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.

Stop by the Baltimore Farmers’ Market for our new Looking Up Downtown tour

Did you know that there are hundreds of lions peering down on unsuspecting pedestrians on Calvert Street, that a piece of the Berlin Wall is now embedded in a downtown church, and that an unexploded bomb from the War of 1812 is perched along the sidewalk on Redwood Street? There are even a pair of 15th century squirrels gathering nuts on a doorway that is an exact copy of a door at the Basilica di Sant’ Andrea in Mantua, Italy by 15th Century Renaissance father Leon Alberti.

Whether its every day for work or occasionally for jury duty, most of us walk the streets of downtown Baltimore without realizing the wealth of grotesques, carvings, and statuary that abounds throughout the core of downtown. With help from Baltimore historians Fred Shoken, Wayne Schaumburg, and Matthew Mosca, we’ve put together a tour to explore the architecture, serious and whimsical, and the wonderful history in our city center. From noble lions and hellish fiends, from neo-Egyptian sphinxes and squirrels of Renaissance Italy, we bet you’ll be as amazed as we were to learn about the veritable menagerie of wildlife downtown.

Please join us this Sunday as we host the first in our new Looking Up Downtown tour series. If you can’t join us this Sunday, we’ll be offering the tour on the first and third Sunday of each month from August through November. So grab your shopping bag for the Farmers’ Market and your walking shoes for the tour and get ready to be surprised at how much is going on downtown above our very heads.

Looking Up Downtown Walking Tour

Sunday, July 29, 9:30 am – 10:30 am
Baltimore Farmers’ Market – Meet at the southeast corner of the market (Gay Street and Saratoga Street)
Tours ongoing every first and third Sunday from August through September.
$5 for adults. Children under 16 are free!
RSVP online today!

Congratulations to 2012 Preservation Awards Winners!

2012 Preservation Awards CelebrationOn June 21, Baltimore Heritage celebrated the best historic preservation projects of the past year and the people behind them. From the rehabilitation and conversion of the largest stone mill in Maryland – Union Mill – to rowhouse rehab work in the Patterson Park neighborhood, 13 projects in all won awards. The honorees included the Friends of St. Vincent Cemetery for their ongoing effort to reclaim an all-but-forgotten cemetery in Clifton Park, to Mr. Stephen Israel for a herculean task of researching, documenting, and photographing every single house in the Ten Hills neighborhood in West Baltimore.

Baltimore Heritage’s board bestowed a special award this year to Karen Lewand, honorary AIA, for lifetime achievement in historic preservation. The award is named after Douglas Gordon, a pioneering advocate who spearheaded the effort to save Mount Vernon Place from demolition in the 1960s. Among many things, Ms. Lewand has been a CHAP commissioner, an advisor to the Maryland Historical Trust, helped found the non-profit organization 1000 Friends of Maryland, and launched numerous innovative education efforts including heritage walking tours, neighborhood research projects, and education programs about historic neighborhoods for Baltimore schools.

Congratulations to all of the 2012 Award Winners!

Restoration and Rehabilitation Award

Garrett-Jacobs Mansion Ballroom Restoration
11 West Mount Vernon Place

The Engineers Club owner; Garrett-Jacobs Mansion Endowment Fund, partner; Thomas Moore Studios contractor; Christiana Cunningham-Adams mural restoration; Walter Raynes panel restoration; Brian Fick contractor; Mary Yeager contractor; Gillian Quinn mural restoration; Matthew Mosca paint analysis; Johnson Berman design consultant.

Lillie Carroll Jackson Museum
1320 Eutaw Place

Morgan State University owner; Gant Brunnett Architects, Inc. architects; Commercial Interiors interior decoration; Hayles & Howe plaster work; Crenshaw Lighting engineers.

Loyola University Francis Xavier Knott Humanities Building
South Chimney Repairs – 4501 North Charles Street

Loyola University Maryland owner; Structural Restoration Services contractor; American Platform & Scaffolding contractor; Whitney Bailey Cox & Magnani contractor.

Adaptive Reuse and Compatible Design Award

10 West Chase Street

WRH Property Holdings, LLC owner; Template Design, LLC architect; Mullan Contracting Company contractor; O’Connell and Associates tax credit consultant.

Fallsway Housing and Resource Center
620 Fallsway

Baltimore City Office of Homeless Services owner; Gant Brunnett Architects, Inc. architects; Roy Kirby & Sons, Inc. contractor.

3000 Chestnut Avenue

Practical Properties owner; 33:D architect.

Restoration Gardens
3701 Cottage Avenue

AIRS/Empire Homes owner; Cho Benn Holback + Associates, Inc. architect; Homes for America developer; Linden Contracting, Inc. contractor; Min Engineer Engineering, Inc. engineer; Mincin Patel Milano, Inc. structural engineer; Gower Thompson, Inc. civil engineer.

Union Mill
1500 Union Avenue

Seawall Development Company owner; Marks, Thomas architect; Hamel Builders contractor; Columbia Engineering structural engineer; Allen & Shariff Corporation engineer; Gower Thompson civil engineer; Poole Design, LLC landscape architect.

Heritage Preservation Award

126 South Patterson Park Avenue

Pagoda Trust LLC, owner.
2214 East Pratt Street

Noel Brown & Sereen Thaddeus owners; Architecture and Urban Views architect; Federal Masonry Restoration contractor; Thomson Remodeling Co. contractor; T & D Development contractor.

St. Vincent Cemetery, Clifton Park

Friends of St. Vincent Cemetery

Historic Baltimore Neighborhoods Award

Ten Hills Research, Documentation, and Recordation
Mr. Stephen Israel

Douglas Gordon Award

A Lifetime of Leadership and Dedication to Historic Preservation in Baltimore
Ms. Karen Lewand, Hon. AIA

Join us next week for our Awards Celebration in historic Bolton Hill!

Join in our annual celebration as Baltimore Heritage celebrates the year’s best in preservation, adaptive reuse, and community leadership from neighborhoods across the city! This year we are in historic Bolton Hill with five unique open houses followed by good food, wine, beer, and an awards presentation at the Maryland Institute College of Art Meyerhoff House. Our open houses this year are a few of the neighborhood’s best — can’t miss landmarks from a 1848 country cottage on Lanvale Street to the former home of the Bolton Street Synagogue which was converted to a private residence in 2005.

Find more details or purchase a ticket today!

Tickets are $65 for members and $75 for non-members. Special thanks to our lead sponsor PNC Bank and all of our generous sponsors and supporters who make this celebration possible!

Behind the Scenes Tour of Homewood House Restoration

Homewood House Portico Restoration 2012

Are you among the many Baltimoreans who have passed Homewood House on the Johns Hopkins University campus and wondered what the construction is about? Wonder no more! Please plan to join us in learning what it takes to renovate a 211-year-old portico and then come inside for a close-up look at this historic and architectural gem. As for the portico, new discoveries during restoration underscore Homewood House’s superlative construction, and may explain why the house ended up costing four times the original $10,000 that Charles Carroll budgeted for it in 1801.

Tour Details

Wednesday, June 13, 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
3400 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218 (on JHU campus)
$15 members | $25 non-members (wine & cheese will be served)
RSVP for the tour today!

Check out the Homewood House with Explore Baltimore Heritage!

Homewood House is the former home of Charles Carroll, Jr., son of Maryland’s only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence, Charles Carroll of Carrollton. In 1800, the elder Carroll offered his son and new bride, Harriett Chew, the funds to build a country retreat. The original plan was to renovate an existing farmhouse, but Carroll the younger had higher social aspirations and wanted a house to reflect it. With more than a little contention between father and son, Homewood House was completed in 1801 at a cost of $40,000, four times what Father Carroll had wished to spend. The exceedingly high cost, however, went into both great architecture and great craftsmanship.

The current restoration of the south portico has reinforced this, with new discoveries of vaulted arches under the stairs and other construction practices that have helped the building stand straight and true for over two centuries. For the tour, Ms. Catherine Rogers Arthur, Director and Curator of Homewood House Museum, and Mr. Travers Nelson, project manager, will take us through the steps involved in the restoration of the south portico and then into the house itself. Today’s current craftsmen undertaking the restoration work include G. Krug & Son, Baltimore ironmongery in business since 1810, for the original wrought iron railing, and SMG Architects as the lead architect. As an extra bonus, the tour will include Homewood House’s most recent acquisition: Charles Carroll of Carrollton’s architectural drawing desk. With several Atlantic crossings to Ireland and back, this Irish-made desk has quite the story to tell. Please join us for a tour of this preservation project in action and one of Baltimore’s historic treasures.

Baltimore by Bike! Explore Monuments and West Baltimore Parks this spring

Photograph by Patrick McMahon, November 5, 2011

Beginning Memorial Day weekend, we are launching a brand-new series of Baltimore by Bike tours to highlight historic places in Baltimore. We are especially pleased that Dr. Ralph Brown, pediatrician, history lover, and founder of Monumental Bike Tours, has come out of tour retirement to lead many of our rolling sojourns this year. Our first tour – The Monuments of Baltimore – is this Sunday, May 27 for an affordable $10 or check out our free tour of West Baltimore Parks on National Trails Day, Saturday, June 2.

The Monuments of Baltimore

Sunday, May 27, 9:00 am to 12:00 pm
RSVP today! $10 per person.
Meet in front of the Lee-Jackson statute across the street from the main entrance to the Baltimore Museum of Art.  The tour will return before noon.

What better way to get into the spirit of Memorial Day than by learning about Baltimore’s great historic monuments? Peddle between major and minor landmarks with a full dose of history along the way from Dr. Ralph Brown.

Explore West Baltimore Parks

Saturday, June 2, 10:00 am to 12:00 pm
RSVP today! Free!
Meet at the Francis Scott Key Monument – Eutaw Place and Lanvale Street.

West Baltimore’s unique landscape of parks and gardens feature everything from a monument to Francis Scott Key to innovative bioswales for sustainable stormwater management. The best way to get to know these local treasures? Hop on your bike and join us for a free National Trails Day ride through West Baltimore parks!  Together with our partner Bikemore (a new citywide bike advocacy group), we’ll take an easy two-hour ride visiting over 10 small parks and gardens across west and southwest Baltimore.

Find more upcoming bike tours, including East Baltimore Bakeries by Bike on Saturday June 16 and West Baltimore Murals by Bike on Sunday, September 16 on our new Baltimore by Bike page!