palaces" on Howard Street in 1899.

The building played a prominent role in Baltimore's turn-of-the-century transition from smaller, specialized retailers to large, purpose-built department stores. Like many department stores across the country, Stewart's strove to provide a wide range of high quality goods to America's rising middle class and lured customers with its open layout, enticing displays, large plate glass windows, and by being, among other things, the first Howard Street store to install air conditioning in 1931.

Though the Stewart's name, etched in block letters at the building's crest, is still visible today, the store's ownership history is a bit less permanent. Within little over a year of the store's opening, The Baltimore Sun reported that Samuel Posner had sold the business to Louis Stewart and the Associated Merchants' Company (AMC), most likely as a result of financial difficulties resulting from high construction costs. Louis Stewart's turn at the helm of store was brief, too: in 1916 Stewart's was absorbed into a new firm, the Associated Dry Goods corporation (ADG), which consolidated several major U.S. retailing chains, including Lord & Taylor and J. McCreery's.

Many Baltimoreans have fond memories of shopping at Stewarts and recall making day-long excursions to the store. Stewart's, according to local columnist, Jacques Kelly, had "...an excellent men's furnishing department – ties and sweaters" and a wonderful selection of "... china and silver" and "yard good (dressmaking materials)." A high-class store with an elegant interior, Stewart's boasted two restaurants—the Georgian Tea Room and Cook Works—both popular with shoppers, as were the delicious vanilla marshmallow treats sold at the store's candy counter.

Stewart's opened their first suburban outlet on York Road in Towson in 1953 and several other suburban stores shortly thereafter. When the flagship store at Howard and Lexington closed in 1979, Stewart's held a week-long closing sale that brought in thousands of bargain-hungry shoppers. Stewart's was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999 and in 2007 Catholic Relief Services opened their offices in the first floor of the building.

226-232 W. Lexington Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

"Huge and, alas! we must say ungainly," is how the Baltimore Sun described The Severn in 1907. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1972, few locals would still dismiss the grand Severn Apartment House as an intrusion on Mt. Vernon Place, but in the 1890s the construction of the building created a real controversy among Mount Vernon's wealthy residents.

Baltimore builder Joseph M. Cone and architect Charles E. Cassell unveiled plans for a new ten-story apartment house in September 1895 at the northeast corner of Mt. Vernon Place and Cathedral Street. The new building would rise to a height of 122 feet, just 7 feet shy of the 1894 Hotel Stafford, a Richardsonian Romanesque landmark around the corner facing the north garden of Washington Place. Known as "The Severn," the proposed apartment house included twenty apartment suites for families and nine bachelor apartments, along with a drug store and a kitchen for room service.

The corner had been occupied by a beautiful townhouse first built as the home of Chancellor John Johnson, Jr., a notable Baltimore lawyer (whose portrait still hangs at the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse) and brother of well-known Maryland politician Reverdy Johnson. One of the last owners, Henry W. Rogers was a well-established real estate investor and, after his death in 1901, his son, himself a well known real-estate agent, sold the property to Joseph Cone.

Neighbors objected to the prospect of replacing the old house with the still unfamiliar form of an apartment house. Building came to a stop in the fall of 1895 as a group of area residents approached Joseph Cone to try to buy back the property. Their effort ultimately failed when they could not raise the necessary amount to buy out the builder. However, the Severn did motivate residents to successfully lobby the state legislature to pass a bill prohibiting development in Mt. Vernon taller than seventy feet.

By the 1970s, when The Severn was designated a National Historic Landmark, Mt. Vernon was not quite as grand as it had been in the past and the apartment building sold to developer Caswell J. Caplan for the modest sum of $250,000. Over the next several years, Caplan worked to modernize the apartments, preserving the original wood floors and tile while renovating the kitchens and other elements. The Severn continues to be owned by members of the Caplan family and is now appreciated more than scorned as one of Mt. Vernon's grandest historic apartment houses.

701 Cathedral Street, Baltimore, MD 21201