2026 Preservation Celebration: Send Us Ideas for Awardees and Microgrants!

We are thrilled that this year’s Baltimore Heritage Preservation Celebration will be at the Baltimore Streetcar Museum! On October 8, we’ll honor our 2026 Preservation Award winners and, with your help, give out five micro-grants (from $500 to $1500) to people working on the front lines in our historic neighborhoods. We’ll say thank you to our volunteers and honor all of their hard work this year. And, we’ll be celebrating local Baltimore businesses by giving away door prize gift certificates to local restaurants, theatres and more! With dinner and drinks from locally-owned Baltimore vendors, we hope you will join us for what promises to be a wonderful evening. The event is free with a suggested donation of $25.

In addition to joining us on October 8, please take a minute to send us your suggestions for our annual preservation awards (email hopkins@baltimoreheritage.org with award nominations). And if you are helping improve a historic neighborhood or place in the city, please consider applying for one of our microgrants. See below for more information.

–Johns Hopkins, Executive Director

About Our 2026 Historic Preservation Awards

At our October 8 celebration, we will honor people in Baltimore who over the last year have made an impact in helping save our historic places and improve our historic neighborhoods.

Our awards recognize work of all kinds: people who have done an excellent rehab job on their house or building; people who have volunteered at a historic site; people who have stepped up to improve their historic community with a new program or partnership. Individuals are eligible, as are organizations, corporations, and government agencies or programs. Self nominations are encouraged! Please email nominations to Johns Hopkins (hopkins@baltimoreheritage.org) by July 31.

 

About Our 2026 Microgrants

We’re in our 11th year of giving away microgrants to help fund preservation work in the city.

We’ll pick the most promising ideas and give them a chance for one $1500 grant, one $1000 grant and three $500 grants. Supporters of each idea will get three minutes to pitch them and at the end, all of us present will cast ballots to decide which ideas receive which micro grants.

The types of eligible projects are endless, and as long as they relate to Baltimore’s history, heritage, historic buildings or historic neighborhoods we will consider them. Past award winners include: restoring leaking masonry at a historic church, launching an after school arts-based safe space program in a historic neighborhood, supporting archaeological efforts at a historic furnace, and providing supplies for a community trying to provide access to a neighboring park. The sky’s the limit!

The award amounts may not be enough to complete an entire project. That’s OK. The goal is to help spark new and support existing neighborhood-level preservation work. You don’t need to be a nonprofit organization or even a formalized group to be eligible. Individuals and small groups are welcome! Complete rules can be found on the application. Please apply by September 11, 2026.

Join Us on October 8 at Our Preservation Celebration

Join us for our free Preservation Celebration 2026 at the Baltimore Streetcar Museum! On October 8, we’ll honor our 2026 Preservation Award winners and, with your help, give out five micro-grants (from $500 to $1500) to people working on the front lines in our historic neighborhoods. We’ll say thank you to our volunteers and honor all of their hard work this year. And, we’ll be celebrating local Baltimore businesses by giving away door prize gift certificates to local restaurants, theatres and more! With dinner and drinks from locally-owned Baltimore vendors, we hope you will join us for what promises to be a wonderful evening. The event is free with a suggested donation of $25.

Event Schedule: 

5:30 pm – Doors Open with Food and Drink

6:00 pm – Welcome

6:05 pm – Presentation of 2026 Awards

6:30 pm – Microgrant Presentations and Selection

About Our 2026 Historic Preservation Awards

At our October 8 celebration, we will honor people in Baltimore who over the last year have made an impact in helping save our historic places and improve our historic neighborhoods.

Our awards recognize work of all kinds: people who have done an excellent rehab job on their house or building; people who have volunteered at a historic site; people who have stepped up to improve their historic community with a new program or partnership. Individuals are eligible, as are organizations, corporations, and government agencies or programs. Self nominations are encouraged! Please email nominations to Johns Hopkins (hopkins@baltimoreheritage.org) by July 31.

 

About Our 2026 Microgrants

We’re in our 11th year of giving away microgrants to help fund preservation work in the city.

We’ll pick the most promising ideas and give them a chance for one $1500 grant, one $1000 grant and three $500 grants. Supporters of each idea will get three minutes to pitch them and at the end, all of us present will cast ballots to decide which ideas receive which micro grants.

The types of eligible projects are endless, and as long as they relate to Baltimore’s history, heritage, historic buildings or historic neighborhoods we will consider them. Past award winners include: restoring leaking masonry at a historic church, launching an after school arts-based safe space program in a historic neighborhood, supporting archaeological efforts at a historic furnace, and providing supplies for a community trying to provide access to a neighboring park. The sky’s the limit!

The award amounts may not be enough to complete an entire project. That’s OK. The goal is to help spark new and support existing neighborhood-level preservation work. You don’t need to be a nonprofit organization or even a formalized group to be eligible. Individuals and small groups are welcome! Complete rules can be found on the application. Please apply by September 11, 2026.

Laurel Cemetery: Added to the National Register of Historic Places

This past Tuesday, Laurel Cemetery was officially listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Baltimore Heritage, in partnership with the Laurel Cemetery Memorial Project, helped write the nomination. This historic property finally has the recognition it deserves as Baltimore’s first non-denominational African American cemetery, incorporated in 1852.

For decades Laurel Cemetery was the premiere burial site for African Americans, used by families across spectrums of social class, occupation, education, and religion. Here, the lives of washerwomen and laborers were commemorated alongside Civil War veterans and some of the most active and influential agents of African American progress. In 1894, Frederick Douglass traveled to Laurel Cemetery to speak at the unveiling of a monument honoring Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne, the sixth Bishop of the AME Church and founder of Wilberforce University. Leading Maryland Civil Rights leaders such as Rev. Harvey Johnson and Rev. Alexander Walker Wayman were also buried here. It is estimated that this burial ground was the resting place of an 37,000-42,000 people.

In 1957, the sole shareholder of the Laurel Cemetery Company sold the land against the wishes of descendants of those interred at the site. The closing of Laurel Cemetery was a politicized maneuver, organized clearly along lines of race and class. A series of lawsuits seeking justice for the disenfranchised descendants failed to prevail in the courts. Thus, after being in existence for 106 years, Laurel Cemetery was leveled and most of the site was paved over and completely forgotten in collective memory. One small undisturbed portion of the cemetery remains hidden in plain sight and this is the portion we nominated to be on the National Register of Historic Places. In February 1962, the former site of Laurel Cemetery became a department store. Today it is the Belair-Edison Crossing Shopping Center. For decades, most Baltimoreans have not known the site’s significance, the identities of those buried here, or even their own family connections to this space.

Thanks to the work of the Laurel Cemetery Memorial Project, Laurel Cemetery is no longer forgotten. It is celebrated as a sacred space and an important site of Black history and our city’s history. This nomination further supports the preservation and education of a key site in Baltimore’s (and Maryland’s) history.

Learn more about Laurel Cemetery on the Laurel Cemetery Memorial Project’s website. And stay tuned for a digitized version of the Laurel Cemetery’s National Register nomination form!

(July 15) Picnic in the Park: Druid Hill Park’s Grove of Remembrance

Join your friends at Baltimore Heritage for our second ‘Picnic in the Park’ evening of the summer! This FREE series celebrates the history of green spaces in our city as we explore some of the fantastic parks Baltimore offers. Pull out your picnic blanket so you can get comfy while we start with a quick talk from members of Baltimore Heritage on the history of the park and who made this green space possible, then we will enjoy some time socializing with others interested in history and preservation in the city. We will provide some cold drinks and snacks, but please feel free to bring your own refreshments, takeout from one of the many delicious local restaurants surrounding the park, or just come to enjoy chatting with your favorite local history buffs!