Author: Baltimore Heritage

Monuments to George Armistead and Samuel Smith rededicated and celebrated for Defender’s Day Weekend

Thanks to Kathleen Kotarba, Executive Director of Baltimore’s Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation, for sharing a guest post on the Defender’s Day Weekend rededication of two War of 1812 monuments in Federal Hill Park and the story behind their conservation.

Baltimore from Federal Hill, ca1822
Federal Hill, courtesy Library of Congress, LC-DIG-pga-0019.

Join Governor Martin J. O’Malley, former Senator Paul Sarbanes, Congressman John Sarbanes, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Major General Jeffrey S. Buchanan, Commanding General of the Military District of Washington, and South Baltimore neighbors celebration and rededication of the Sam Smith Monument and Armistead Monument at Federal Hill Park. The US Army 3rd Infantry’s “Old Guard” Fife and Drum Corps, the Maryland National Guard Honor Guard, and the Maryland Defense Force Buglers will perform, accompanied by a Military Retreat and lowering of Federal Hill’s distinctive 15-Star Flag.

Celebrate and Rededicate War of 1812 Monuments on Federal Hill

Saturday, September 14, 2013, 5:00pm
Federal Hill Park, 300 Warren Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21230

The ceremony is co-hosted by South Harbor Renaissance, Inc. and the Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks, with the cooperation of the Maryland Military Monuments Commission and the Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation.

Major General Samuel Smith Monument, 1917

The Samuel Smith Monument was one of several sculptural monuments commissioned in recognition of Baltimore’s Centennial of the War of 1812. General Smith was commander of the Maryland forces that repulsed and defeated the British in the Battle of Baltimore at North Point and at Fort McHenry on September 12-14, 1814. Previously, Smith had been a hero of the Revolutionary War. After his exemplary military career, he continued his public service by serving forty years in Congress including becoming President of the U.S. Senate, serving as Secretary of the U.S Navy, and at the age of 80 serving as the Mayor of Baltimore.

Prominent Baltimore sculptor Hans Schuler received three commissions during the Centennial of the War of 1812, including the monument to General Smith. Schuler’s sculpture artfully presents the strength of the General, standing in his military uniform from the War of 1812. This 1917 monument has been relocated twice and was originally located in the southeastern edge of Wyman Park. In 1953, the monument moved to a park named for Samuel Smith at the corner of Pratt and Light Streets. In 1970, General Smith’s monument was moved to its current Federal Hill Park location, overlooking the grand view of Baltimore’s harbor and skyline.

In January of 2012, the Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP) determined that structural conditions within the monument’s base required the City’s immediate attention. In Summer of 2013, CHAP engaged Conservator of Fine Art, Steven Tatti, to conduct a comprehensive conservation of the monument, including the necessary reconstruction of the base.

The bronze statue of Samuel Smith was removed and secured to allow for the dismantling of the granite base. The statue of Smith was carefully cleaned and the bronze received a heated wax conservation treatment. The granite sections of the monument base were completely dismantled and placed adjacent to the monument. The existing structural pad was then cleaned and prepped for the reconstruction of the base. The one broken section of granite was repaired prior to reinstallation. The granite sections were gently cleaned to avoid potential damage. The monument base was then reconstructed and repointed, course by course, to restore its stability. It was very important to get each course level and plumb to insure that the bronze statue could be reinstalled securely.

Once the granite base was reconstructed, the bronze statue of Smith was returned the top of the monument. The projected was funded by the City of Baltimore, through CHAP’s Monument Restoration Program in the Department of Planning, with additional contributions of the Maryland Military Monument’s Commission.

Colonel George Armistead Monument, 1882

Armistead's Monument from The pictorial field-book of the war of 1812 (1896), California Digital Library.
The pictorial field-book of the war of 1812 (1896), California Digital Library.

The Mayor and City Council of Baltimore erected the Colonel George Armistead Monument on Eutaw Place on September 12, 1882. Armistead was commander of Fort McHenry during the British attack of September 13-13, 1814. The architectural firm of G. Metzger designed this monument that features the outline of Armistead’s career in the inscription on the shaft. The marble block of fourteen feet rests on a base a foot and a half high. This monument was commissioned as a “substitute” for an earlier ca. 1828 tablet of commemoration that became defaced and destroyed by time.

As with the Samuel Smith Monument, the Armistead Monument was moved from its original location. Designed for its initial installation on Eutaw Place, the monument was subsequently moved to Federal Hill after residents protested that its height did not harmonize with the loftiness of their homes. Today, the strong architectural presence of the Armistead Monument anchors the Federal Hill overlook in close proximity to the Samuel Smith Monument.

In summer of 2013, CHAP engaged Conservator of Fine Art, Steven Tatti, again to conserve the Armisted Monument. The original lower tier of the stacked stone foundation was cleaned and shimmed as needed. The stone foundation, as well as the joint between the foundation and the monument base, was then repointed with an appropriate sand cement mortar mix. The monument itself was gently washed, carefully avoiding damaging the fragile stone. The ornamental fence was then cleaned, prepped and repainted with alkyd black semi-gloss paint. The projected was funded by the City of Baltimore, through CHAP’s Monument Restoration Program in the Department of Planning, with the additional contributions of the Maryland Military Monument’s Commission and the City-wide Adopt A Monument Fund.

This post is based on the September 2013 Monument Project Conservation Report available from CHAP.

“The whole place is good” – Edward L. Palmer and the architecture of Guilford

Our latest post in our ongoing series on the 100 year history of Guilford is by Walter Schamu FAIA on the role of Edward L. Palmer. Enjoy Walter’s thoughtful history of Palmer and his firm Palmer & Lamdin:

Edward L. Palmer (1877–1952), courtesy the Guilford Association
Edward L. Palmer (1877–1952), courtesy the Guilford Association

It would be impossible to discuss the history of Baltimore’s Guilford community without serious attention being given to the architect Edward L. Palmer. Palmer and his firm of Palmer and Lamdin designed many of the significant residences in Guilford, as well as Roland Park, Homeland and Gibson Island.

Edward L. Palmer was an 1899 graduate of Johns Hopkins and, in 1903, the University of Pennsylvania School of Architecture. He began his career in architecture as the in-house architect to the Roland Park Company working for Edward Bouton, the developer of the new planned Roland Park community and Guilford. During the time as architect for the Roland Park Company he designed some of the first Guilford homes including the greatly admired Tudor Revival Bretton Place and Chancery Square (1913).

It was once reported by Palmer’s daughter, Ann Sinclair-Smith, that Bouton sent young Mr. Palmer to Switzerland to see, first hand, how houses can be constructed on steep slopes. No doubt this was to prepare him for the “unbuildable” terrain of much of northern Roland Park. In 1911 Palmer and Bouton traveled to Europe together looking for ideas and studying domestic architecture. In 1917 he left the Roland Park Company and began his firm as “Edward L. Palmer Jr. Architect.”At this point begins the story of a truly remarkable architectural firm which, through its many iterations, designed over 200 residences and hundreds of institutional, religious and corporate buildings in the Maryland region and beyond.

As quoted in Mr. Palmer’s obituary in the Baltimore Sun, October 27, 1945:

“It was during the period from 1907 to 1917, when he served as architect and a member of the Committee on Approval of Plans for the Roland Park Company, that Mr. Palmer’s work in residential development earned him national recognition among architects and real-estate developers. For under his guidance, the Roland Park Company was one of the first in the United States to employ competent landscape architects and engineers for site development, to require standards of excellence in design, to impose restrictions on land use and make adequate provisions for maintenance of streets, plantings and parks after completion of the initial development. As architects for the company, Mr. Palmer successfully demonstrated—by designing and supervising the construction of several hundred individual residences—that the insistence of high architectural standards was economically feasible.”

Early in his practice his work focused on two large housing developments. The first was for workers housing for the Bethlehem Steel Corporation in Dundalk, Maryland and the second was for the Dupont Company in Wilmington, Delaware. These were multi-unit, rowhouse type structures of a modest scale, but clearly with distinctive architectural character. But it was his private residential work in the still emerging neighborhoods north of Baltimore City that some of his best work can still be seen and enjoyed. This is especially true when, after 1920, William B. Lamdin joined the firm. In 1925, the firm name was changed by adding new partners to become “Palmer, Willis and Lamdin.” Again in 1929 it changed to simply “Palmer and Lamdin” which had it offices at 513 North Charles Street, in downtown Baltimore.

4001 Greenway, courtesy Tom Hobbs
4001 Greenway, courtesy Tom Hobbs

In the early years of his practice, Palmer set the course for his firm to eventually flourish in Baltimore. One of his first commissions in 1915, seemingly undertaken while he was still with the Roland Park Company, was a house for C. Braxton Dallam at 4001 Greenway. This house was constructed on the site of the original Guilford estate of A.S. Abell. Referred to by local architectural historian, Peter Kurtze, as a “baronial Jacobean mansion” the house is an imposing display of brick arches and steeply pitched roofs, ornate chimneys and other refinements that must have been the hot topic of its day.

Bill Landin, courtesy the Guilford Association
William D. Lamdin (1883–1945) joined the firm in 1923, courtesy the Guilford Association

Later on, in his work with partner Bill Lamdin, the firm began to develop a definite style, especially in the houses that recall English or French country architecture. Bill Lamdin, who joined the firm in 1923, had served as an Army artillery officer in France in World War I and must have seen and possibly sketched the vernacular architecture of rural France, as so much of its design characteristics are seen in their work.

For an article in the Baltimore News in April 1916, Edward L. Palmer is asked directly “What do you think to be the significance of the houses of Guilford from your point of view?” Palmer responded in his predictably modest manner:

“I can’t give a finished essay off hand on the subject but I can tell you in plain talk what I think it means for us. The main thing about the houses in Guilford, it seems to me, is that they show a serious attempt on the part of the architects to design stuff that is in ‘good grammar.’ That may sound queer, but it is the best simile I can think of. The architecture there is more comparable to correct English than anywhere else . . . Roland Park and Guilford are now really developments that we can be proud of. They possess some splendid houses and many more that are very good. For instance, it isn’t as if Guilford were a place you could find one or two examples of good architecture—the whole place is good.”

3700 Greenway, courtesy Greg Pease
3700 Greenway, courtesy Greg Pease

Charles M. Nes (who became a partner in the firm with L. McLane Fisher in 1945, after World War II, when the firm became “Palmer, Lamdin, Fisher, Nes”) said that once Bill Lamdin completed the “Gateway Houses” at Greenway and St. Paul Street in 1925, the firm’s future was secure.These two houses, 3701 St. Paul Street and 3700 Greenway, are not identical or mirror images, but rather complementary in design and present a classic example of the best of Palmer and Lamdin’s work. Bill Lamdin was the designer and his talents are on full display—all the trademark elements are handled with tremendous skill including the steeply pitched roof, the variegated and rusticated slate, decorative masonry, ironwork and ornate chimneys and cornices.These elements will occur again and again in the firm’s work with other touches often added such as stair tower turrets, dovecotes, stone and brick facade interplay.

Other notable and classic examples of their work can be seen throughout Guilford and include 14 St. Martins Road (1929), 3707 Greenway (1929), 4014 Greenway (1914), 4201 and 4205 Underwood Road (1926), 212 Wendover Road (1922), 219 Northway (1925), 4200 Greenway (1914). 101 Wendover Road (1929), 28 Charlcote Place (1929), 210 E. Highfield Road (1926), 7 Stratford Road (1928), The Roland Park Apartments (1925), Second Presbyterian Church (1924). The streets of Roland Park, Guilford and Homeland are rich with the architectural works of this firm. The architectural files of the Roland Park Company retained at the Langsdale Library of the University of Baltimore, document that Edward Palmer and Palmer and Lamdin designed more than 150 Guilford homes, many of them iconic examples of domestic architecture and displaying a mastery of many styles.

This piece was originally published in the Summer 2012 issue of The Guilford News. Walter Schamu FAIA, is president and founder of SMG Architects. He is respected throughout the region for his expertise in historic architecture, and is the founder of Baltimore Architecture Foundation.

“Unusual care” – Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. and the plan for Guilford

After a bit of a summer break, we have our latest guest blog post by Tom Hobbs, President of the Guilford Association from his series on Guilford’s 100 years of history. Find out more about upcoming events in Guilford on the Guilford Centennial Facebook page including our September house tour with historian Ann Giroux!

Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., courtesy U.S. Commission of Fine Arts
Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., courtesy U.S. Commission of Fine Arts

The Directors of the Guilford Park Company, determined to create a garden suburb of the highest quality, engaged the Olmsted Brothers to prepare the plan for development of the Guilford community. The Olmsted Brothers company was the foremost landscape firm in the country. Its principals were Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. and John Charles Olmsted, the son and stepson of the late Frederick Law Olmsted, the dean of American landscape architects and founder of the firm, designer of Central Park, numerous other city park systems, great estates and plans for many noted institutions.

Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. was the principal who primarily worked on the Guilford plan and landscape design. He was a highly respected designer, widely regarded as the intellectual leader of the American city planning movement in the early twentieth century. In 1901, he was appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt as a member of the McMillan Commission to plan for the restoration of the Washington Mall and other aspects of the L’Enfant plan for Washington. He had a lifetime commitment to national parks and planned many of them; he designed park systems for many cities, including Baltimore and he designed a number of planned communities.

Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, NPS
Illustration comparing a 1908 map projecting the Baltimore City grid through the Guilford area with an early street plan prepared by Olmsted for the Guilford Park Company prior to 1911 when it merged with the Roland Park Company, courtesy the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, NPS/Guilford Association.

When the Guilford Park Company acquired the Abell estate, the City already had on paper a plan to continue the grid street system north throughout the estate property. Such a plan would have disregarded the topography and devastated the lush forested areas. The Directors rejected such a plan and were determined that there should be a green garden suburb reflecting the value of the countryside supplied with urban conveniences but removed from the city’s “congestion, noise, crime and vice.”

Illustration of Ebenezer Howard's Garden City plan, Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies
Illustration of Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City plan, Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies

Olmsted was a proponent of garden suburbs in America where people live harmoniously together with nature, a concept advocated by Ebenezer Howard in England. The Guilford site was surveyed and existing trees and vegetation were inventoried in detail. He laid out streets to follow contours of the land, preserve stately trees and valued vegetation and generally enhance the natural beauty. Traffic was to be concentrated on a few wide streets with pedestrian walks along well planted areas. Most roadways were to be quiet and safe with traffic channeled to the thoroughfares.

When the Guilford Park Company merged with the Roland Park Company there was no question that Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. would continue as planner and landscape designer. He had designed the western portion of Roland Park and he and Edward Bouton, now the president of the Roland Park Company, had consistent ideas about the development of the garden suburb and specifically the objectives for Guilford. They also were working together on Forest Hills Gardens, the Russell Sage Foundation developed planned community, outside of New York City. There Bouton was general manager, concurrent with his role as president of the Roland Park Company, and Olmsted was the planner and landscape designer. Olmsted also was engaged in other Baltimore projects, including the design for the Johns Hopkins Homewood campus, the Charles Street approach to Guilford and a plan for the Baltimore park system.

Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, NPS
Detail from the Olmsted Plan, courtesy Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, NPS

When the Roland Park Company took over the development of Guilford in 1911 plans were sufficiently prepared for the company’s engineers to design the infrastructure systems and begin detailed designs for the roadways. Olmsted continued to refine the design and prepared road and landscape designs for each block of Guilford. As the Roland Park Company information brochure for potential buyers indicates: “The planting of trees and shrubs in the parks and sidewalk lawns, along slopes and in other unoccupied spaces, has been made a distinctive feature of Guilford. The plans for this planting have been developed by Mr. Olmsted in the form of a carefully studied unified design for the whole property… Unusual care has been taken in the designation of the trees and shrubs to be used.”

Of great importance to Olmsted in his designs for new communities was “the separateness and internal integrity that would promote tranquility and give rise to the development of a sense of ‘shared community’ among their residents.” In addition to the general lush planting and walkway system, three community parks were planned (the Sunken Park, Stratford Green and the Little Park). In addition, Olmsted introduced private parks, little parcels of land spotted in the centers of many Guilford blocks as further evocations of “natural” land.

There were other conditions unique to the Guilford site that required careful consideration by Olmsted and Bouton. The Episcopal Diocese had purchased a site at the southwest edge of Guilford on which it planned to build a large, twin-towered cathedral, requiring Olmsted to plan options for both the cathedral site and the important southern entrance to Guilford. All along the eastern edge of the site on the east side of Greenmount Avenue/York Road was the grid street pattern and unplanned development; on the north was Cold Spring Lane and uncertain development. To address the issue of the north edge of the site that abutted Cold Spring Lane, Olmsted used “back-turning” streets at Whitfield Road, Bedford Place and Charlcote Place. English cottage houses were built along the eastern end surrounding a private “close.”

Roland Park Company Magazine
Courtesy Sheridan Libraries JHU

The eastern edge of the Guilford site presented a greater challenge. It was here that the Roland Park Company undertook initial development, building the architecturally admired Tudoresque houses of Bretton Place and Chancery Square, creating an internally focused English village-like environment. Handsome and setback row houses were built along Greenmount Avenue to the south and the homes of York Courts surrounding private green spaces were built to the north. At the Olmsted National Historic Site in Brookline, Massachusetts there are over 500 drawings and records covering the Guilford plans. In addition there are relevant Olmsted records at the Smithsonian and many additional records related to the planning among the Roland Park Company files now at the Johns Hopkins Library. These all are being searched for the planned book on Guilford.

Both Olmsted and Bouton were committed to the importance of protective covenants as the best means for assuring “stability” and “permanence.” Without control on development, they had observed high quality single family communities transformed by conversion to multi-dwelling and commercial uses and value change and character loss. Nuisance laws and design guidelines had proven to be insufficient protection against decline and change. Deed restricted covenants, including design controls, they argued protect purchasers against unwanted change that might “destroy the setting and they assure long-term well-being.” The collaborative work of Bouton and Olmsted in refining protective covenants became a model for similar provisions that are still widely used.

At the presentation of the Pugsley Gold Medal Award in 1953 honoring champions of parks and conservation, it was observed:

“Carrying on the ideals of his father, and with many of his father’s special qualities and characteristics, Olmsted was an outstanding leader in advancing landscape architecture to a status of honor and recognition among the professions. Indeed, for over a half-century Olmsted was the preeminent practitioner and spokesman for landscape architecture and comprehensive planning both interested in the interrelationship of people and their environment.”

Olmsted summarized his philosophy about landscape architecture in the following terms:

“In dealing with existing real landscapes, I have been guided by an injunction impressed on me by my distinguished father: namely, that when one becomes responsible for what is to happen to such a landscape his prime duty is to protect and perpetuate whatever of beauty and inspirational value, inherent in that landscape, is due to nature and to circumstances not of one’s contriving, and to humbly subordinate to that purpose any impulse to exercise upon it one’s own skill as a creative designer.”

Guilford residents and the City of Baltimore are the fortunate beneficiaries of Olmsted’s insight and design skills, living in and with one of the country’s most admired and lasting communities.

This piece was originally published in the Winter 2012 issue of The Guilford News. Thanks again to Tom Hobbs for sharing his research – take a look at Tom’s previous posts on the early history of the A.S. Abell estate and developer Edward Bouton.