Author: Johns

Johns Hopkins has been the executive director of Baltimore Heritage since 2003. Before that, Johns worked for the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development developing and implementing smart growth and neighborhood revitalization programs. Johns holds degrees from Yale University, George Washington University Law School, and the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment.

Restoration Two Ways in Mount Vernon and an Evening to Remember in Hampden!

Do you know one of the wonderful things about Baltimore rowhouses? Even when they look nearly the same on the outside, there are countless different ways they can be rehabbed and restored on the inside. Please join us next week on a tour of two neighboring rowhouses in Mount Vernon. Each is grand in its own way: one restored to its original glory and the other rehabbed by mixing stunning modern elements with the historic fabric.

We’re also pleased to be working with a new partner—the Greater Hampden Heritage Alliance—to develop a new Explore Baltimore Heritage tour of Hampden and promote an evening open house this Friday. Come out to enjoy the historic Church & Co. venue (a former church, of course!), hear performances by local musicians, donated refreshments, and bid on their fun silent auction to raise money for a new history walking tour brochure of Hampden landmarks!

As always, we hope you can join us for one of our Looking Up Downtown tours or stop by Patterson Park for our next free Battle of Baltimore tour.

Featured image: Photograph of 823-831 Park Avenue Baltimore, MD. Courtesy Library of Congress, Historic American Building Survey, HABS MD-1135-1.

Photos: 2014 Preservation Awards Celebration at the Baltimore Design School

Thank you to everyone who joined us last month at the Baltimore Design School for our annual Preservation Awards Celebration. Special thanks to Melissa Gerr who volunteered to capture a few great photographs of the evening. Enjoy!

Welcome to the Jenkins House

New tours! Join us at Jenkins Mansion and along the Jones Falls

In July of 1814, Captain Henry Thompson reported that this month began with sultry mornings and showers in the afternoons. The weather hasn’t changed much even 200 years later but we’re rolling through the height of a sultry Baltimore summer with some new tours.

For the casual bicyclist, we have a new tour of historic mills in the Jones Falls Valley, where you can roll down hill then take the light rail home! For anyone curious about Baltimore’s elite in the Gilded Age, we have the chance to look inside the Jenkins Mansion in Mount Vernon, one of the city’s most gilded and best preserved residences. Please join us!

Interior photographs courtesy Julie Canard/MRIS.

Behind the Scenes at Locust Point's Immigrant House

Come on a tour this summer in Locust Point or Station North!

After last week’s 2014 Awards Celebration, I want to again congratulate everyone who won an award and share my sincere thanks with everyone came out and helped make the evening a success. Take a look at our list of 2014 award recipients and you are sure to share our excitement about the future of preservation and revitalization in Baltimore. As we head into July, we have an exciting line up of new tours and returning favorites.

Don’t miss our tour of the “Immigrant House” – a new museum in the making in Locust Point! We are glad to share a fun event from the Archdiocese of Baltimore as it celebrates its 215th Anniversary with a day of open houses of Catholic heritage sites downtown. Finally, if you have family in town this month, we have plenty of cheap and free tours to show off our city’s historic landmarks including Looking Up Downtown and free Station North by Foot tours at Artscape!

Photograph from Book of the Royal Blue, 1904.

Happy Birthday, Green Mount Cemetery! Take a tour with Wayne Schaumburg

Green Mount Cemetery, sometimes known as Baltimore’s “Valhalla,” is turning 175 years old this July and we are celebrating with a walking tour with cemetery guru and eminent Baltimore historian Wayne Schaumburg! With notables that include Johns Hopkins and Enoch Pratt, William and Henry Walters, and Betsy Patterson, it is no wonder the cemetery has earned the moniker “where Baltimore’s best were laid to rest.”

You can also combine fresh produce and fresh history on our latest Looking Up Downtown tour leaving from the Baltimore Farmer’s Market this Sunday, June 1. And don’t forget to sign up soon for our 2014 Awards Celebration on June 19 at the new Baltimore Design School – tickets are going fast!