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.

Bring a Friend, Win a Prize! 2012 Membership Challenge

Behind the Scenes Tour of the USS Constellation, March 2011

In fall, Baltimore Heritage launched our annual membership drive and the new 2012 Membership Challenge. As part of our ongoing efforts to get more Baltimoreans engaged in learning about and preserving our great historic buildings and neighborhoods, we are asking for your help by bringing friends, neighbors, family members, and others to our tours and events. We know we need a large and diverse group of friends and supporters to effectively preserve and promote Baltimore’s historic places, and we believe that coming to one of our events is a great way to introduce people to our work.

As a way of saying thank you for your help and support, we are raffling off private guided tours of historic neighborhoods – a walking tour of Mount Vernon, a bike tour of West Baltimore Parks and more – led by myself and Baltimore Heritage Field Officer Eli Pousson. Anybody who joins us for a tour or to an event and then becomes a member of Baltimore Heritage, along with any current Baltimore Heritage member who refers a new member is eligible to win. We’ll announce the winners in early January. So the next time you register for one of our Behind the Scenes tours or other events, please bring a friend! Thank you for helping us with our 2012 Membership Challenge, and for helping us protect our shared history and revitalize our historic neighborhoods. I hope to see you and a guest at one of our events soon.

Explore Colonial Grandeur at the Perry Hall Mansion

Join us in exploring one of Baltimore County’s most historic places, Perry Hall Mansion, home of the Gaugh Family. We’re pleased to host this event with our partners, the Friends of the Perry Hall Mansion and the Preservation Alliance for Baltimore County.

Behind the Scenes Tour of Perry Hall Mansion

Wednesday September 19, 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm
3930 Perry Hall Rd, Perry Hall, MD 21128
RSVP today! $15 per person.

Erected high on a hill above the Gunpowder River Valley, Perry Hall Mansion dominated life in northeastern Baltimore County in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Built in the 1770s by Harry Dorsey Gaugh, Perry Hall was named after the family castle near Birmingham England. The 16-room home, the seat of a vast plantation, soon became one of the leading houses in colonial Maryland. The mansion, considered a “sister” house to Hampton Mansion not very far away, turned from a house of raucous parties to a place of more reserved pleasure as Gaugh and his wife, Prudence, became ardent supporters of the early Methodist movement that had strong roots in Maryland.

Gaugh became a distinguished planter, a member of Maryland’s House of Delegates, and on the board of one of Maryland’s first orphanages. After Gaugh’s death in 1808, the mansion remained in the family for nearly 50 years. It was sold to a group of investors in 1852 that carved the plantation into lots for houses, many of which went to German immigrants. By 2001, the estate had dwindled to four acres and the house was sold to Baltimore County for use as a museum and community center. The County completed a first stage of restoration in 2004, and exterior restoration won an award from the Preservation Alliance of Baltimore County as an “outstanding public project.” The Friends are continuing with the restoration of this stately home.

Support preservation leadership in Baltimore! Tell CHAP to keep their director

Today we have an update with some distressing news regarding historic preservation in Baltimore. We just learned that Baltimore’s local historic preservation commission- the Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP) – is holding a special “closed door” meeting on Monday, August 27 with the purpose of firing CHAP’s Executive Director, Ms. Kathleen Kotarba. While we are reluctant to get involved in a personnel matter at CHAP, we are confident that the effort to fire Ms. Kotarba is directly related to her professional work with CHAP staff and commissioners and fear that it involves recent controversial historic preservation issues – the preservation of Read’s Drug Store, the Mechanic Theater, and the Edgar Allan Poe House. As you know, preservation issues are at the forefront of many city-shaping decisions today and we fear that the effort to fire Ms. Kotarba is an attempt to reduce the influence of historic preservation in Baltimore.

I wanted to let you know that this controversy is unfolding and also to ask for your help. We do not know the full story behind Monday’s meeting, but we do know that Ms. Kotarba has served the city with distinction for nearly 35 years. Firing her behind closed doors is unfair and makes no sense. If there are administrative issues or issues involving the direction of CHAP, we strongly believe that the director should be involved in the solution. Therefore, I ask that you join us in voicing our concern by contacting CHAP Commissioners. In thinking about this, I want to point out that the executive director of CHAP is an unusual position within city government: the director works for the CHAP Commission. I think the position was created this way on purpose knowing that the director might encounter tough issues that ruffle feathers. It is only with a strong and professional preservation staff and commission that checks and balances within city government are possible.We need you to let the CHAP Commissioners know that you care about preservation leadership in Baltimore. Click here to start composing an e-mail addressed to the full commission or find a list of individual commissioners below. Please also join us in demonstrating your concern by attending Monday’s CHAP meeting. We expect there may be no opportunity for us to speak but we can help show the importance of preservation in Baltimore just by being there.

Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation – Special Session
Reeves Conference Room, Baltimore City Hall, 100 Holliday Street, 4th floor
Monday, August 27, 1:00 pm.

Thank you, again, for your help in ensuring that we have a fair and respectful city process for historic preservation in Baltimore.

Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation

Celebrate five years of Behind the Scenes Tours with a House and Village Tour in Dickeyville

Baltimore Heritage’s Behind the Scenes Tours Program is celebrating 5 years and over 100 tours of sites throughout Baltimore with a guided house and village walk in Dickeyville.  Please join us for this fundraising event to learn about one of Baltimore’s oldest communities, peek inside a few private homes, and ensure the tours can keep going strong for years to come.

House and Village Tour in Dickeyville

Saturday, September 8, 2012
4:00 to 5:30 p.m.
2411 Pickwick Rd (Baltimore 21207)
$25 for members / $35 for non-members
RSVP today and bring a friend!

The Gwynns Falls first saw industrial development as early as the late 1700s and, by 1808, the small industrial village began to form around an early paper mill along the water where Dickeyville sits today. Although few of these early stone structures remain, the village endured and grew in the mid 1800s when the Wethered Brothers, owners of the mills, began building homes for their workers and made other improvements for the community. The Wethered’s sold off small lots to private owners, many of whom built their own houses along with public buildings such as a fraternal hall, a general store, and churches. The diversity of worker housing and industrial buildings created over time resulted a uniquely diverse architecture that is at the heart of the historic village’s captivating character today.

In the 1930s, however, the isolated mill village was rocked by change thanks to the start of the Great Depression and the introduction of electrified industrial facilities that brought older mills like those on the Gwynns Falls to a stop. In 1934, the entire stock of buildings was sold at auction and bought by a group called the Title Holding Company. The new owners hired Palmer and Lambden, noted local architects from the Roland Park Company, to build new houses and renovate existing ones, using the Roland Park Company as its sales agent. A rush of new residents decided they wanted their community to resemble an English village in design and name – making Dickeyville one of Baltimore’s earliest attempts at historic restoration. The new homeowners added many historic details such as gaslamps, Belgian Block gutters, and picket fences, and gave their streets names evoking another era – like Pickwick Road named for an English village.

Dickeyville residents have worked hard for several generations to maintain and build from the village’s historic buildings and character. Standing in the center of the community today, you might swear you were in the middle of an 19th century village in the Cottswalds. Please join our hostess, Patricia Hawthorne, and resident tour guide Mike Blair for a short stroll around the village and a look inside three private homes: with hosts Elizabeth and Steven Sfekas, Leslie and Bruce Greenwald, and Patricia Hawthorne.