Category: Education

Our education programs include technical assistance to property owners, heritage education around the Civil War Sequicentennial and the Bi-Centennial of the War of 1812, and our ongoing Race and Place in Baltimore Neighborhoods project.

What Are We Planning for 2026? And why we need your support to make it happen.

With thanks to those who have already donated, we wanted to share what we’re planning for next year and ask again for help in making it happen by joining or renewing your membership! We are a small organization so a gift of any size – from $5 to $500 – will help immensely. Here are a few highlights for how your gift will help in the year ahead:

 

Heritage Tours

This past year we launched a new Inner Harbor by Boat tour and a new walking tour at Green Mount Cemetery focusing on John Willkes Booth and Abraham Lincoln. This spring we will be able to return with more robust tours and events, including more boat tours and a new series we’re calling Baltimore After Dark. Please stay tuned!

 

Five Minute Histories Videos 

We have produced 387 Five Minute Histories and counting! Don’t worry, these are here to stay, and we’re ramping up for a full year of them in 2026.

 

Hands On Preservation Work

This past year we launched a new “voluntours” series where we helped with community trash clean-ups and learned local history in the process. We held two voluntours at Laurel Cemetery and several trash clean-ups at Herring Run Park and Masonville Cove. We plan to continue this unique tour model in 2026.

 

 

We need your help today.

 

We at Baltimore Heritage are a little bit unusual. We rely heavily on kind volunteers to make our work possible, and nearly three quarters of our annual operating income comes from gifts from individuals. Most of these gifts are at our basic membership levels of $35 for an individual and $50 for a family. By donating at any level, be assured that your support goes a long way.

Please accept an enormous thank you to everyone who volunteers with us, comes out for tours and programs (in-person and virtually!), and supports our work by generously donating. Your help makes all of what we do possible.

— Johns Hopkins, Baltimore Heritage

Announcing our New WYPR Weekly Segment!

We are delighted to be partnering with WYPR 88.1 FM on a weekly radio segment called “Five Minutes of Baltimore History” hosted by our executive director, Johns Hopkins! Not all of Baltimore’s history is easy or straightforward, but all of it is important. Frederick Douglass escaped his enslavement from here; Holocaust survivor Gustav Brunn created Old Bay seasoning here; and William Walters gave the world Maryland rye whiskey (and gave us an art museum) from here. We hope you’ll join us each week to learn a little bit more about famous and not-so-famous people and events that continue to shape our city and our nation. To explore more of these stories, check out our Five Minute Histories videos.

The segment will begin airing on Tuesday, November 4, and can be heard on WYPR at 4:44 p.m. In addition to the radio broadcast, Five Minutes of Baltimore History will be available on demand at wypr.org and wherever you get your podcasts.

New Centennial Home: The O’Donnell, Wooden & Crew Family in Patterson Park

On October 16, 2025, Baltimore Heritage awarded a Centennial Homes certificate to Trudee O’Donnell. Trudee’s rowhouse on N. Kenwood Ave has been in her family for over 100 years. Her great-grandmother Gertrude Yowell and husband bought the home in 1922. And as you see from the picture, the potential next owner is in training! Thanks to Trudee and her family for their loving care of this home.

The Baltimore Centennial Homes project, developed in collaboration between Baltimore Heritage and City Councilman James Kraft, recognizes families that have been in the same house for 100 years or more. These families have anchored Baltimore’s historic blocks and neighborhoods through good times and bad. Their stories show the changes that our communities and our city have experienced as well as the critical roles that neighborhoods and their families have played in keeping historic neighborhoods thriving.  See all of our Centennial Homes here!

 

New Inner Harbor History Virtual Tour!

Did you know we have curated virtual tours on our free website and app, Explore Baltimore Heritage? Check out our newest one about the Inner Harbor. America defeated the British here. Frederick Douglass escaped from here. Today we are pioneering watershed restoration here. Join us to discover 300 years of history around Baltimore’s world famous Inner Harbor and see how Baltimore’s wonderful waterfront connects the past with the present and Baltimore to the rest of the world. This virtual tour was created as a companion to our in-person Inner Harbor history boat tour. Thank you for support from National Park Service Chesapeake Gateways and PNC Bank.

 

Happy Pride from Baltimore Heritage!

Happy Pride from Baltimore Heritage! This month we are celebrating and remembering the LGBTQ community that has always been here.

Monumental Elks Lodge #3’s Pansy Balls (click the photo for more information)

 

The Friday Evening Group (click the photo for more information)

 

Baltimore Gay Alliance (click the photo for more information)

 

Rev. Delores Berry/Baltimore Coalition of Black Gay Women & Men (click the photo for more information)