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’s Columnar Monuments

This week’s Baltimore Building of the Week is not, in fact, a building. Instead, it is three of Baltimore’s notable “Columnar Monuments.” Both the Battle Monument and Mount Vernon’s Washington Monument have also been featured on the Monument City website. Visitors can take a tour of the Shot Tower’s ground floor exhibit, sound and light show, and informational video are available with appointment at 10:30 AM on Saturday or Sunday. The Washington Monument is open for visitors Wednesday to Friday 10 AM to 4 PM and Saturday and Sunday 10 AM to 5 PM up until Memorial Day.

Battle Monument, Image courtesy Jack Breihan
Battle Monument, Image courtesy Jack Breihan

Completed during the 1820s, two of these towering structures established Baltimore’s distinction as “the Monumental City.” Maximilian Godefroy’s Battle Monument, depicted on the City flag, commemorated the Defenders who died beating off the British attack in 1814. It combines Egyptian and Roman themes, including a giant set of fasces. A gigantic Roman Doric column, Robert Mills’ Washington Monument portrays the Father of Our Country, dressed in a toga, performing what its builders considered his most heroic act. (What was it? answer next week!) The contemporary Phoenix Shot Tower was a monument to Baltimore’s growing industrial sector; it manufactured lead shot for the Chesapeake Bay duck-hunting industry.

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Baltimore Building of the Week: The Basilica

This week’s featured Baltimore Building of the Week from Dr. John Breihan is the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a National Historic Landmark, National Shrine, Marian Shrine, and Co-Cathedral of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. You can become a fan of this incredible building on Facebook or take a guided tour Monday through Saturday.

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

By far the greatest architectural masterpiece in Baltimore is its long-time Catholic cathedral, now known as the Basilica of the Assumption. Designed by Benjamin Henry Latrobe for Archbishop John Carroll, the Basilica was built between 1806 and 1820. The great domed church with its curious cylindrical towers, our Hagia Sophia, long dominated the Baltimore skyline. To mark its bicentennial in 2006, the Basilica underwent a much-needed rehabilitation of its basic systems and a conjectural restoration of the interior to its appearance in 1820. While some welcome the new bright pastels, others miss two centuries’ accretions of church furniture, gold leaf, and stained glass.

Image courtesy Jack Breihan

Baltimore Building of the Week: Homewood House

This week’s featured Baltimore Building of the Week from Dr. John Breihan is Homewood House at 3400 North Charles Street on the campus of The Johns Hopkins University.

Image courtesy of John Breihan

Even the wealthy Charles Carroll was shocked by the cost of his son’s country villa, Homewood, built early in the 19th century on a hillside north of town.  A federal-style version of the standard five-part Georgian Palladian mansion house (see Mt. Clare), Homewood’s principal floor is tall, elegant, airy, and cool.  Service rooms are tucked away in the basement or attic (there is a fine brick privy in back).  The Johns Hopkins University acquired the surrounding estate and built a new campus there early in the 20th century.  Homewood is open to the public as part of Johns Hopkins University Museums.

The Homewood House Museum is currently hosting a four-part speaker series in association with their fourth annual student-curated focus show, On the Road: Travel and Transportation in Early Maryland. The first event in the series is David Shackelford, Chief Curator at the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum, speaking tonight, February 18, 2010 at 4:30 PM.

Baltimore Building of the Week: 9 North Front Street

Staying in the historic Jonestown neighborhood for another week in our Baltimore Building of the Week series, Dr. John Breihan shares an exceptional example of the characteristic federal row house: 9 North Front Street. Read on then click here for an additional photo of 9 North Front Street from the interesting Monument City project.

Image courtesy Jack Breihan
Image courtesy Jack Breihan

The federal style of architecture was popular during Baltimore’s most vigorous period of growth, from the 1790s to the 1850s, when Baltimore vaulted into second place among American cities. The new residents were mostly housed in 1, 2, and 3½-story dormered brick row houses, less ornate than their Georgian predecessors. They are to be found all around the bustling harbor, from Fells Point through Little Italy and Jonestown to Federal Hill. A good example is 9 N. Front Street, the home of Baltimore’s second mayor, Thorowgood Smith, built in 1790. It was saved from deterioration by the Women’s Civic League during the 1970s. Other federal row houses preserved for public use include the Mother Seton House, the Star-Spangled Banner Flag House, and the Edgar Allen Poe House.

Baltimore’s Centennial Homes: Honoring Neighborhood Stewardship of “Unsung Heroes”

Our volunteer program manager Lisa Doyle wrote this article for the January 2010 issue of Forum News on the development of our Centennial Homes program and the story of John Pente and the Little Italy rowhouse the Pente has owned for over 100 years. Thanks to Lisa for sharing this great story!

Historic preservation is all about places: buildings, sites, communities, even entire towns and cities. As preservationists, we uncover forgotten or neglected details about these treasures, restore them, and find ways to preserve and share their relevance for future generations. Yet some of the greatest preservationists in our own neighborhoods receive scant recognition: the people and families that have been living in the same home on the same block in the same neighborhood for a long time. Baltimore’s Centennial Homes Program seeks to thank these cornerstones of communities by honoring families that have lived in the same house for 100 years or more.

Centennial Homes families are the “unsung heroes” that have played a significant role in preserving the history of Baltimore’s neighborhoods. They have unique voices and perspectives that recount how their neighborhoods have evolved through times of war, immigration, social and economic changes. Heartfelt decisions from generation to generation to remain not only in the same neighborhood but in the same home reflect a true commitment and stewardship for their neighborhoods.

Baltimore’s Centennial Homes Program was born five years ago when a local city councilman was knocking on doors trying to get elected. He came across a number of “little old ladies” who answered their doors and mentioned that they had been born in their houses as had their parents. James Kraft, now a councilman for a district near Baltimore Harbor, felt that there should be some way to thank these families that have long been a part of Baltimore’s historic neighborhoods. He initiated a partnership between the City of Baltimore and Baltimore Heritage, and the Centennial Homes Program began.

The program is modeled after the numerous state programs that honor agricultural properties that have been continuously owned and maintained in agricultural use by the same family for a century or more, such as those of Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, North Dakota, Tennessee, and Wyoming. Families may be recognized in ceremonies at the state fair, as well as with certificates or plaques and other publicity. Colorado’s Centennial Farm Program and Oklahoma’s Centennial Farm & Ranch Program both present an additional Historic Structures Award to farm and ranch families that have preserved four or more historic buildings (at least 50 years old) in conjunction with the land. The Georgia Centennial Farm Program gives special recognition to properties listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Baltimore’s Centennial Homes Program gives this idea an urban twist. The focus of the program is on families and how they have contributed to their communities. The Centennial Homes houses are not grand or historically important, other than as part of the fabric of their historic neighborhoods. And Baltimore Heritage has emphasized the link between the family and neighborhood, regardless of the condition of the house.

From its beginning, the Centennial Homes Program has relied on partnerships with local universities. As a semester project, a Goucher College historic preservation program undergrad created the nuts and bolts of how the program works. Undergraduates from Loyola University and the University of Baltimore history programs interview the homeowners, create a family profile, and document neighborhood history of the last 100 years. Baltimore Heritage features each family and the family’s neighborhood on its website, providing inspiration to other neighborhood residents about their own past and future community involvement. Along with these profiles, each Centennial Home receives a bronze plaque to identify the house and its occupants as long-term stewards.

At the real heart of the program are the people and their neighborhood stories. The story of the first Centennial Homes family tells a lot about the program itself and what it can accomplish. John Pente, the 99-year-old patriarch of the Pente family in Baltimore’s Little Italy neighborhood, lives by himself in a quintessential Baltimore rowhouse. John’s father purchased the house in 1904 and John has lived in it since his birth in 1910. From this house, he wooed his future wife, raised his family, found work during the Great Depression, cheered for returning troops from both World Wars, saw new families join the neighborhood in different waves of immigration and others leave for homes in the suburbs, and experienced booms and busts of economic fortunes. Throughout all this, the family has stayed active in the neighborhood, from volunteering at church dinners to advocating sidewalk repairs. The Pente family has been part of the backbone that makes Little Italy a unique and thriving neighborhood.

For the past 11 years, John has allowed the Little Italy Film Festival, held outdoors on Friday nights in the summer, to project movies from a bedroom window of his home. It was only fitting that the official launch of the Centennial Homes Program honor the Pente family at one such Friday film night. Neighbors new and old came out to honor and thank the Pentes for their stewardship. Most viewers would not identify themselves as “historic preservationists,” but their support for the neighborhood and the Pente family proves otherwise.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the evening was learning that John’s great-niece recently purchased the house next door from her grandmother, John Pente’s sister. With a fifth generation of Pentes due to arrive soon, it appears this family’s commitment to the neighborhood will not fade any time soon. As Meredith Nagle, John’s great-niece, said: “I just couldn’t let someone other than family buy the house that feels like a second home to me.”

There are now nearly a dozen Centennial Homes families identified in ten different neighborhoods across Baltimore, with new leads on possible 100-year owners coming in regularly. As we work to preserve our buildings and neighborhoods in Baltimore, the Centennial Homes Program helps us focus on an essential component: these unsung people and families, whose voices and daily efforts to care for historic communities cannot be forgotten.