Bolton Hill Blue Plaques - Baltimore Heritage

Overview

Did you know that F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gerald W. Johnson, President Woodrow Wilson and the Cone Sisters, to name a few, were all once residents of Bolton Hill? The residential enclave of Bolton Hill rivals in significance Boston’s Beacon Hill and New York’s Brooklyn Heights, throughout its 150 years attracting some of Baltimore’s most distinguished residents. Modeled after London’s Blue Plaques, Bolton Hill’s current residents have proudly marked the homes of its most distinguished past residents.

The Bolton Hill plaques project, organized by Frank Shivers and Polly Duke and sponsored by residents and the Mt. Royal Improvement Association, celebrates and memorializes those who made important contributions to human welfare, cultural and intellectual life, or history. If you need information or wish to apply for a plaque for your historic home, please contact Polly Duke at 410-669-1818.

Learn more on the project website

Location

Bolton Hill, Baltimore, MD

Project Team

Frank Shivers
Polly Duke

Partners

Mount Royal Improvement Association

List of Plaques

Bolton Street

1310 Bolton Street – Gerald W. Johnson, historian and journalist whom Adlai Stevenson called “the critic and conscience of the nation

1514 – Franklin P. Mall, M.D., pioneer in embryology and a major shaper of Johns Hopkins Medical School

1604 – John Jacob Abel, M.D., pathfinding pharmacologist and researcher on adrenalin, insulin, and the artificial kidney

Eutaw Place

1208 – William Sydney Thayer, M.D. , much-decorated Chief Medical Consultant to American Expeditionary Forces in World War I, and president of the American Medical Association

1210 – Woodrow Wilson, 28th president of the United States

1300 – Daniel Coit Gilman, first president of Johns Hopkins University and first Director of Johns Hopkins Hospital, as well as a trail blazer in American graduate and professional education

1404 – Sidney Lanier, poet (“sweet singer of the South”) and first writer-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University

1406 – Howard A. Kelly, M.D., pioneer gynecologist and “wizard of the operating room” as well as an early user of radium to treat cancer

1701 – Claribel Cone, M.D., and Etta Cone, major modern art collectors, especially of Matisse, who visited here

John Street

1434 – Garry Moore, early television host

W. Lafayette Avenue

221 – Curt Richter, Ph.D, discoverer of biorhythms/ the biological clock

W. Lanvale Street

127 – Jesse Lazear, M.D., medical martyr: to find the cause of yellow fever he courageously exposed himself to virus-infected mosquitoes and died of the disease, thereby proving the route of transmission

201 – Ernest Stebbins, M.D., 40-year dean of Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, where students became citizens of the world, and founder of the American Board of Preventive Medicine as well as advisor to the early World Health Organization

213 – Col. Charles Marshall, Gen. Robert E. Lee’s aide-de-camp at the surrender at Appomattox

225 – Circuit Court Judge Hugh Lennox Bond, stalwart supporter of Lincoln and of Emancipation and later known as “the curse of the K.K.K” for his harsh sentences

232 – William H. Howell, Ph.D., discoverer of the anticoagulant heparin

Madison Avenue

1301 – William H. Halsted, M.D., America’s most influential surgeon, surgical innovator, and teacher of surgery. One of the so-called Big Four, founders of clinical services at the new Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions

Park Avenue

1307 – F. Scott Fitzgerald, novelist author of The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night

1314 – Edith Hamilton, classicist author of The Greek Way, and her sister Alice Hamilton, M.D., founder of industrial hygiene and pioneer in removing lead from paint

1316 – William Edwards Stevenson, president of Oberlin College and later of the Aspen Humanities Institute, as well as ambassador to the Philippines. When young, a Rhodes Scholar and Olympic Gold Medalist

1325 – Florence Rena Sabin, M.D., path finding medical researcher, histologist, educator, and reformer of Colorado’s health laws. She is one of the two Coloradans whose statues stand in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol

1729 – Jacob Epstein, innovative wholesaler to the South, collector of Old Masters, philanthropist, and an inaugurator of the system of matching charitable grants