The Maryland Art Place is a local cultural institution occupying a five-story Richardsonian Romanesque industrial building on the west side of Baltimore’s Downtown.

The building on Saratoga Street was erected in 1907 as a factory for the Erlanger Brothers Clothing. Owned by New York textile merchants, Abraham and Charles Erlanger, Erlanger Brothers’ best-known product was BVD underwear. Some assumed BVD stood for Baltimore Ventilated Drawers, but, in reality, the letters stood for the names of Bradley, Voorhees & Day, who founded the brand in 1876.

By 1921, the Saratoga Street building hosted showrooms for the Peabody Piano Company where Baltimoreans could purchase pianos, Victor-brand records and Victrola record players. Eventually the building became the Johnson Brothers Radio Producers & Retailers for making early radio receivers and later televisions.

Maryland Art Place started in 1981 when a group of artists and committed citizens began organizing around the needs of visual artists throughout the state and the desire of many people to have more access to and information about artists working in Maryland. The Maryland State Arts Council supported their efforts and, in 1982, this dedicated group of volunteers formed Maryland Art Place (MAP).

In 1986, the Maryland Art Place moved into the former factory on Saratoga Street and, after renovations, opened exhibition spaces on three floors. Long-time executive director Amy Cavanaugh Royce recalled the experience in an interview with the Baltimore Sun, “It's a cavernous building. It has its own aura. I began walking around the back stairwells and the basement and it grew on me." MAP bought the building in 1988.

Today, artists fill the former factory (Jordan Faye Block, a Chicago-born artist and curator, owns a contemporary gallery on the fifth floor) and MAP is building a members gallery.

218 W. Saratoga Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

A Local Composer at 426 W. Baltimore Street

Spinning wheel manufacturers, cigar makers, tailors, hat makers, multiple banks, and a music school all occupied this site—often at the same time—going back to the early nineteenth century. During the decade after the Civil War, the upper stories provided a home for the James M. Deems Music School established in 1867 by Civil War veteran and well-known composer General James Monroe Deems.

Born in Baltimore in 1818, Deems played music since early childhood—later declared a "prodigy" for his performances with a group organized by his father. He traveled to Dresden, Germany in 1839 to study musical composition and cello with J. J. F. Dotzauer, a famed German cellist and composer. After his return to the United States, Deems became an instructor at the University of Virginia but maintained his ties to Baltimore, convincing Baltimore schools to adopt his Vocal Music Simplified instructional book for music education in 1851. After a brief but active military career during the Civil War, Deems opened his music school on West Baltimore Street sharing the building with the Haydn Musical Association. Even after the school left Baltimore Street in 1877, Deems remained an active composer and educator through his death in 1901.

In the years after World War II, the condition of the block deteriorated as the decline of the clothing industry left many small commercial buildings vacant. Fortunately for this handsome landmark, the building was restored and opened as a PNC Bank branch in 2009.

426 W. Baltimore Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

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

McCrory's, Kirby-Woolworth, and Schulte United

In contrast to the high-end shopping at Stewart's or Hochschild-Kohn's on Howard Street, West Lexington Street offered goods of all kinds at affordable prices thanks to a row of five-and-tens from Read's Drug Store down to Kresge's on the other side of Park Avenue.

McCrory's at 227-229 West Lexington stands out with a colorful early twentieth century tile facade built over a structure that likely dates back to late nineteenth century. John Graham McCrorey started the chain in Scottsdale, Pennsylvania in 1882 and soon expanded with locations across the country. Noting McCrorey's reputation as a smart and thrifty businessman, in 1887 The New York Times reported that he had legally changed his name, dropping the e, because he did not want to pay the cost of the extra gilt letter on his many store signs. McCrory's on Lexington Street opened in the late 1920s and was one of over 1,300 McCrory's outlets operating around the country by the 1950s.

The more modest Kirby-Woolworth Building east of McCrory's began as two buildings put up by two close competitiors - Frederick M. Kirby and the H.G. Woolworth & Co. In retrospect, the reunion of the two buildings feels inevitable as Kirby and Woolworth pioneered the five-and-ten cent store business together in the 1870s and early 1880s, opening a store together in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania in 1884 before parting ways in 1887. The two buildings came up side by side on Lexington Street in 1907 and likely combined into a single structure after the merger of H.G. Woolworth & Company and F. M. Kirby & Company in 1912.

Schulte United Five and Dime offers a unique façade with shining gold eagles and incised lettering along the top of the building. The building began as the Eisenberg Underselling Store, later known as the Eisenberg Company, with the determined motto that they offered "prices that are irreproachable everywhere." By 1928, 600 employees worked for the Eisenberg Company at several locations throughout the city. Within a few years, however, Schulte United – established by David A. Schulte, a "tobacco store potentate," who decided to enter the five-and-dime business in 1928 with the ambitious goal of investing $35,000,000 in 1,000 stores around the country – purchased the store on Lexington Street.

200 W. Lexington Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

First established in 1847 by a group of prominent businessmen, the Eutaw Savings Bank spent its first decade operating out of the Eutaw House Hotel located on the same site as the Hippodrome Theater. In 1856, the Eutaw Savings Bank purchased a lot across the street on the corner of Eutaw and Fayette Street from the estate of Michael F. Keyser, a director of the Eutaw Savings Bank who died in 1855. The bank demolished the grand old mansion that occupied the corner to make way for a "more modern and beautiful edifice" designed by Baltimore architect Joseph F. Kemp in an Italian Renaissance Revival style and built at a cost of around $22,000.

The Building Committee of the Board of Directors for the bank praised their own work with the statement that, "for neatness, convenience, and durability, it is at its cost unequaled by any other banking house in our city." Within a few years, the reportedly "popular and thriving" bank had outgrown their building and decided to purchase a lot directly across Eutaw Street. Their new brownstone bank, later adapted for use as part of the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center in 2004, opened in 1889.

The Baltimore Equitable Society (still operating in Baltimore City under the name Baltimore Equitable Insurance) purchased the building in 1889 and maintained offices in the building for over 114 years, until 2003. Founded in 1794 as the first fire insurance company in Baltimore, the "Baltimore Equitable Society for Insuring of Houses from Loss By Fire" was modeled after The Philadelphia Contributorship, a fire insurance company founded by Benjamin Franklin, among others. The Baltimore Equitable Society remains the oldest corporation in Maryland, and the nation's fourth oldest fire insurance company.

The Baltimore Equitable Society endured many challenges over the decades, from the War of 1812, the Civil War, economic depressions and other calamities. The Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 resulted in a loss of $1.5 million but the firm still paid all of its policyholders' claims in full, with an officer of the bank later explaining, "we were hit hard, but are still strong." When the Great Depression caused other banks and insurance companies to close down, the Baltimore Equitable Society actually thrived, increasing assets by 23% and even opened a Fire Museum in the second floor of its building. After the 1968 riots that led to the loss of buildings due to fire, some insurance companies refused to cover homes and businesses in the City of Baltimore. However, the Society continued insuring properties within the City regardless of the perceived increased risk.

Although the Baltimore Equitable Society left the building in 2003, it remains a handsome reminder of Baltimore's early financial history on the West Side. Looking at the first floor windows, you can still read the words "Baltimore" and "Insurance" painted in gold on its lower panes, the remnants of a "Baltimore Equitable Insurance" sign and inside the decorative wood work and grand tall windows remain in excellent shape.

21 N. Eutaw Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

Lexington Market, originally known as Western or New Market, was started at the western edge of the city at the turn of the 19th century to take advantage of the trade with the recently opened Northwest Territory. The first market shed was built c. 1805 on land once belonging to John Eager Howard. It grew quickly along with the city, which was advantageously situated on the western most harbor along the East Coast. This access to transatlantic trade routes, then the railroads, were major factors to the growth of Baltimore through the 19th century. After a visit to the market, Ralph Waldo Emerson dubbed it the “gastronomic capital of the world.”

The larger and more established public markets, like Centre, Hanover, and Broadway markets, were often used for court ordered auctions of enslaved people. Having been located at the edge of the city, there is not much evidence that such sales were common at Lexington Market. The only information found so far indicates that at least one such auction did take place here in 1838. A monument was recently erected here to memorialize the woman sold at that court-ordered auction and a runaway enslaved man who had worked at the market. Their names were Rosetta and Robert.

Hotels and taverns proliferated near public markets, including this area around Lexington Market. It was a common practice during this time to arrange business meetings in hotels and taverns, to such an extent that bartenders and inn keepers would take and relay messages for regular customers. The meetings could be business or social. Transactions discussed could be anything from starting a chapter of a fraternal organization to the selling and buying of real estate, farm animals, or enslaved people. Many slave traders got their start in this manner--Slatter, Woolfolk, and Purvis to name a few. An example of an ad from the early 19th century informed buyers of people “to apply at Mr. Lilly’s Tavern, Howard Street” and another directed buyers to “Fowler’s Tavern near the New Market, Lexington Street.” The latter of these might be William Fowler’s Sign of the Sunflower, which was located in this area.

Although the original intention of the market was to sell Maryland-grown produce, by the turn of the twentieth century, the market offered an international selection as thousands of immigrants moved to Baltimore, becoming both vendors and customers. The city kept the price to rent a stall at the market low to encourage aspiring business owners. This practice was particularly beneficial for immigrants who had few job opportunities upon entering the country. As a result, immigrant communities grew around Lexington Market and helped establish a diverse community in West Baltimore. The new products offered at the market contributed to the international fame it would attain at the turn of the century.

While the form of Lexington Market has changed dramatically over the decades — an early frame market shed was replaced in 1952 following a 1949 fire and the city significantly expanded the market in the 1980s — the community of vendors and locals continues to draw crowds of residents and tourists daily.

400 W. Lexington Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

Constructed across from the venerable Ford's Theater in 1911, the Empire Theatre (as the Everyman was first called) was designed in the Beaux Arts style by Baltimore architects William McElfatrick and Otto Simonson. Although its advertising slogan was appealing, "Better Burlesque," and it boasted its own soda fountain and billiard parlor, the theatre never caught on with burlesque or a few years later, with vaudeville.

By 1915 it had switched to a single screen movie theatre with seats for over 1500. Movies did not fare well either, and after a brief stint back as a burlesque theatre, the building was shuttered in 1927. In 1937 it reopened, but as a parking garage. For some reason, this use also did not stick, and in 1947 the building was rebuilt back into a theatre. With architects Lucius White and John Zinc in the lead, the new theatre was fully modern, with Art Moderne styling, amoeba-shaped wall decorations, and even a concession stand selling new fangled orange-coated ice cream treats called Dreamsicles. The Town Theatre, as it was then renamed, opened with a premier showing of "It's a Wonderful Life," complete with Jimmy Stewart in the audience.

It was during this period that a real life drama took place in 1953 when the FBI received a tip that a wanted criminal, John Elgin Johnson, was at the theatre. He was in a phone booth when the FBI approached and he opened fire, wounding agents J. Brady Murphy and Raymond J. Fox. Additional agents returned fire, killing Mr. Johnson. Agent Murphy later died from his wounds.

From the 1960s into the 1970s, the Town was Baltimore's only "Cinerama," a film technique where multiple film strips are shown on a single projector. This run didn't last either, and the theatre closed again in 1990, about a week before the Hippodrome a block away also went dark.

The building was given to the Everyman Theatre in 2006, which was then in search of a new home. After raising considerable capital for a major renovation, the restoration included both the historic exterior and a wholly new interior to accommodate modern performance requirements. The theatre now has 250 seats and a host of other spaces: a scene shop, dressing rooms, a green room, a rehearsal hall, classrooms, offices, costume shop, and a prop shop. The company's first performance in the new space was in January 2013.

315 W. Fayette Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

Opened in 1786 by Baltimore's First Presbyterian Church, the Westminster Burying Ground is the resting place for many of early Baltimore's most notable citizens, including merchants, mayors, and fifteen generals from the Revolutionary War and War of 1812. In 1852, the church that also occupies the property was built on brick piers over some of the tombs, creating what is called the "Baltimore Catacombs."

Although notables such as Sam Smith and James McHenry are buried here (bitter rivals in life, fate brought them cheek to jowl in the graveyard), the most famous eternal resident is Edgar Allan Poe. When he died in 1849, Poe was originally buried in an unmarked grave next to that of his grandfather in the back of Westminster. In 1875, Poe's body was moved to the front of the graveyard with a dedication ceremony that included the American poet Walt Whitman. Adding to the mystery that surrounds Poe and his death, Baltimore lore has it that the re-internment in 1875 got the wrong poor soul into the new grave (probably not true) and that the current monument has Poe's birth date wrong (true).

The church and graveyard are now in the care of the Westminster Preservation Trust, a private, non-profit organization established in 1977. In the early 1980s, the Trust restored the graveyard as well as the former church building, and the church is now available to rent.

519 W. Fayette Street, Baltimore, MD 21201