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.

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.

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.

Baltimore Building of the Week: Hansa Haus

This week’s Baltimore Building of the Week from Dr. John Breihan, the Hansa Haus at Redwood and Charles Streets, is right next door to last week’s building– the Savings Bank of Baltimore. The Hansa Haus reflects both Baltimore’s rich German heritage and the history of immigration into Locust Point as the former Baltimore office of the North German Lloyd Steamship Company–

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

A favorite Beaux-Arts era historical-revival building housed the Baltimore offices of the North German Lloyd Steamship Company, a decidedly up-to-date modern enterprise when this building was erected in 1912. Its site, adjacent to the Baltimore Savings Bank (see last week) testified to the importance of German immigration to Baltimore in the early 20th century. To prevent said immigrants from being too homesick, Hansa Haus resembled a half-timbered 16th-century German Rathaus, perhaps the Zwicken in Halberstadt. Originally coats of arms of the cities in the Hanseatic League decorated the upper floor. Since the departure of the steamship line, Hansa Haus has had a variety of uses; it remains a challenge to sympathetic re-use.

Baltimore Building of the Week: Savings Bank of Baltimore

This week’s Baltimore Building of the Week is unfortunately really last week’s Baltimore Building of the Week as we play a bit of catch up. The Savings Bank of Baltimore is a classic bank building at the very heart of downtown–

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

The Beaux-Arts movement of cloaking modern steel-framed buildings with historical architectural styles appears again. This time the style is drawn from ancient Greece. Built in 1907, this elaborate white marble Ionic temple sits atop three underground of parking and vaults. It was built for the Savings Bank of Baltimore, the city’s oldest bank.

Appropriately, the site is the corner of Charles and Baltimore Streets (from which all Baltimore street numbers are calculated). Catty-corner to it is the headquarters of the B&O Railroad, a more conventional Beaux-Arts skyscraper. Both were built in the aftermath of the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904. It currently houses offices.