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.

Baltimore Building of the Week: Peabody Institute

If you enjoyed the tour of the Peabody Library during our 50th Anniversary Celebration back on June 11, you will likely enjoy this week’s entry in our Baltimore Building of the Week series on the Peabody Institute,

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

Although a long row of Italianate rowhouses (think Union Square) could look like one of the urban palaces of the Italian Renaissance, Baltimore boasts a few genuine Italianate palaces. In 1857 the international philanthropist George Peabody endowed Baltimore with an institute devoted to music and the arts. The architect Edmund G. Lind designed its initial building in 1859 and a large addition containing a fireproof library built 1875-78. Although the magnificent cast-iron Peabody Library draws the most attention, Lind has done an excellent job uniting the exterior facades of the two buildings beneath a heavy Italianate cornice and balustrade.

Baltimore Building of the Week: Italianate Conversions

Finishing up our series on Italianate rowhouses is this week’s post focuses on Italianate conversions in older neighborhoods such as Federal Hill and Fells Point,

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

The Italianate style, with its consistent cornice line, made for uniform and stately rows of identical houses. In older federal and Greek Revival style rowhouse neighborhoods, however, it had the opposite effect. The imposing cornices reminiscent of the palaces of the Renaissance – and the full-height top storey beneath them – proved so popular that Baltimoreans either tore down their old dormered or Greek Revival rowhouses or converted them to the Italianate style. The result is a romantic jumble of differing rooflines that lends a peculiar charm to older neighborhoods like Fells Point and Federal Hill.

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

Baltimore Building of the Week: Italianate Rowhouses

Our Baltimore Building of the Week series from Dr. John Breihan returns with Italianate Rowhouses, the second entry in our three part series on Italianate Rowhouses,

Franklin Square, image courtesy Jack Breihan

Italianate rowhouses, popular in Baltimore from the 1850s until the 1880s and beyond, were particularly suited to long, uniform rows beneath uniform carved cornices. They formed stately “street walls” around Baltimore’s squares and along principal thoroughfares like Broadway. Pictured here are Waverly Terrace, circa 1850, on Franklin Square, and the north side of Union Square, circa 1880. The latter contains the home of the Sage of Baltimore, Henry Mencken, now owned by the City of Baltimore.

Union Square, image courtesy Jack Breihan

Baltimore Building of the Week: Italianate Rowhouse

This week’s edition of the Baltimore Building of the Week series from Dr. John Breihan comes a few days late as we finalize preparations for our 50th Anniversary Celebration this Friday. Please join us for the open house tours on Mount Vernon Place at 4:30 PM or for an evening of Preservation Awards, dinner, and dancing starting at 6:30 PM. This single Italianate rowhouse is the first in a three week long focus on Italianate rowhouses in Baltimore,

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

The heavy carved wooden cornice of this rowhouse was based on the palaces of the great trading families of the Italian Renaissance – the Medici, for example. Perhaps the adoption of this “Italianate” style reflected the booming commerce of a growing Baltimore. At any rate, from the 1850s on, Italianate became the most popular architectural style in Baltimore for the next four decades. Unlike the semi-fortified houses of the Renaissance elites, Italianate rowhouses featured huge windows, increasingly taking advantage of advances in glassmaking that replaced multi-paned windows with window frames incorporating extensive sheets of glass, sometimes triple hung for extra height. Arched doorways were approached by white marble steps. Italianate houses could be either brick or stone. But carved wood cornices crowning flat or shed roofs always remained the hallmarks of this style.

Baltimore Building of the Week: Octagon Houses

This week’s Baltimore Building of the Week from Dr. John Breihan is an unusual dwelling type that can be found throughout the country– the Octagon Houses inspired by Orson Squire Fowler. More information on this fascinating example of American vernacular architecture can be found in the Octagon House, 1850-1860 by Deborah Holmes.

Mt. Washington, courtesy Jack Breihan

In 1848 the polymath Orson Squire Fowler of upstate New York (presumably not related to Baltimore’s Lawrence Hall Fowler) published A Home for All, a book extolling an octagonal floor plan as the most desirable residence. Later editions also extolled a primitive form of concrete construction. In this era of eclectic architecture, other free-thinkers were inclined to try it out. There is a particularly fine single-family octagon in Lutherville. Within today’s city limits, Rev. Elias Heiner of the German Reformed Church built an enormous octagon for the Mt. Washington Female Seminary, which occupied it between 1855 and 1861. For about a century the hilltop octagon housed Mount St. Agnes College, until it merged with Loyola University in the 1970s. It now is part of the Mt. Washington Conference Center. Across Smith Avenue at the foot of the hill stand two unusual octagon duplexes (demi-octagons?), reflecting perhaps a Baltimore tendency to turn anything into a rowhouse.

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