The Zion Lutheran Church is a piece of German-American history that dates back to 1755. Originally known as the German Lutheran Reformed Church, it served Lutheran immigrants coming from Germany. The congregation held services in private residences for the first seven years.

The original church was erected in 1762 on Fish Street (now Saratoga Street), a block away from their current site. The number of worshipers grew rapidly over the years and by 1808 the first building on the current church grounds was completed. It is one of only a few buildings standing that predates the War of 1812 and is the oldest Neo-Gothic style church in the United States. Between 1912 and 1913, the church completed several additions including the Parish House, bell tower, parsonage, and garden.

The church possesses a number of historical artifacts including a piece of the Berlin Wall and plaques dedicated to the members of the church who died in WWI and WWII. The church boasts an impressive collection of stained glass. A number of the windows celebrate German heritage and achievements. The Industry Window in the Sanctuary Entrance has an image of the linotype in the bottom-right corner, a device invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler in Baltimore.

The Zion Lutheran Church currently provides services in both German and English, making it the oldest church in the United States that has maintained uninterrupted services in German and the only church in Maryland to offer a service in German.

400 E. Lexington Street, Baltimore, MD 21202

On August 15, 1814, almost exactly one month before the Battle of Baltimore and the bombing of Ft. McHenry in the War of 1812, Rembrandt Peale opened "Peale's Baltimore Museum and Gallery of Paintings" on Holliday Street in downtown Baltimore. Designed by noted Baltimore architect Robert Carey Long, the building is the first purpose-built museum in the western hemisphere. Taking after a natural history museum that his father, Charles Wilson Peale, started in Philadelphia in 1786, Rembrandt Peale displayed collections of fossils and other specimens, as well as portraits of many of the country's founding fathers that his family had painted. As the British made plans to attack and the War of 1812 was on the city's threshold, portraits of the Revolutionary War heroes were highly popular, and Peale was able to charge 25 cents for admission. In September of 1814, Baltimore turned back the British invasion on land and sea, providing a critical turning point in the war and likely sparing the city from destruction. The British, after all, had burned the nation's capital just a few miles south after Washington fell the month before. The Peale Museum capitalized on patriotic fervor, and put a number of bombs and shells that were collected from the failed British bombardment on display. In doing this, Peale became the first person to display samples of Britain's firepower, which of course Francis Scott Key immortalized as the bombs bursting in air in the Star Spangled Banner. Some years later, in 1830, Peale's museum was still capitalizing on the War of 1812 when they displayed the original flag that flew over Ft. McHenry, borrowed from a willing Mrs. Louisa Armistead, the widow of Lt. Colonel George Armistead. Lt. Colonel Armistead commanded Ft. McHenry during the war and reportedly ordered an extra large flag to fly at the Fort as a pointed challenge to the British. From its earliest days embracing Baltimore's war effort, the Peale Museum has been intertwined with the city's history. The building served as a museum from 1814 until 1830. It then became the Baltimore City Hall until 1875 when the current city hall building was erected. After 1875, the museum had various uses, including as the Colored School Number 1 for African American children, and then in 1931, it returned to its origins as a museum, becoming the "Municipal Museum of Baltimore." Fittingly, the Municipal Museum focused on Baltimore City history. In 1985, the museum underwent a physical renovation and was reborn as the center of the "City Life Museums." With exhibits on Baltimore's historic gems, such as the H.L. Mencken House and Phoenix Shot Tower, to the rowhouses and front steps that help define working class life in Baltimore, the City Life Museums lasted until 1997 when the enterprise closed. Today, the Peale Museum is empty and awaiting the next chapter in its long and storied service to Baltimore.

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225 N. Holliday Street, Baltimore, MD 21202

Although it imitates the arrangement of the U.S. Capitol with a central dome and symmetrical wings, the Baltimore City Hall is covered in French architectural elements, including banded rustication, arched windows, and a crowning Mansard roof. How did this come about?

Between 1861 and 1865, the U.S. Civil War stopped most building projects. By the time the war ended, tastes had changed. Although the Italianate style remained popular (especially in conservative Baltimore), the antebellum Greek and Gothic Revival styles faded away. Indeed, this whole era in American architecture bears a European name: “Victorian,” for the queen of Great Britain between 1837 and 1901. Victorian buildings showed off the new products of the industrial revolution then creating out a wealth of new building products: cheaper bricks and cut stone, encaustic tiles and terracotta, various forms of structural iron.

The Victorian style from France is named for the Second Empire of the Emperor Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, who styled himself Napoleon III. It was this Napoleon who extended the Louvre and laid out the boulevards and sewers that made Paris the most modern city in the world in the late nineteenth century. The Second Empire style became very popular for government buildings after the Civil War; it was sometimes called the “General Grant” style after the eighteenth President. In Baltimore, George A. Frederick’s design, completed in 1875, employed a good deal of cast iron, including the 227-foot tall dome designed by Wendel Bollman and cast by Bartlett, Robbins, and Company.

About seventy-five years after their construction, Victorian buildings inevitably came to be seen as downright ugly. In Baltimore, the construction of the Abel Wolman Municipal Building overshadowed City Hall, blocking any views from the north. In the 1970s, city officials seriously discussed demolishing City Hall. But wiser heads prevailed, and a prize-winning renovation equipped City Hall for continued use as the center of Baltimore’s government.

100 N. Holliday Street, Baltimore, MD 21202