9 North Front Street is the former residence of Thorowgood Smith, a successful merchant and Baltimore’s second mayor. Built around 1790, the Federal style residence served as Smith’s home between 1802 and 1804. The federal style of architecture…

The 82,000 square-foot Reginald F. Lewis Museum opened in 2005 and immediately made history as the first major building in downtown Baltimore designed by African American architects—a joint effort between Philip Freelon of a North Carolina firm, the…

The history of delicatessens in East Baltimore is not limited to Lombard Street. In the thoughtfully restored 800 block of East Baltimore Street, Harry Goodman established one of the city’s earliest delicatessens at 825 E. Baltimore Street around…

Albemarle Square is a new residential development that makes up virtually all the housing in the Jonestown neighborhood today. Albemarle Square opened in 2006 on the footprint of the old Flag House Courts public housing project. The history…

In the early 1900s, more than 600 people lived in the 70 houses on just a single block of Lombard Street between Lloyd and Central Avenue. For example, two households lived in 1139 E. Lombard Street in 1910. The Bergers consisted of Morris, a…

Looking up at this large, handsome red brick and stone building across Baltimore Street, one can just make out the remnants of “Hendler Creamery Company” written across the front façade. Manuel Hendler (1885-1962) opened this ice cream manufacturing…

On a vacant lot facing the McKim Center, once stood a mid-nineteenth century Greek revival townhouse that served as the Jewish Working Girls Home in the early 1900s. The home at 1200 East Baltimore Street was a boarding house operated by the…

Attman’s Delicatessen at 1019 E. Lombard Street is one of just a few delis the remain at the heart of the old Lombard Street market that once stretched from Albemarle Street to Central Avenue. Imagine New York’s famed Lower East Side, minus the…

Today, the entire south side of the block between Exeter and Lloyd is occupied by the Helping Up Mission, a transitional housing and recovery center which has recently completed renovation of the several historic buildings that it occupies. Their…

In 1775, Patapsco Meeting, in what was then Baltimore County recorded that they wished to move their Meeting to Baltimore Town. By 1781, at the cost of $4,500, a new Meetinghouse had been erected at Fayette Street (then Pitt) and Aisquith Street…

The 1833 McKim Free School building is one of Baltimore’s most important landmarks with deep roots in the city’s history and an unsurpassed 175 year record of education and social service. Founder John McKim came to Baltimore as a young man,…

Built in 1845 at the center of what was a thriving Jewish community in East Baltimore, the Lloyd Street Synagogue was the first synagogue erected in Maryland and today is the third-oldest standing synagogue in the country. In building the…

Incorporated in 1873 shortly after the end of the Civil War as the "Russian Congregation B'nai Israel of Baltimore City," B'Nai Israel was formed by Eastern European Jews living at a hub of Jewish Baltimore along the Jones Falls…