Author: Molly Ricks

We Are Now Offering Welcome Back Tours for Downtown Firms!

Downtown is opening up!

Since we’re coming back into the office, now’s the time to learn about where you work. Why does Charles Street narrow at Saratoga? Why do the enormous bronze doors at Ten Light Street sport bee hives, locomotives, and clipper ships? Where can you find hundreds of lions peering down on unsuspecting pedestrians? Join Mr. Johns Hopkins, director of the nonprofit Baltimore Heritage, on a 45-minute guided walking tour to learn about the history, architecture, and stories that make downtown interesting.

Logistics
Length: 45 minutes
Location: Leave from and return to your office lobby (we will tailor the tour to fit your location)
Time: Anytime weekdays 7:00 am to 5:00 pm (fits into a lunch hour or can be the start of a happy hour!)
Cost: $100

Please contact Molly Ricks at ricks@baltimoreheritage.org or 410-332-9992 for scheduling.

 

Want to take your office out for more tours? We’ve got over 15 different tours of downtown. Click here for a whole list!

Announcing New Green Mount Cemetery Walking Tours!

All tours are full

Baltimore Heritage is happy to announce that we will be hosting four tours of historic Green Mount Cemetery starting in April. After 30 years without a break, Baltimore historian Wayne Schaumburg is finally taking a spring off and he has kindly shared his tour notes with us. We hope you’ll join us and tour guide Tim Fabiszak on one of these four dates: April 3, April 17, May 1, & May 15.

Opened in 1839, Green Mount is an early example of an urban-rural cemetery, that is, a cemetery with a park-like setting located close to the countryside. Green Mount is the final resting place of some of Maryland’s most famous, and infamous, figures including Johns Hopkins, Enoch Pratt, William and Henry Walters, Mary Elizabeth Garrett, Betsy Patterson, A.S. Abell, John H. B. Latrobe, A. Aubrey Bodine, John Wilkes Booth, and Elijah Bond, who patented the Ouija Board!

Due to Covid precautions, we are limiting space more than usual. All participants will be required to wear face masks and socially distance during the tour. See these events and more on our Events page!

Members Make It Happen: Thank You from Baltimore Heritage

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We at Baltimore Heritage cannot say it enough. This year has been challenging for everyone and we could not have navigated it without your support. Our new Five Minute Histories video series and our ongoing Legacy Business and Centennial Homes programs, to name a few, are possible only with your help. If you haven’t yet done so, please consider joining or renewing your membership today.

Here are just a few of this past year’s projects made possible with your support:

We produced over 100 Five Minute Histories videos. Beginning the first day of Maryland’s Covid lock-down, we have traveled all over our city covering topics such as the Civil Rights Movement, mercantile history, immigration, religious development, Native American history, LGBTQ heritage, transportation, landscape design, women’s rights, and even some geology.

We expanded our Friday afternoon history lecture series and went virtual. In partnership with the Baltimore Architecture Foundation, we held engaging talks by Charlie Duff, Nancy Proctor, Jackson Gilman-Forlini, Aaron Henkin, Anne Bruder, Meg Fairfax-Fielding, and more.

We handed out 5 micro-grants and 18 preservation awards virtually. We pivoted to a Zoom pitch party to continue to make preservation a participatory sport with micro grants. Thank you to member Brigid Goody for making this yearly event possible. And we have been featuring our 2020 preservation awards winners on our website and on our YouTube channel.

We continued to fight to preserve Baltimore’s heritage. Restoration has begun at the Bruce Street Arabber Stable. Construction continues at the Lafayette Square bathhouses. And the Center for Health Care and Healthy Living at the Baltimore Hebrew Orphan Asylum will soon be 100% occupied by the Baltimore City Health Department and Behavioral Health System Baltimore.

For all of you who volunteer, log-on to our programs, email us kind words (and correct our mistakes), and support our advocacy work in Baltimore, please accept a sincere thank you from all of us at Baltimore Heritage. Your time, talents and financial support make a difference. Please consider joining or renewing your membership.

We wish you a safe holiday season and thank you again for doing so much for Baltimore.

P.S. Need a holiday present idea? Get in touch about how you can get a gift membership for a friend or family-member!

Introducing Our New Video Series on South Baltimore’s Industrial Legacy with the Baltimore Museum of Industry

Baltimore Heritage is pleased to be launching a new series, South Baltimore: In the Shadow of Industry, created with our friends at the Baltimore Museum of Industry. Tune in on Wednesdays for five videos about different industrial sites in Locust Point. Today’s episode showcases the Procter & Gamble factory, today’s Under Armour headquarters!

Micro-Grants Fund Five New Preservation Projects!

Thank you to everyone who came to our virtual micro-grant party last week and helped select the five new ideas to advance preservation in Baltimore! It was a fun and participatory event. Here are the five projects that received funding:

$500 Micro-Grants: 

Friends of Contee-Parago Park: The micro-grant will help them preserve the original dedication plaque installed in the park in 1971. 

Fight Blight Baltimore: The micro-grant will help fund the establishment of a book and food library at 703 N Fremont Ave. 

$250 Micro-Grants: 

ImagineIN: The micro-grant will help create an outdoor visual art video installation at 1647 North Calhoun Street. 

The Linden Avenue Association: This micro-grant will help to repair and repaint the gazebo in the 1700 block of Linden Avenue. 

$50 Micro-Grant: 

The Baltimore Crime Museum: This micro-grant will help to create a podcast about Baltimore’s crime history and how it has shaped Baltimore’s history, geography, and its current situation. 

 

We will keep you posted as these projects move along and, again, thank you!!