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.
Thanks to everyone who joined us last month for our West Baltimore Squares Photowalk & Tour organized in partnership with the Baltimore Sun’s DarkRoom. Photographers, locals and first-time visitors to Sowebo all had the chance to photograph local landmarks from Hollins Market to Franklin Square with a stop at the H.L. Mencken House on Union Square – where Will Cocks caught this nice shot of Mencken’s cigar box. Find more featured images from the photowalk at the Baltimore Sun DarkRoom blog.
We were excited to partner with Greenpants and Luminous Interventions at the Transmodern Festival last week on a tour of Downtown’s West Side. Our walk featured building-sized light and video projections during the tour animated the stories of historic sites along Howard Street. Find more images of the projections from Luminous Interventions.
Baltimore Heritage is teaming up with Read That City — a new book club for The City That Reads dedicated to reading non-fiction, novels and more about Baltimore and by Baltimoreans — to organize our latest Young Preservationist Happy Hour! Join us next Friday evening in Mt. Vernon to celebrate a few of the new books (and local authors) that will be featured at the CityLit Festival on Saturday, April 14.
Friday, April 13, 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm
The Brewer’s Art, 1106 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21201
RSVP today to join our e-mail list!
Pick up a copy of Wicked Baltimore: Charm City and Scandal to peek into the darker corners of Baltimore’s past or check out From Animal House to Our House: A Love Story for a story of the challenges and rewards of a DIY rowhouse rehab. We’ll be joined by both authors of these two new Baltimore books — Lauren Silberman and Ron Tanner — for a informal opportunity to drink and chat about books, buildings and history with fellow Baltimore preservationists (and book lovers)!
The Brewers Art is located in a classy historic building in the heart of Mt. Vernon right on the Charm City Circulator Purple Route. With their affordable happy hour specials and a great selection of house beers, Brewer’s Art gets very crowded early in the evening so please come out early. Don’t forget to RSVP and have a chance to win free Behind the Scenes tour tickets next Friday!
On Tuesday, the Secretary of the Department of Interior Ken Salazar celebrated Women’s History Month with an appearance in downtown Baltimore at the Maryland Women’s Heritage Center, just one week before Baltimore Heritage’s Behind the Scenes Tour there (Saturday March 31, 2-3 pm). Joined by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Judge and First Lady Katie O’Malley, Secretary Salazar noted a serious underrepresentation of historic sites associated with women’s history, and articulated a vision for getting more of these places designated as National Historic Landmarks and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In one example, the Secretary noted that of the country’s National Historic Landmarks, a designation that the Department of Interior bestows on buildings with the highest level of national significance, only 4% are places with significance to women’s heritage.
As the Secretary of the Department of Interior, Mr. Salazar oversees numerous agencies that are responsible for heritage sites, including the National Park Service that manages the National Register of Historic Places and the National Historic Landmark program. In his vision for the near future, Secretary Salazar said that as the National Park Service gears up to celebrate its centennial anniversary in 2016, he is committed to launching a national dialogue over women’s heritage sites to create a blue print for how to bring these to a higher level of prominence and visibility.
Citing Maryland as a national leader in the role of state governments to promote women’s heritage, the Secretary also said that he is committed to more full federal funding for State Historic Preservation Offices as a way to make sure that smaller places and ones with more local significance also receive assistance.
Baltimore Heritage will wrap up Women’s History Month with a tour of the Maryland Women’s Heritage Center on Saturday, March 31. The tour is from 2-3 pm at the Center: 39 West Lexington Street, in the historic former BG&E Building. The cost is $10. Register online today.
Did you know that March is Women’s History Month? What better way to celebrate than by visiting the Maryland Women’s Heritage Center located in the historic 1916 Baltimore Gas and Electric Company building on Lexington Street? We hope you can join us.
Tour Details
Maryland Women’s Heritage Center | 39 W. Lexington Street (corner of Lexington & Liberty Sts.), Baltimore, MD 21201
Saturday, March 31st | 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
$10 members | $20 non-members
The Maryland Women’s History Center is the first comprehensive state-based women’s history center and museum of its kind in the nation. For our tour, a docent from the Center will guide us through exhibits on Maryland women “firsts,” unsung heroines, and the suffrage movement in Maryland. The Center’s location at the BG&E building is more than fitting. In the early 1900s, a suffrage pioneer named Edith Houghton Hooker staged a major rally for giving women the vote outside the building at Lexington and Liberty Streets. Ms. Hooker had come from Buffalo to Baltimore as one of the first women accepted into the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. In 1909, she established the Just Government League of Maryland, a local affiliate of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and edited and published Maryland Suffrage News from 1912 through the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. In addition to the history of the suffrage movement, we will be among the first to see the Center’s newest exhibit on Maryland women in science and technology.
