A Modern Office for the Baltimore Archdiocese

The stylish Catholic Center building at the southwest corner of Mulberry and Cathedral Streets has been an important administrative office for the Baltimore Archdiocese for fifty years. The eight-story structure was designed by architect John F. Eyring with details, including granite and limestone clad walls and bronzed window trim, selected to complement the Central branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library on the opposite side of Mulberry Street.

The site, formerly occupied by the old Calvert Hall College High School, attracted numerous onlookers during construction not for the modern architecture of the building but the unusual tower crane employed by general contractor Kirby & McGuire. Invented in Germany in 1949, self-erecting tower cranes were still remained an unusual sight in Baltimore when the Copenhagen-built crane went to work in the early 1960s.

The three-million-dollar, eight-story structure was completed in early 1965 and, on November 7, dedicated by Bishop T. Austin Murphy. The cornerstone of the building held copies of the Catholic Review from the day of the building's completion. The new office hosted Catholic priests, church hierarchy, lay men and women who had previously worked at offices and churches scattered across the city.

Since it opened, the building has been used for exhibitions, meetings, and many other religious and community events up through the present. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Movement Against Destruction, a coalition of Black and white community groups fighting against the construction of the East-West Expressway, met weekly on Monday evenings at the Catholic Center to share information and plan protests. While the city eventually built a portion of the proposed highway (now officially known as I-170 and unofficially as the "Highway to Nowhere"), the coalition successfully stopped the demolition of hundreds of homes in the west Baltimore neighborhood of Rosemont and in southeast Baltimore.

320 Cathedral Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

Modernist former Maryland National Bank on North Avenue

The former Maryland National Bank building at the southwest corner of Maryland and North Avenues is a faded but still striking example of the modern architecture that accompanied the city’s growth in the 1950s and 1960s. The Fidelity Baltimore National Bank (a predecessor of Maryland National) opened their first branch location on North Avenue since the late 1930s. In the mid-1950s, the firm built a drive-in on the eastern side of Maryland Avenue—a structure still in use today as the home of K & M Motors.

The local architectural firm of Smith & Veale (Albert K. Broughton serving as the project architect) designed the modern building and the general contractor was the Lacchi Construction Company. Broughton remained a practicing architect in Maryland up through 2002, shortly before his death in 2005. Reflecting the continued importance of automobiles to retail banking, a large parking lot was located on the southern side of the building and the branch was designed so patrons could enter the bank from either North Avenue or the parking lot.

As the building went up in March 1961, the Baltimore Sun touted the bank as the city’s first commercial building with a precast concrete frame. The Nitterhouse Concrete Product Company in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania cast a series of t-shaped elements that were then transported to Baltimore by truck.

The Maryland National Bank sold the property in 1990 and, sometime after 1995, the Korean-American Grocers & Licensed Beverage Association of Maryland (KAGRO) moved into the building as their office. In 2015, the Contemporary occupied the building for an exhibition by artist Victoria Fu. The exhibition, Bubble Over Green, is described as multilayered audio-visual experience consisting of moving images projected onto architectural surfaces, aligning the physical site with the space and textures of digital post-production.

101 W. North Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21201