By Gwynns Falls Trail Council
Industries flourished in the lower Gwynns Falls Valley since the early 1700s, when the Baltimore Iron Works Company turned iron into nails and anchors and Dr. Charles Carroll's gristmills ground wheat into flour. The Union Stockyards, located…

By Gwynns Falls Trail Council
Ellicott Driveway was built on top of the millrace that once carried water to Three Mills operated by the Ellicott Brothers near Frederick Road. In the 1800s, twenty-six gristmills along the Gwynns Falls and others on the Jones Falls and Patapsco…

By Gwynns Falls Trail Council
Leon Day Park is named for Leon Day an outstanding player in the Negro Leagues who was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. A resident of southwest Baltimore, Day joined the Baltimore Black Sox in 1934 when African Americans could not play…

By Edward Johnson & Eli Pousson
Rogers Buchanan Cemetery is hardly famous. Few visitors to the park even know where the cemetery is. Fewer still know the surprising stories of the men and women interred behind the wrought iron fence. But for those who know the history, the…

By Tom Hobbs
Guilford began in 1780 when the property was confiscated from British land-owners and given to Revolutionary War veteran Lieutenant-Colonel William McDonald. McDonald gave Guilford its name to commemorate the battle of Guilford Court House, North…

By Nathan Dennies
After a brief stint in New York, Ogden Nash returned to Baltimore in 1934 and wrote: "I could have loved New York had I not loved Balti-more." Nash grew up in Rye, New York and first came to Baltimore for love. On a trip to the Elkridge…

By Ryan Artes
Mencken lived in an apartment at 704 Cathedral Street for five years with his wife, nee Sara Haardt. The third floor apartment’s east windows faced Mount Vernon Place, and the inside was decorated with a distinctly Victorian style. Marion Elizabeth…

By Nathan Dennies
The John H.B. Latrobe House is the only surviving site associated with the "Saturday Morning Visiter" writing contest that launched Edgar Allan Poe's literary career. On an evening in October 1833, Latrobe, along with John Pendleton…

By Eli Pousson
Organized in 1875 by Samuel H. Cummings at Gilmore and Mulberry Streets, the Harlem Park Methodist Episcopal Church relocated to Harlem Park in 1880 under the leadership of John F. Goucher. The church constructed a new building in 1906 under the…

By Eli Pousson
At a ground-breaking ceremony for the Immanuel Reformed Church on June 24, 1922, twelve trustees, including Charles C. Zies, Sr. and John H. Weller, signed a contract for the construction of the new building. Plans filed a few days later for a…

By Eli Pousson
Perkins Square Baptist Church has been an institution on Edmondson Avenue since the mid-1950s occupying a grey stone church that began in 1913 as Emmanuel English Evangelical Lutheran Church. The two-story tall church was designed by local architect…

By Dr. Edward Orser
In 1967, the Baltimore Afro-American called the home in the 2500 block of Harlem Avenue "a typical slice of Baltimore:" "The 2500 block of Harlem Avenue is a microcosm of middle-class Baltimore. . . . A visit to the neighborhood on a late summer…

By Dr. Edward Orser
James Mosher Elementary (#144) was built in 1933. The original brick structure, facing Wheeler Avenue, was constructed in simple Art Deco style. In an era of segregation, it was designated a “white” school; children still were required to travel…

By The Explore Baltimore Heritage team
Founded in 1824, St. James’ Episcopal Church is the nation’s second oldest African Episcopal congregation and the first Episcopal church organized by African Americans south of the Mason-Dixon line. Since 1932, the congregation has occupied a…

By Auni Gelles
Old St. Paul’s Church is known as the mother church of all Episcopal congregations in Baltimore. As one of the thirty original Anglican parishes that the General Assembly created under the Establishment Act of 1692, St. Paul’s (also known as…

By Preservation Alliance of Baltimore County
Fort Carroll is a 3.4 acre artificial island and abandoned fort located within the shadow of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. The fort was designed by then Brevet-Colonel Robert E. Lee, and construction was started in 1848 by the U.S. Army Corps of…

By Johns Hopkins
Originally the summer home of industrialist and abolitionist Elisha Tyson in the early 1800s, 732 Pacific Street is a classic Federal style house built with native granite two feet thick. Among many other accomplishments, Tyson helped finance the…

By The Explore Baltimore Heritage team
The highly ornamented Mercantile Trust Building was constructed in 1885 by architectural firm Wyatt and Sperry. The architecture conveys a sense of impenetrability, characterized by its massive, heavy stonework and deep set windows and entrance. Ads…

By Nathan Dennies
A slice of English architecture, the Furness House was built in 1917 by architect Edward H. Glidden. Glidden also designed the Washington Place Apartments in Mount Vernon and the Marlboro Apartments on Eutaw Place (home to the famed art-collecting…

By Laurie Ossman
Built in the aftermath of the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904, the Gayety Theatre opened on February 5, 1906—making this building the oldest remaining burlesque theater in Baltimore. While the theatre interior was subdivided into three separate spaces…

By Nathan Dennies
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…

By Nathan Dennies
Robert Garrett was the original owner of the thirteen-story Garrett Building. Among other things, Garrett was a banker, Olympian, collector of medieval manuscripts, and a leader in the development of recreational facilities in Baltimore. He was a…

By Nathan Dennies
The Vickers Building represents a shift in downtown Baltimore architectural design that occurred directly after the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 and is one of the largest buildings to utilize brick as a primary material in the Central Business…

By Nathan Dennies
As opposed to the Baltimore Sun, Baltimore News-American was an afternoon newspaper targeted to working class and blue-collar districts. One of the newspaper’s many editors was John L. Carey. He was deeply interested in the question of slavery in…

By Eli Pousson
Few places demonstrate the radical transformation of the Baltimore waterfront from the early nineteenth century through the present as vividly as the site of the Battery Babock, a short distance south of where Fort Look-Out once stood in Riverside…

By William Dunn
In 1885, Baltimore City set out to build the most beautiful Courthouse in the country. Fifteen years, and $2.2 million later ($56 million adjusted for inflation), that goal was realized. On January 6, 1900, the Baltimore Sun reported that the City…

By Nathan Dennies
The Stafford was once an elegant hotel serving the elite of Baltimore and the many high-profile figures visiting the city. The hotel was designed by founding member of the Baltimore AIA chapter Charles E. Cassell and when it opened in 1894, it was…