Please join us as we celebrate the holidays with tours of two of Baltimore’s most elegant and important historic houses: Homewood House and Evergreen House. Our hosts at each have decorated for the holidays, and we invite you to join us for a little holiday cheer and a lot of Baltimore information on one or both of them.
Tour Information
Homewood House | 3400 North Charles Street, 21218
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
- Wine and cheese: 5:00 pm to 5:30 pm | Tour: 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm
- $20 for members; $30 for non-members (half the proceeds go to support Homewood House).
- Parking is available on Charles Street and other nearby streets.
Evergreen House | 4545 North Charles Street, 21210
Thursday, December 16, 2010
- Wine and cheese: 5:00 pm to 5:30 pm | Tour: 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm
- $20 for members; $30 for non-members (half the proceeds go to support Evergreen House).
- Free parking is available on site.
Register for one or both tours today!
Homewood House
In 1800, Charles Carroll of Carrollton decided to give his son (also Charles) and bride, Harriet Chew, a nice present: a country estate just north of the city. Taking his father’s money but not his advice to renovate an existing farm house, the younger Charles and Harriet commissioned Homewood House. No expense was spared, and at a price tag of $40,000 (a fortune at the time), Homewood became a show place for the elite young couple. The house is noted as one of the best examples of Federal style architecture in the country. Built on a Palladian-inspired five-part plan, Homewood is renowned for its elegant proportions, fine workmanship and materials, and the extravagant detail in all aspects of its construction, from the intricately carved wooden fireplace surrounds, doorways, and chair rails, to the marble painted baseboards and mahogany grained doors and the ornate plaster ceiling ornaments. Johns Hopkins University acquired the building, which gave rise to the “Homewood Campus” name, in 1902 and opened it as a museum in 1987. Please join us and our hosts from the Homewood Museum as we explore the corners of the Homewood House, learn about the architecture of the day, and sip Madeira wine, which you might have been served had you been lucky enough to get an invitation to the house some 200 years ago.
Evergreen House
Evergreen House was built in 1857 by the Broadbent Family. John Work Garrett, president of the B&O Railroad, purchased the mansion 19 years later (in 1878) for his son T. Harrison Garrett. (Incidentally, five years before this, John Work Garrett purchased the Garrett Jacobs Mansion on Mount Vernon Place for his other son, Robert). The Mansion was expanded in the 1880s and again in the 1920s by two generations of family members. It has over 50,000 items from the Garretts, including drawings by Degas and Picasso and the world’s largest collection of Tiffany glass pieces. The building’s rare book library was designed by architect Lawrence Hall Fowler, and contains 8,000 volumes that include works by Shakespeare and Audubon, as well as the signatures of every signer of the Declaration of Independence. The mansion even has its own theater, which is elaborately decorated by the Russian designer Leon Baskt and the only known theater to retain original sets by him. In 1942, the mansion and surrounding 26 acres of landscaped lawns and gardens were deeded to The Johns Hopkins University, under whose care they are today. Please join us for a tour of this fantastic, and more than a little opulent, Baltimore treasure.
This tour series is made possible in part by a generous contribution from the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts and the Maryland State Arts Council. Thank you to our 50th Anniversary Year Sponsors!