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.

Pente Family: 100 Years in Little Italy

John Pente with daughter Margaret Schwartz and son-in-law Al Schwartz celebrate over 100 years in Little Italy. Photo by Lisa Doyle.

Sadly, Little Italy’s John Pente passed away earlier this week at age 100. Mr. Pente was a lifelong resident of Little Italy and Baltimore Heritage’s first honoree in the Centennial Homes program. Mr. Pente’s family moved into the house on High Street in 1904, and Mr. Pente lived there almost his entire life. His grandfather settled along President Street in Baltimore as an immigrant from Abruzzi, Italy in the 1890s when “Little Italy” was more German and English than Italian.  The area became known as “Little Italy” in the 1920s after the first Italian restaurant opened then. As part of Baltimore’s growing Italian community in the area, the Pente family found work where they could and carried on a family tradition as musicians in various local Italian bands. As a volunteer with St. Leo’s Church, the Sons of Italy, and the ambassador for the Little Italy Film Festival (which projected from a window on his second floor), John Pente was an active participant for decades in helping neighborhood grow and prosper. Part of this remarkable man’s legacy is certainly the Little Italy neighborhood that he took such good care of.

Click here to download a brief profile of the Pente Family by Cristina Ambroselli for our Centennial Homes program.

The Baltimore Sun ran a nice article on Mr. Pente in today’s paper.  Also, WYPR will re-broadcast an interview with Mr. Pente from 2009 when he helped launch the Centennial Homes program.  The interview will air on Friday, July 30, between 9:15 and 9:30 a.m. A viewing will be held at Zanino’s Funeral Home in Highlandtown on Friday between 2:00 and 9:00 p.m. and a funeral mass will be held at St. Leo’s Church in Little Italy on Sunday at 10:00 a.m.

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.