Author: Molly Ricks

What Are We Planning for 2024?

And why we need your support to make it happen!

There are only a few days left in 2023, which means you have only a few days left to donate or become a member this year! We are a small organization so a gift of any size – from $5 to $500 – will help immensely. Here are a few highlights for how your gift will help in the year ahead:

  • Heritage Tours: This past year we began hosting tours at Westminster Hall & Burying Ground in addition to our recurring tours at Clifton Mansion, Green Mount Cemetery and in historic neighborhoods around our city. This spring we will be able to return with more robust tours and events, including three new bus tours. Please stay tuned!
  • Five Minute Histories Videos: Our Five Minute Histories series offers a way to connect that in-person programs just can’t. So, don’t worry, these are here to stay, and we’re ramping up for a full year of them in 2024.
  • Critical Preservation Advocacy: This past year we helped fight to preserve architecturally significant rowhouses on Preston Street in Mt. Vernon and several buildings in the Five & Dime Local Historic District near Lexington Market. In 2024, we will continue this work throughout the city, which a special focus on disinvested historic neighborhoods.

 

We need your help today.

 

We at Baltimore Heritage are a little bit unusual. We rely heavily on kind volunteers to make our work possible, and nearly three quarters of our annual operating income comes from gifts from individuals. Most of these gifts are at our basic membership levels of $35 for an individual and $50 for a family. By donating at any level, be assured that your support goes a long way.

So once more for 2023, please accept an enormous thank you to everyone who volunteers with us, comes out for tours and programs (in-person and virtually!), and supports our work by generously donating. We look forward to working with you and connecting with you in the year ahead.

— Johns Hopkins, Baltimore Heritage

Members Make It Happen: Have You Renewed Your Membership?

It’s membership renewal time at Baltimore Heritage! If you haven’t yet done so, please consider joining or renewing your membership today. We’ve still got a whole month left of 2023 with loads more walking tours, Five Minute Histories videos, and other programs coming up. I hope you can join us online or in person.

Your membership makes preservation possible in Baltimore. Thank you for doing so much for our city.

— Johns Hopkins, Executive Director

Spend Your Holidays with Baltimore Heritage: Upcoming December Tours

The holiday season is upon us and we want to spend it with you! Please check out our upcoming heritage tours to get to know even more about Baltimore’s history this winter season. We hope to see you this month!

Boughs of Holly: A Tour of Evergreen Museum & Library Decked Out for the Holidays

When a tremendous Gilded Age mansion gets fully-adorned with holiday decorations, there’s a lot to see. On Tuesday, December 5, please join us for a special winter tour of the Evergreen Museum and Library, which holds 48 rooms, a soaring portico, a Tiffany designed glass canopy, and loads holiday decorations. Register here!

 

The Baltimore Immigration Museum: A Behind-the-Scenes Tour

On Tuesday, December 19, join Baltimore Heritage at the Baltimore Immigration Museum to hear the stories of the various ethnic groups, including Germans, Irish, Jews, Poles, Lithuanians, Czechs, Italians, and Greeks, who started their American journey in Baltimore between 1830 and 1914. Register here! 

 

Up into the Clockworks at the Bromo Seltzer Tower

On Wednesday, December 27, join us for a behind-the-scenes tour of the Bromo Seltzer Tower! Completed in 1911, the tower’s four clocks each measure 24 feet across, a foot more London’s Big Ben, and the tower itself was the tallest building in Baltimore at the time. Our tour through the building will include a trip up into the clockworks at the top to look at the tick-tock operation in process and peer out the translucent windows. Register here! 

 

Our 2023 Preservation Celebration

Finally, with Thanksgiving just behind us, we at Baltimore Heritage have a lot to be thankful for, starting with the kind volunteers who lead our tours, research and write about historic places for Explore Baltimore Heritage, join us in fighting for threatened historic landmarks, and so much more. You make our work possible. Thank you all!

— Johns Hopkins, Executive Director

PS: It’s the time of year when we both give thanks and look forward to the year ahead. It is also the time of year when we ask you to join or renew your membership support for Baltimore Heritage. Your gift makes our work possible.

Johns Hopkins’ 20th Anniversary at Baltimore Heritage

Hi friends,

My name is Lesley Humphreys and I am the current President of the Board of Baltimore Heritage. 2023 marks the 20th anniversary of Johns Hopkins joining us as Executive Director. As a way of saying thanks for all he has done for our organization, for our members, and for Baltimore, we put together a short two-minute video.

We at Baltimore Heritage are also honoring Johns’ anniversary (and hopefully many years ahead!) by raising funds to support our current work and to secure our future. We hope you will consider making a contribution today. You can donate online, call us at 410-332-9992, or send a donation through the mail (100 N. Charles St, Suite P101, Baltimore, MD 21201).

We can’t thank Johns enough for his thoughtful and steadfast tenure as the Executive Director of Baltimore Heritage. And on behalf of Baltimore Heritage’s board of directors, I also can’t thank you enough for your commitment and support.

Sincerely,

Lesley Humphreys, Board President
Baltimore Heritage

Thank You for Attending Our Preservation Celebration 2023!

Last night, Baltimore Heritage had its annual Preservation Celebration! We handed out 13 awards to groups and individuals doing fabulous work celebrating and preserving our city’s history and buildings. We gave out 6 micro-grants to 6 very worthy community projects. We conducted our organization’s annual meeting and welcomed a few new board members. And we said a big thank you to our wonderful volunteers. They make historic preservation possible in Baltimore. All the while, we ate delicious food from Pitamore and drank wine from Spirits of Mt. Vernon! Thank you to everyone attended.

 

Award Winners 

Volunteer of the Year: Pat Hawthorne
For years of dedication to Baltimore’s historic places

Afro Charities
For 60 years of preserving the Afro American Newspaper’s history

Various organizations accepting the 2023 Preservation Award for Lexington Market

Raymond Bahr
For bringing the history of Canton to light

BGE Gas Regulator Fighters
For fighting for Baltimore’s historic neighborhoods

Siobhan Hagan and SHAN Wallace
For bringing Baltimore’s historic moving images and home movies to light

Friends of Herring Run Park
For creating the Heritage Trail at Herring Run Park

The Authors and Editors of A Place for Memory
For a new book on Laurel Cemetery

Maryland Women’s Heritage Center
For promoting the history of the Women’s Suffrage Movement

E. Evans Paull
For the book Stop the Road: Stories from the Trenches of Baltimore’s Road Wars

The Friends of the Ship Caulkers’ Houses
For the stabilization and exterior restoration of 612-614 S. Wolfe Street

Cory Ann Adcock-Camp
For the reclamation and restoration of 1810 Barclay Street

Latrobe Building / Ulysses Hotel
For restoration of the historic Latrobe Building into the Ulysses Hotel

Lexington Market
For conserving public market heritage in the new Lexington Market

 

Pitch Party Winners

TyJuan Hawkins of St. Luke’s Youth Center pitching a microgrant project

$1000: St. Luke’s Youth Center

$1000: Govans Presbyterian Church Racial Justice Ministry

$1000: Maryland Women’s Heritage Center

$500: Friends of Herring Run Park

$500: Baltimore Lab School

$500: Baltimore Crime Museum