Behind the Scenes Holiday Tours of Homewood & Evergreen

Image courtesy JHU Museums

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!
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Baltimore Building of the Week: Baltimore Trust Company

This week’s Baltimore Building of the Week could go by many different names. It began as the Baltimore Trust Company but was later known as the Maryland National Bank, Nations Bank and at the present the Bank of America Building–

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

Besides college campuses, the Beaux-Arts combination of the historical Gothic style and modern technology was very popular for skyscrapers. Some, like the Woolworth Building in New York or the Chicago Tribune tower, were directly modeled on medieval precedent – just enormously taller. Other early 20th-century skyscrapers combined Gothic verticality with streamlined decorations derived from the new airplane and automobile industries. New York’s Chrysler Building is a prime example. Its contemporary in Baltimore, originally the Baltimore Trust Co., leans more to Gothic than to Art Deco, especially in its cavernous banking floor. At 34 stories and 509 feet, it was Baltimore’s tallest building for a generation before being edged out by I.M. Pei’s USF&G tower, 529 feet. Baltimore Trust went bankrupt in the Great Depression, but a succession of banks have maintained this crowning spire of the Baltimore skyline.

Win a week at a private Nicaraguan villa!

Support Baltimore Heritage by buying a chance to win a week’s stay at a privately owned Spanish Colonial villa along Nicaragua’s Pacific coast, courtesy of Baltimore’s own Agora, Inc.  And they make great stocking stuffers! You can experience the privacy of a remote tropical paradise and the luxury of modern accommodations with a private cook, house-keeper, and transportation to and from the airport.  Horseback riding, spa, tennis, restaurant, bar, pool and more are available at the adjacent resort of Rancho Santana.

  • Maximum 500 raffle tickets will be sold
  • $20 for 1 ticket or $50 for 3
  • Drawing at the end of December 2010

Call Baltimore Heritage director Johns W. Hopkins at 410-332-9992 for details and to purchase raffle tickets.

Bittersweet news for the Poe House

This fall has been bittersweet for Baltimore’s Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum. In November, the Poe House was honored by the Maryland Office of Tourism with a 2010 tourism award for its “Nevermore 2009” campaign. The year-long tribute to Poe’s 200th birthday generated $1.9 million in advertising equivalency, over 400 printed articles, and sold out events with people coming from as far away as Europe and Asia.

Unfortunately this fall the Poe House also received news that Baltimore City has decided to no longer provide funding for the city-owned museum. The museum’s sole staff member, director Jeff Jerome, had worked through Baltimore’s Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP) for nearly three decades. The museum and CHAP are now working to find a solution to keep the building open. They have put out a request for proposals to hire a consultant to develop an operating and financial plan for the long-term sustainability of the museum. The deadline for submissions is in early December and CHAP expects to bring on the consultant in early January 2011.

Baltimore Building of the Week: Loyola University Quadrangle

This week’s edition of our Baltimore Building of the Week highlights the history of Loyola University–where Dr. John Breihan teaches–with a feature on the Loyola University Quadrangle,

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

Another historical style taken up under the impulse of the Beaux-Arts movement was Gothic. Unlike the “gingerbread” Gothic revival of the early 19th century or the robust Victorian Gothic, the Gothic revival of the Beaux-Arts period adhered closely to actual medieval models, except that now these were steel framed buildings. Plumbing and heating were included; buttresses were entirely ornamental. The “Collegiate Gothic (so called on account of its popularity on college campuses) had tracery, moldings, and sculptural executed in white or tan limestone that contrasted with the natural colors of local fieldstone walls.

American colleges were restless in the early 20th century; many abandoned constricted urban sites for new locations in the suburbs. In Baltimore, Johns Hopkins moved to Homewood, Loyola to Evergreen, and Goucher to Towson (the latter move delayed by World War II). Hopkins’ new campus is neo-federal in style; Goucher took up the International Style. Loyola’s Collegiate Gothic period began in 1922 with Beatty Hall, pictured here along with neighboring Jenkins Hall, both from 1922-23. Unlike Hopkins and Towson, which face the outside world across a green lawn or “campus,” Loyola’s academic buildings and chapel face inwards a central court that derives from medieval college quads at universities like Cambridge and Oxford.