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: Camden Station

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

At the beginning of the railroad era, no one knew what a grand metropolitan rail terminus should look like. In the mid-1850s the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad chose the Italianate style, with bracketed cornices and window arches; a long, symmetrical composition of pavilions and lower hyphens; and a curious skyline of tower and cupolas seemingly drawn from church architecture. At 185 feet, the central tower was the tallest structure in Baltimore when the building was completed in 1867, a beacon for travelers making their way to their trains through the crowded commercial district. As with so many mid-19th century buildings, the architects were Niernsee and Neilson.

With the decline of train service Camden Station declined as well, eventually losing its crowning array of tower and cupolas. In the early 1990s, however, the old station was taken in hand by the architects Cho, Wilkes, and Benn as part of the Oriole Park sports complex. Using fiberglass and other modern materials they reconstructed the stations skyline and prepared the interior for reuse as museum space.

Baltimore Building of the Week: Cast Iron Baltimore

This week’s entry in our Baltimore Building of the Week series is Baltimore’s Cast Iron Buildings,

300 West Pratt Street, courtesy Jack Breihan

Another version of the Italian palace that dominated Baltimore architecture in the middle of the 19th century was not executed in traditional materials like marble (Peabody Institute) or brick (Old Loyola College). Instead it used cast iron and large sheets of glass – both made more abundant by the Industrial Revolution. In 1850, James Bogardus of New York obtained a patent for a system of iron construction. His first great commission was the Sun Iron Building in downtown Baltimore, sadly destroyed in the Great Baltimore Fire. Bogardus and his imitators went on to build a number of iron-and-glass commercial palaces across the United States, often cast by Baltimore foundries like Heyward, Bartlett, & Co. and Denmead’s Monumental Foundry.

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Baltimore Building of the Week: Old Loyola College

Revealing his fondness for the history of his own institution, Dr. John Breihan, a professor of history at Loyola University Maryland, offers this week’s Baltimore Building of the Week on the historic buildings of St. Ignatius Church and Old Loyola College, used since the 1970s as the home of Center Stage,

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

Just a few blocks away from the Peabody, stretching along Calvert Street between Madison and Monument Streets, stands another massive Italian palace, built for another educational institution. The patron here was the Society of Jesus, a Catholic religious order. Again, we see arched windows with elaborate moldings, and a heavy Italianate cornice unifying the northern half, containing St. Ignatius Church (designed by Louis L. Long and completed in 1856) with the southern (designed by O’Connor and Delaney of New York and finished in 1899). Besides the parish church, this huge redbrick palace housed Loyola College and Loyola High School until they split into two separate institutions and moved away in 1922. Since the mid-1970s the long vacant southern section has been imaginatively re-used for two theaters designed by James Grieves and the firm of Ziger, Hoopes, and Snead for the Center Stage repertory theater.

Baltimore Building of the Week: Peabody Institute

If you enjoyed the tour of the Peabody Library during our 50th Anniversary Celebration back on June 11, you will likely enjoy this week’s entry in our Baltimore Building of the Week series on the Peabody Institute,

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

Although a long row of Italianate rowhouses (think Union Square) could look like one of the urban palaces of the Italian Renaissance, Baltimore boasts a few genuine Italianate palaces. In 1857 the international philanthropist George Peabody endowed Baltimore with an institute devoted to music and the arts. The architect Edmund G. Lind designed its initial building in 1859 and a large addition containing a fireproof library built 1875-78. Although the magnificent cast-iron Peabody Library draws the most attention, Lind has done an excellent job uniting the exterior facades of the two buildings beneath a heavy Italianate cornice and balustrade.

Baltimore Building of the Week: Italianate Conversions

Finishing up our series on Italianate rowhouses is this week’s post focuses on Italianate conversions in older neighborhoods such as Federal Hill and Fells Point,

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

The Italianate style, with its consistent cornice line, made for uniform and stately rows of identical houses. In older federal and Greek Revival style rowhouse neighborhoods, however, it had the opposite effect. The imposing cornices reminiscent of the palaces of the Renaissance – and the full-height top storey beneath them – proved so popular that Baltimoreans either tore down their old dormered or Greek Revival rowhouses or converted them to the Italianate style. The result is a romantic jumble of differing rooflines that lends a peculiar charm to older neighborhoods like Fells Point and Federal Hill.

Image courtesy Jack Breihan