Mary E. Rodman Elementary School and Recreation Center

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The Mary E. Rodman Elementary School and the Mary E. Rodman Recreation Center on Mulberry Street are named for a local leader in education for African Americans. Mary E. Rodman graduated in June 1889 from the first class of Baltimore’s first public high school for blacks located at Carrollton and Riggs Avenue. She went on to teach and administer at black schools around the city before her death at home on Calhoun Street in 1937.

The school was built in 1962 by the Lacchi Construction Company for $973,000 and almost immediately filled up to capacity. The Recreation Center arrived in 1974 and was designed by Louis Fry, Jr. a nationally prominent black architect based out of Washington, DC. The name for the Mary E. Rodman Recreation Center had originally been applied to another center at Poplar Grove Street and Lafayette Avenue.