Explore Baltimore Heritage 101 teaches you how to discover and share stories of historic places

December 28, 2015

In January 2016, Baltimore Heritage is offering a free course—Explore Baltimore Heritage 101—designed to teach local residents how to research, write and share the stories of historic places in their communities. The course is going to cover four main themes:

Research: How to use digital sources to learn about local history and architecture
Writing: How to write about historic places for local audiences
Visuals: How to combine writing with maps, photos, and graphics
Outreach: How to reach local audiences with online engagement and public programs

Our goal is not to make you an “expert” on Baltimore history. Instead, we want to help you become a better researcher, writer, historian and teacher. Explore Baltimore Heritage 101 is an opportunity to connect with friends and neighbors who share an interest in the stories of Baltimore’s historic buildings and neighborhoods.

Please sign up to hear more about Explore Baltimore Heritage 101—we expect to publish the course schedule and open registration soon!

Over the course of five class sessions, we plan to guide a group of students through the process of sharing a story about a historic place including the opportunity to publish a story on our Explore Baltimore Heritage website and app.

We know you and your community have stories to share. Important stories are found everywhere around us—in parks, public art, rowhouses and schools. And good stories about places are really about people. Historian Eric Sandweiss explained it neatly:

“[the history of a city street] means little if it’s not tied to the story of the farmer who sold the land, the developer who bought it from him, the families who campaigned to have it paved, the men who laid the asphalt, or the children who rode their bikes on it.”

By empowering you to connect stories from the past with places found in your neighborhood today, we know we are helping you to build a stronger future for Baltimore. Supporting local residents like you is our central goal for the Local Preservation School—our new experiment in online education funded by the National Park Service. This winter class is our first step in creating free open online educational resources that people across the United States can use to get more involved with saving historic places in their own communities.

Even if you can’t join is for our class this winter, we invite you to subscribe to the Local Preservation School newsletter, follow @localpast on Twitter, share links or comments with the #localpast hashtag, or get in touch with your questions or suggestions.

P.S. Thanks to everyone who has already completed our course planning survey. The survey is still open for responses so please share your comments and help us put together a great class this winter!

Happy Holidays from Baltimore Heritage

December 23, 2015

On behalf of Baltimore Heritage, I hope you are enjoying a cheerful holiday season. I am thankful for the volunteers, members, and supporters who helped us to sustain and expand Baltimore Heritage’s education and preservation programs over the past year.

Before we all start to sing Auld Lang Syne, I’d like to share a few highlights from our year in review:

We expanded our tours. With our new Monumental City Tours, we offered volunteer-led tours every Sunday morning from April to November from Patterson Park to the Shot Tower. And we are getting ready to do it again in 2016!
We celebrated heritage milestones. We welcomed the tenth family into our Centennial Homes program honoring families that have been in the same house for a century. We also organized a year-long series of Fell’s Point walking tours celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Robert Long House.
We documented Baltimore’s Civil Rights heritage. In partnership with the Maryland Historical Trust, our project—Looking for Landmarks from the Movement—has mapped over 200 places (from churches to rowhouses to tennis courts) associated with the Civil Rights movement in Baltimore. We are already putting this research to work with a new initiative to protect threatened Civil Rights landmarks.

Photograph by Auni Gelles, 2015 December 5.

Be sure to learn more about what we do with your support in our 2015 year in review! Thank you again to everyone who volunteered with us, joined or renewed their membership, and came out on a tour to learn more about Baltimore. If you have not contributed yet in 2015, please donate online today or send a check to 11 1/2 W. Chase Street, Baltimore, MD 21201.

I wish you a happy holiday season and I look forward to seeing you in the new year.

Department of Public Works releases final plan for Druid Hill Reservoir project

December 18, 2015

On Wednesday, the Baltimore Department of Public Works released their “100%” final plan for the Druid Hill Reservoir project. DPW is planning to install two drinking water tanks (one holding 35 million gallons and another 19 million) buried under the western third of Druid Lake. After construction, the land above the tanks would become part of the park including a new band shell. DPW plans to convert the remaining eastern part of the reservoir into a publicly accessible lake but Druid Lake would no longer be part of the city’s drinking water supply.

View of Druid Lake looking towards apartment houses in Reservoir Hill, 1930 April 24. Baltimore Museum of Industry, BG&E Collection, BGE.3375N

Changes to Druid Lake are required by new federal policies to improve drinking water safety and follow nearly three years of study and public meetings. With the release of this final plan, the Department of Public Works is moving forward with implementation and anticipates completing work in four to five years – 2019 or 2020.

Throughout the planning process, Baltimore Heritage worked with neighbors and the Friends of Druid Hill Park, to draw attention to issues around the treatment of the historic lake and the new configuration of Druid Hill Park. We now have answers to a few of these big questions.

What happens to the historic stone wall and iron fence around the lake?

Around the eastern area of the lake, the project plan keeps the stone wall and fence in place and repairs any deteriorated elements. Around the western area (located above the tanks), the plan keeps segments of the stone wall in place but removes all the existing ironwork. The goal of the latter changes is to make the lake accessible to the public and support new opportunities for recreational boating, fishing, and other activities.

Now that the lake is no longer needed to supply drinking water, will it still be kept full of water?

The Department of Public Works has committed to keep Druid Lake filled with water by diverting groundwater into the reconstructed lake and, if necessary, supplementing that supply with drinking water.

How does this project pay for the necessary park improvements?

Funding for this project from the Department of Public Works should pay for widening the path on the southern part of the lake and constructing the base for the band shell. The Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks is expected to find funding for to complete the band shell and related park improvements. Funding for this additional work is not currently included in the capital budget for Recreation and Parks but we hope to see those resources identified before construction is complete.

Illustration of proposed improvements. Baltimore City Department of Public Works.

Join the conversation about Baltimore’s Confederate Monuments

December 11, 2015

Lee-Jackson Monument, 2015. Baltimore Commission to Review Baltimore’s Public Confederate Monuments.

Thank you to everyone who came out and joined our tour of Baltimore’s Confederate Monuments at Wyman Park Dell this past weekend. As I explained in my testimony before the Special Commission reviewing the city’s Confederate monuments on October 29, Baltimore Heritage supports the review process and is working educate the public about the history of the monuments. Our organization has not made any formal recommendation for what we think the commission should do about the monument. We think it is important for everyone with an interest in this issue to learn more and to add their voice to the ongoing discussion. To support this goal, we have put together a set of educational resources to help you prepare your comments or testimony.

What is the history of the monuments?

Confederate Monument, Mount Royal Terrace (c. 1906). Library of Congress

In September, Baltimore Heritage has published a detailed study on the history of the monuments with a particular focus on how race and politics shaped their meaning in the past and present. We also published our testimony from October 29 and our full tour notes from the December 5 walking tour. If you have any questions or suggestions, please let us know—we plan on continuing to revise and expand these materials in the months ahead. Additional profiles on the four monuments under review are available from the Special Commission.

Where are the monuments located?

We have also put together a map showing the four monuments selected for review and the broader collection of monuments, statues and historic sites related to the theme of Civil War memory and the Lost Cause.

What do the monuments look like?

The staff of the Commission has shared their extensive photo documentation of all four monuments and we have uploaded these photographs to an album on Flickr so anyone can get a close look at the monuments from the general surroundings to the smallest details.

How do I send comments?

There are three ways to share your comments: send a letter by mail, send an email, or attend the public hearing on December 15. Please note that your comments become part of the public record and may be shared by the Commission as part of the process.

To submit comments by email contact monuments.review@baltimorecity.gov or use the online contact form.
To submit comments by mail, send a letter to the Commission to Review Baltimore’s Public Confederate Monuments c/o Eric Holcomb, 417 E. Fayette St. 8th floor, Baltimore, MD 21202.
To testify at the public hearing on December 15, you should prepare your testimony in advance, sign-up before the meeting, and bring a printed copy of your testimony for the Commission. Find additional details about the public hearing on our calendar.

How do I prepare effective testimony?

For anyone interested in testifying at the meeting on December 15, we have six quick tips for making the most of your testimony:

Introduce yourself
Lead with your key message
Make it personal
Stick to the facts
Keep it short
Say thank you

Check out our expanded version of this guide including links to more related resources. The Special Commission has details about the process of signing up to testify and what to expect in their guide (PDF).

For questions about this issue, please feel free to contact me at pousson@baltimoreheritage.org or contact our director Johns Hopkins at 410-332-9992.

Renew your Baltimore Heritage membership in 2015

December 10, 2015

As we head towards the end of the year, I want to say thank you to all of our volunteers, supporters, and members for making this another exciting year of preservation and education at Baltimore Heritage. I also want to ask you to renew your membership (if you haven’t already!).

Eli Pousson and Louis Hughes, Mount Vernon Pride Walking Tour. Photograph by Nicole Stanovsky, 2015 May 31.

Membership giving is the largest single source of support for our organization every year. Contributions from members are critical for all that we do, from the Centennial Homes program honoring Baltimore families living in the same house for a century or more to the walking and building tours we organize throughout the year.

Member support also has given us the foundation to launch two major new initiatives in 2015. The first is Baltimore’s Civil Rights Heritage: Looking for Landmarks from the Movement—a partnership with the Maryland Historical Trust to document and preserve places associated with the long history of the Civil Rights movement in Baltimore. Of course, this effort became even more urgent in November with the demolition of Freedom House, the home to Baltimore’s first black City councilman and the long-time headquarters for the NAACP.

The second project is our new Local Preservation School—a unique effort supported by the National Park Service to build an open online educational resource for volunteer preservation advocates around the country. We’re looking forward to offering our first course—Explore Baltimore Heritage 101—in January 2016. This free class will teach people both online and in person how to research and write about historic places.

With your help, the year ahead is full of promise and opportunity. You can count on a full year of walking, biking, and historic building tours. With our community partners in Northeast Baltimore, we are working to bring public archaeology back to Herring Run Park in the spring. And, of course, we are continuing our advocacy to preserve and revitalize irreplaceable historic places from the West Side of downtown to the Hebrew Orphan Asylum.

Photograph by Eli Pousson, 2015 May 13.

Membership begins at $35 for individuals and $50 for families and it only takes a few minutes to donate through our website. Thank you again for your support.

P.S. Baltimore Heritage membership makes a great holiday present! With tour and event discounts, it is a gift that keeps on giving throughout the year. Please email me at hopkins@baltimoreheritage.org or call 410-332-9992 for more information.