All Stories: 492
Stories
School 33 Art Center
School 33 Art Center was established in 1979 as a center for contemporary art in South Baltimore. Formerly known as Public School 33, Baltimore City erected the brick and brownstone building in 1890. It operated as an elementary school up until 1975…
Columbus Monument
The Columbus Monument is a forty-four foot tall brick and cement obelisk standing in a small park at Harford Road and Walther Boulevard. The monument to Christopher Columbus was erected by French consul, Charles Francis Adrian le Paulmier Chevalier…
The Children's Zoo
A giant carrot, a house made of cheese, and barnyard chickens were among the attractions that greeted visitors to the Baltimore Zoo’s new Children’s Zoo when it opened in Druid Hill Park in 1963. “Most children’s zoos are full of fairy tale stuff,…
The Three Sisters Ponds
At the edge of the Disc Golf Course in Druid Hill Park where the greens give way to weeds and woods, you might notice a set of stone steps that lead nowhere. Trace their path downward through the wild overgrowth and you can pick out remnants of a…
Maryland Zoo's Animal Hospital
Disc golfers playing on Druid Hill Park’s course sometimes toss their Frisbees accidentally over the Maryland Zoo’s perimeter fence. The discs land alongside a flat, understated red-brick building whose bland exterior contrasts with a fascinating…
Maryland Zoo's Reptile House
On August 5, 1948, Mayor Thomas D’Alessandro and other Baltimore City dignitaries came by motorcade to Druid Hill Park for the official opening of the Baltimore Zoo’s new Reptile House. They pulled up in front of a small, yellow-brick building a…
The Maryland Building
When the first official World’s Fair in the United States – the Centennial Exhibition – closed in Philadelphia in November 1876, the Maryland delegation chose not to abandon their state exhibit hall. Instead, the wooden building (described as “a…
Maryland Zoo's Perimeter Fence
Visiting any zoo in the world today, you expect to find it surrounded by a fence. It might seem difficult, then, to imagine that for nearly a century there was no fence around the Baltimore Zoo. The zoo was open to anyone who visited Druid Hill…
Mansion House Lawn
"Buttercups bloom and children play joyously amid the grasses and sunshine," waxed one Sun reporter poetically of the Mansion House lawn. Since the park's founding in 1860, the grassy hillside attracted thousands upon thousands of visitors for music…
Warden’s House, Baltimore City Jail
The Warden's House on Monument Street is a remarkable work of architecture and a unique reminder of the history of justice and injustice in Baltimore. The Warden's House was built as part of a larger city jail designed by local architects…
Union Baptist Church
The Union Baptist Church was built in 1905 under the leadership of Rev. Dr. Harvey Johnson and financed entirely by African Americans. The congregation was formed in 1852, the fifth oldest African American congregation in Baltimore. In 1892, the…
Old Town National Bank
The classically styled Old Town National Bank building at 221 N. Gay Street was constructed in 1924 as a bank headquarters. The first floor still retain an array of historic details, including a two-story lobby, cornice and parapet wall, grand…
Sphinx Club
Light and music onced poured out the windows and door of the Sphinx Club on Pennsylvania Avenue but only club members (and musicians) could get inside to enjoy the drinks and entertainment. Today, the building sits boarded-up and waiting on a…
Aquila Randall Monument
On July 21, 1817, Captain Benjamin C. Howard’s First Mechanical Volunteers formed up early in town and marched six miles to the North Point battleground. Accompanying them were wagons conveying the monument blocks to be assembled and dedicated on…
Orpheus with the Awkward Foot
One of the most striking monuments related to the Battle of Baltimore is the nearly forty-foot tall statue of the Greek god Orpheus greeting visitors to Fort McHenry since 1922. Dedicated to Francis Scott Key as well as the Old Defenders, the…
Gunpowder Copper Works
The Gunpowder Copper Works, a once-prominent factory located along the Great Gunpowder Falls near Glen Arm, Maryland is the second oldest copper works in the United States. The factory operated from around 1811 to 1858 turning blocks of copper into…
Eubie Blake National Jazz Institute and Cultural Center
The Eubie Blake Blake Cultural Center has owned and operated from a historic building at 847 N. Howard Street since 2000, but the history of the organization dates back to to the 1960s.
In the late 1960s, a group of Baltimoreans organized the…
The Maryland Center for Historical and Culture (formerly the Maryland Historical Society)
In January 1844, a group of Maryland residents gathered in the offices of the Maryland Colonization Society at the Baltimore City Post Office and established the Maryland Historical Society. They proposed collecting the "remnants of the state’s…
L. Gordon and Son Factory
The L. Gordon & Son factory is a sixty-four thousand square foot industrial building on the corner of South Paca Street and West Cross Street, a few blocks from M&T Stadium. It is a three-story building of lightly-ornamented but utilitarian…
Cathedral of Mary Our Queen
A fire erupted on the morning of February 7, 1904, in the dry goods firm of John E. Hurst & Co., on what is now Redwood Street. The blaze spread wildly out of control, consuming central Baltimore. In a panic and with few options, city engineers…
Saint Ignatius Church
Stretching along Calvert Street between Madison and Monument Streets, stands a massive Italianate palace, built for the Society of Jesus, a Catholic religious order. Decorating the facade are arched windows with elaborate moldings, and a heavy…
Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church
Completed in 1872 as a “Cathedral of Methodism,” the Norman-Gothic Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church was a signature achievement for the noted Baltimore architects Thomas Dixon and Charles L. Carson. It was also at first an immense source…
Baltimore County Almshouse
The Baltimore County Almshouse officially opened in 1874 as a public home for the county's indigent, elderly, and infirm residents. The Almshouse and its predecessors were the ancestors of today’s nursing homes, mental health hospitals, homeless…
Motor House
Built in 1914 for Eastwick Motors, Baltimore’s first Ford dealership, 120 West North Avenue has been home to a surprising array of owners and occupants. After its days with Eastwick (a proud supporter of Amoco gasoline and its American Oil Company…
Locust Point Immigrant House
Baltimore’s Locust Point was a rapidly growing neighborhood between the Civil War and 1920. One major factor in the neighborhood’s growth was an immigration pier and depot built in 1867 by the B&O Railroad and the North German Lloyd Shipping…
S.S. John W. Brown
During World War II, the SS John W. Brown belonged to a fleet of 2,700 Liberty Ships transporting war materiel and allied troops across dangerous waters. Today, the ship is one of just two Liberty Ships still sailing and serves as a unique memorial…
Zissimos Bar
In Charles Barton's 1948 romp, The Noose Hangs High, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello argue over shrimp cocktails. Abbott tells Costello to imagine he's in Grand Central station with a ticket in his pocket. Where is he going? Costello doesn't understand…
Chase Brexton Health Care
Chase Brexton Health Care was founded in 1978 as a gay men's STD screening clinic. The clinic operated as program of the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Baltimore from 1978 until 1989. In 1989, Chase Brexton became an independent healthcare…
Medical Arts Building and the Health Education Resource Organization (HERO)
The Health Education Resource Organization (HERO) was founded in 1983 by Dr. Bernie Branson at the former Medical Arts Building on Read Street. Over the next two decades, HERO grew to become Baltimore's oldest and largest HIV and AIDS service…
The GLCCB
This location once served as home for the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Baltimore. In 1977, activists involved with the Baltimore Gay Alliance (BGA), established two years earlier in 1975, decided to split that organization into two separate…