Author: Eli

Eli Pousson started as a Field Officer at Baltimore Heritage in partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation in October 2009. Prior to moving to Baltimore, Eli worked for the DC Office of Historic Preservation and completed graduate work in anthropology and historic preservation at the University of Maryland College Park. Eli continues to work with the Lakeland Community Heritage Project and other heritage organizations in Prince George’s County, Maryland.

Summer news from Baltimore Heritage

Baltimore Heritage members should discover a bit of preservation news in their mailbox this week as we just sent out a late summer edition of our Baltimore Heritage newsletter. A few of our features may be familiar to readers of this blog, including our piece on John Pente and an update on the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, but the newsletter also includes previews for upcoming events, a list of this year’s Preservation Award winners, and an advocacy update on a threatened building in Ridgely’s Delight. With a fresh visual design and a new format, we welcome any questions or comments on the issue.

You too can receive a copy of the Summer 2010 Baltimore Heritage newsletter by becoming a member of Baltimore Heritage today! Individual memberships start at only $35 (less than $3 a month!) and include discounts on all of our Behind the Scenes tours and first chance at registration for our popular Baltimore by Foot spring walking tour series. Read up on the membership benefits at each level of support and consider becoming a member or renewing your support for historic preservation in Baltimore.

Baltimore Building of the Week: Second Empire Rowhouses

This week’s featured Baltimore Building of the Week from Dr. John Breihan is the stylish Second Empire Rowhouse,

St. Paul Street, courtesy Jack Breihan

St. Paul Street is particularly rich in rowhouses in the Second Empire style. Note the elaborate window moldings and of course the crowning Mansard roof. These houses were probably constructed in the 1870s, the heyday of the style. The grandest of the Second Empire city houses was the mansion of Enoch Pratt on Monument Street, an 1870s-era remodeling of an original Greek Revival house of 1847. The house has been preserved by the Maryland Historical Society.

Enoch Pratt House, courtesy Jack Breihan

Baltimore Building of the Week: City Hall

This week’s entry in our Baltimore Building of the Week series from Dr. John Breihan features the Baltimore City Hall,

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

Although it imitates the arrangement of the U.S. Capitol – central dome and symmetrical side wings, the Baltimore City Hall is covered in French architectural elements, including banded rustication, arched windows, and a crowning Mansard roof. How did this come about?

Between 1861 and 1865 the American Civil War retarded most building projects. By the time it ended, tastes had changed. Although the Italianate style remained popular (especially in conservative Baltimore), the antebellum Greek and Gothic Revival styles faded away. Indeed, this whole era in American architecture bears a European name: “Victorian,” for the queen of Great Britain, 1837-1901. Victorian buildings showed off the new products of the industrial revolution then pouring forth a wealth of new building products – cheaper bricks and cut stone, encaustic tiles and terracotta, various forms of structural iron.

The Victorian style from France is named for the Second Empire of the Emperor Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, who styled himself Napoleon III. It was this Napoleon who extended the Louvre and laid out the boulevards and sewers that made Paris the most modern city in the world in the late 19th century. The Second Empire style became very popular for government buildings after the Civil War; it was sometimes called the “General Grant” style after the 18th President. In Baltimore, George A. Frederick’s design, completed in 1875, employed a good deal of cast iron, including the 227-foot tall dome designed by Wendel Bollman and cast by Bartlett, Robbins, and Company.

About 75 years after their construction, Victorian buildings inevitably came to be seen as downright ugly. In Baltimore, the construction of the Abel Wolman Municipal Building overshadowed City Hall, blocking any views from the north. In the 1970s, demolition of City Hall was seriously discussed. But wiser heads prevailed, and a prize-winning renovation equipped City Hall for continued use as the center of Baltimore’s government.

Baltimore Building of the Week: Eastern Female High School

We’re still playing a bit of catch-up on the Baltimore Building of the Week, but we should soon return to our regular weekly schedule. Today’s featured building is the Eastern Female High School at 249 Aisquith Street owned by Sojourner-Douglass College, is also included on our Baltimore Heritage Watchlist for its continued vacant condition.

Eastern Female High School, August 2007

An odd urban version of the towered Italian Villa style, this building includes symmetrical towers at the corners – along with Italianate arched windows and bracketed cornices. A pioneering effort in women’s education, the school was built in 1869 at the corner of Orleans and Aisquith Streets. It is the oldest Baltimore school building still standing. Derelict in the 1970s, it was restored in the following decade as housing for elderly citizens. In 2010, the again-vacant landmark awaits another round of adaptive reuse.

Baltimore Building of the Week: Clifton Mansion

This edition of our Baltimore Building of the Week series with Dr. John Breihan is a few days late but still a stunning landmark of Baltimore history and architecture: Clifton Mansion,

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

The country home of Baltimore’s premier philanthropist, the wealthy merchant Johns Hopkins, Clifton represents another variation on the Italianate architectural style so popular in the middle of the 19th century. Besides their massive symmetrical town palaces with heavy overhanging cornices, the merchant princes of the Italian Renaissance also built less formal suburban villas. The layout was deliberately asymmetrical, especially evident in a tall tower placed at an off-center location in the design. Johns Hopkins certainly qualified as a merchant prince. In addition to his town mansion on Saratoga Street (since demolished), Hopkins in the 1840s began to remodel an older Federal-style house situated on a suburban hilltop, once the home of an 1814 Baltimore Defender. The architectural firm of Niernsee and Neilson incorporated the old house into a much larger mansion, including various Italianate elements – particularly bracketed cornices and arched windows and porch arcades – combined with the asymmetrical layout and 80-foot tower that mark the Italian Villa style.

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