The white two-story house at 2702 Elsinore Ave was once the home of Violet Hill Whyte, the first African-American police officer in the Baltimore City Police Force. It was through her service as an officer and a social worker that Whyte became a beloved and well-respected pillar of her community.

Violet Whyte (born Violet Hill) was born in Washington, D.C. on November 18th, 1897 and moved to Baltimore as a young girl. After graduating from Douglass High School and Coppin State College, Hill became a public school teacher. She taught grammar for 6 years until she got married and had children with George Sumner Whyte, who was the principal of Public School No. 111 at the time. In the following years, Violet Whyte became a prominent social worker in her community. She became a member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in 1931 and continued to serve in many different roles with the WCTU until 1976. Before becoming an officer, she was also a member of the Civic League advisory board and the Negro State Republican League, the executive secretary of the Parent-Teacher Federation, and president of the Intercity Child Study Association.

On December 3, 1937, Whyte was appointed an officer of the Baltimore Northwestern District Police Force. At the time, the Baltimore Police Department had never allowed an African American to become a police officer. However, on June 1st, 1937, William P. Lawson replaced Charles D. Gaither as Baltimore Police Commissioner. In his first six months, Lawson decided to end the BPD’s policy of barring African Americans from becoming police officers. 

The station where Whyte was assigned to work served one of the largest police districts in Baltimore. Two days after her appointment, she arrested murder suspect Violet Key. The next day, over 100 Baltimoreans crowded into the station to celebrate her induction as an officer. The crowd showered her with floral arrangements and congratulations as she formally accepted her post.

Whyte worked incredibly hard. She handled homicide, abuse, assault, narcotics and robbery cases. Once, she went undercover in order to arrest the members of a narcotics gang. She even worked up to 20 hours on some days. She handed out food and gifts during holidays, and inspired local children to stop skipping school. This dedication to helping the community through both law enforcement and charity led her to be described as a “one-woman-police-force and a one-woman-social-worker combined.” In 1965, she was promoted to sergeant. Two years later in October 1967, she was promoted again to the rank of Lieutenant, a first for both African Americans and women in the BPD.

Finally, on December 3rd, 1967, Whyte retired from the police force 30 years to the day after she was appointed. She never missed a day of work.  Even after retiring, she volunteered at the Western District Station to organize charity events. She also continued to be involved in many other community and charity organizations. On July 17th, 1980, after a lifetime of service, Violet Hill Whyte passed away at the age of 82. 

A historical sign at the corner of N Payson St and W Franklin St honors the massive impact Whyte had on the city of Baltimore. Violet Hill Whyte Way near the University of Maryland, Baltimore campus was also named after her.

2702 Elsinore Ave, Baltimore, MD 21216

Since the doors opened at the former Southwestern District Police Station house on July 17, 1884, the square brick building at Pratt and Calhoun Streets has served the city in many different ways. When construction on the new building began in the fall of 1883, the Baltimore Sun claimed the new Southwestern district police station would "surpass in size, elegance and completely of arrangement any police building now in the city, and, indeed, it will have few equals in the country."

Builders Philip Walsh & Son and architect Frank E. Davis completed the three-story building with room for 47 officers. The men had been reassigned from the southern and eastern districts to serve under of veteran police officer Captain Daniel Lepson who led the brand-new district.

In the summer of 1944, Baltimore's first police boys' club moved into the upper floors, serving around 120 boys from 8 to 18 years old every day during the first few weeks after they opened. With donations from a local social club, the officers converted the station's third floor gymnasium into a  "big clubroom," described by the Sun as, "filled with tousle-haired boys noisily pushing at billiard balls, fashioning B-17's out of wood, nailing magazine racks together and eying each other craftily over checker games." The city started four boys' clubs in the 1940s, with a segregated facility for black children at the Northwestern District Police Station on Gold Street.

Both the officers and the Boys' Club departed in 1958 when the Southwestern District Police Station relocated to a modern, air-conditioned facility at Fonthill and Hurley Avenues. Following close on their tails, however, were the men and dogs of the department's K-9 Corps who moved their official headquarters from the Northern District station to Pratt Street.

Unfortunately, by the late 1970s, the building fell vacant. The Maryland Department of Social Services renovated the former police station in the early 1980s. When they left, the building fell vacant again. Today, the structure is deteriorating and remains at risk until a new use for this often reinvented building can be found.

200-206 S. Calhoun Street, Baltimore, MD 21223

Pine Street Station, the handsome, slate-roofed High Victorian Gothic building was built between 1877 and 1878 and designed by architect Francis E. Davis. The red brick structure, which is trimmed with painted bluestone lintels and adorned with ornate pressed metal roof finials and hip ridges, served as a court and jail for the area west of Lexington Market from 1878 to 1951. Originally built to protect the area's growing number of banks and police the often raucous blocks of theaters and taverns around Lexington Market, the station underwent a major transformation in the mid-twentieth century.

In 1952, the station became Baltimore's Bureau of Aid and Prevention and was officially renamed "Pine Street Station," a name that city residents had already used for years. During its tenure as the Bureau of Aid and Prevention (BAP), the increasingly run-down brick building served as a refuge for homeless women and orphan children and housed a police boys club. Though Pine Street made a safe haven for the city's disenfranchised while operating as the BAP and, according to an article in the Afro-American, the cells were tidied up and painted gray and peach to better suit its new residents, the Baltimore Sun later criticized the station for its practice of locking young people up with hardened female criminals and for a staff that did not have adequate training to work with children.

Though all manner of prisoners landed in Pine Street over the years, the tumult of civil rights activism in the 1950s and 1960s brought a new sort of inmate to the station: local female college students. Continuing its tradition of serving as a women's jail, city police often brought young women from Morgan State, Goucher College, and Johns Hopkins University to Pine Street after mass arrests during the 1950s and 60s civil rights demonstrations in Baltimore. Pine Street Station shut its doors in 1971 and sat vacant for twenty years while a planned extension of I-70 threatened the structure with demolition. Local preservation groups saved the building thanks to efforts that halted the highway at Leakin Park just outside of the city. In 1991, the University of Maryland acquired the building from Baltimore City and it currently houses the university's security department.

This story was created in partnership with the University of Maryland Baltimore County, Department of History, Public History Track.

214 N. Pine Street, Baltimore, MD 21201