Category: Behind the Scenes Tours

Boo! Greenmount and New Cathedral Cemetery tours for Halloween

Who’s Who in Baltimore: Greenmount Cemetery and Famous Marylanders Lunch, Talk and Tour

Saturday, October 27, 2012, 12:00 pm to 2:30 pm
RSVP today!  $40 per person (includes lunch)
Tour begins with lunch and a talk at the Baltimore Montessori Public Charter School, 1600 Guilford Avenue

Greenmount Cemetery, image courtesy Jack Breihan

From elites like William and Henry Walters, Johns Hopkins, and Enoch Pratt, to extraordinary slaves like Patty Atavis, and even the infamous assassin John Wilkes Booth, the dead at Greenmount Cemetery tell a rich and fascinating story of the growth of Baltimore. For this tour, we’re pleased to be partnering with the Maryland Historical Society and Greenmount Cemetery tour guide Wayne Schaumburg.

The program will begin with lunch and a discussion of some of the Marylanders buried at Greenmount led by curators at the Maryland Historical Society using items in the Society’s collections. After lunch, we’ll drive over to the cemetery to join Baltimore historian and Greenmount guide Wayne Schaumburg for a tour of the cemetery, its ornate grave stones, and its notable inhabitants. Space is limited!

Behind the Scenes at New Cathedral Cemetery

Saturday, November 10, 2012, 10:00 am to 12:00 pm
RSVP today! $10 per person
Meet at the Cemetery’s main entrance  – 4300 Old Frederick Road, 21229

New Cathedral Cemetery, courtesy jomiwi/Flickr.

Covering 125 acres in West Baltimore and with its origins dating to St. Peter’s Kirkyard at Saratoga and Cathedral Streets in the 1770s, New Cathedral Cemetery is a historic gem that is surprisingly hidden. Among other things, it is the resting place of more Hall of Fame baseball players than any other cemetery in the country, including Orioles greats from the 1890s Ned Hanlon, Joe Kelley, and John McGraw. It is also the resting place of Baltimore mayors Solomon Hillen, Thomas D’Alesandro, Jr., and Clarence (du) Burns, entrepreneur and philanthropist Reginald F. Lewis, and Mother Mary Lange, founder of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the first ever congregation of women religious of African descent. Charles Carroll of Carrollton was originally buried here until he was reinterred at Doughoregan, the family estate in Howard County, but the cemetery still claims at least two other Carroll family members: Charles Carroll of Homewood and Governor John Lee Carroll.

With three centuries of wonderful headstones and statuary, the cemetery is also rich with sculpture and art, and of course stories about Baltimore. Please join us and cemetery historian Susan Schmidt on this trip through Baltimore history as told through New Cathedral Cemetery.

Explore Colonial Grandeur at the Perry Hall Mansion

Join us in exploring one of Baltimore County’s most historic places, Perry Hall Mansion, home of the Gaugh Family. We’re pleased to host this event with our partners, the Friends of the Perry Hall Mansion and the Preservation Alliance for Baltimore County.

Behind the Scenes Tour of Perry Hall Mansion

Wednesday September 19, 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm
3930 Perry Hall Rd, Perry Hall, MD 21128
RSVP today! $15 per person.

Erected high on a hill above the Gunpowder River Valley, Perry Hall Mansion dominated life in northeastern Baltimore County in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Built in the 1770s by Harry Dorsey Gaugh, Perry Hall was named after the family castle near Birmingham England. The 16-room home, the seat of a vast plantation, soon became one of the leading houses in colonial Maryland. The mansion, considered a “sister” house to Hampton Mansion not very far away, turned from a house of raucous parties to a place of more reserved pleasure as Gaugh and his wife, Prudence, became ardent supporters of the early Methodist movement that had strong roots in Maryland.

Gaugh became a distinguished planter, a member of Maryland’s House of Delegates, and on the board of one of Maryland’s first orphanages. After Gaugh’s death in 1808, the mansion remained in the family for nearly 50 years. It was sold to a group of investors in 1852 that carved the plantation into lots for houses, many of which went to German immigrants. By 2001, the estate had dwindled to four acres and the house was sold to Baltimore County for use as a museum and community center. The County completed a first stage of restoration in 2004, and exterior restoration won an award from the Preservation Alliance of Baltimore County as an “outstanding public project.” The Friends are continuing with the restoration of this stately home.

Celebrate five years of Behind the Scenes Tours with a House and Village Tour in Dickeyville

Baltimore Heritage’s Behind the Scenes Tours Program is celebrating 5 years and over 100 tours of sites throughout Baltimore with a guided house and village walk in Dickeyville.  Please join us for this fundraising event to learn about one of Baltimore’s oldest communities, peek inside a few private homes, and ensure the tours can keep going strong for years to come.

House and Village Tour in Dickeyville

Saturday, September 8, 2012
4:00 to 5:30 p.m.
2411 Pickwick Rd (Baltimore 21207)
$25 for members / $35 for non-members
RSVP today and bring a friend!

The Gwynns Falls first saw industrial development as early as the late 1700s and, by 1808, the small industrial village began to form around an early paper mill along the water where Dickeyville sits today. Although few of these early stone structures remain, the village endured and grew in the mid 1800s when the Wethered Brothers, owners of the mills, began building homes for their workers and made other improvements for the community. The Wethered’s sold off small lots to private owners, many of whom built their own houses along with public buildings such as a fraternal hall, a general store, and churches. The diversity of worker housing and industrial buildings created over time resulted a uniquely diverse architecture that is at the heart of the historic village’s captivating character today.

In the 1930s, however, the isolated mill village was rocked by change thanks to the start of the Great Depression and the introduction of electrified industrial facilities that brought older mills like those on the Gwynns Falls to a stop. In 1934, the entire stock of buildings was sold at auction and bought by a group called the Title Holding Company. The new owners hired Palmer and Lambden, noted local architects from the Roland Park Company, to build new houses and renovate existing ones, using the Roland Park Company as its sales agent. A rush of new residents decided they wanted their community to resemble an English village in design and name – making Dickeyville one of Baltimore’s earliest attempts at historic restoration. The new homeowners added many historic details such as gaslamps, Belgian Block gutters, and picket fences, and gave their streets names evoking another era – like Pickwick Road named for an English village.

Dickeyville residents have worked hard for several generations to maintain and build from the village’s historic buildings and character. Standing in the center of the community today, you might swear you were in the middle of an 19th century village in the Cottswalds. Please join our hostess, Patricia Hawthorne, and resident tour guide Mike Blair for a short stroll around the village and a look inside three private homes: with hosts Elizabeth and Steven Sfekas, Leslie and Bruce Greenwald, and Patricia Hawthorne.

Behind the Scenes Tour of the Old Town Firehouse

Which is older, Old Engine House No. 6 or the Baltimore City Fire Department? If you picked the firehouse you would be correct. Completed in 1853, this venerable fire station predates the Baltimore fire department by four years. It is located on Gay Street in the Jonestown neighborhood and was built not for Baltimore City but for the Oldtown Independent Fire Company. In its day, this fire company would fight battles with rival companies over who would have the honor of putting out a blaze, a practice that helped give Baltimore its notorious name, “Mobtown.” In addition to its age, the building boasts notable architecture, especially its 103-foot Italianate-Gothic tower that was copied from Giotto’s campanile in Florence, Italy.

On the inside, Engine House No. 6 was home to a steam engine named, appropriately, the “Deluge,” that weighed 8,600 pounds. During the great 1904 Fire, teams from the firehouse helped pump water from the Jones Falls to prevent the fire from jumping the river and destroying East Baltimore, and also operated as a sort of field hospital for injured firemen. In 1960 Baltimore’s Fire Board recommended razing the tower because it had outlived its usefulness. The tower and the station, however, hung on in active use until 1976 when the building closed as a municipal fire station and transformed into the Baltimore Fire Museum. Today the building is included on the list of landmarks that the city is evaluating with regard to use and ownership. Please join us on a tour this wonderful historic space and its rich collection of artifacts to learn about this fascinating part of Baltimore’s history.  We will have the honor of our tour being lead by Deputy Chief/Fire Marshal Raymond C. O’Brocki who will share his research on the firehouse.

Tour Details

Baltimore City Fire Museum
416 N. Gay Street, Baltimore, MD 21202
Thursday, August 9, 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
$15 members | $25 non-members (wine & cheese will be served)
RSVP for this tour today!

Behind the Scenes Tour of Homewood House Restoration

Homewood House Portico Restoration 2012

Are you among the many Baltimoreans who have passed Homewood House on the Johns Hopkins University campus and wondered what the construction is about? Wonder no more! Please plan to join us in learning what it takes to renovate a 211-year-old portico and then come inside for a close-up look at this historic and architectural gem. As for the portico, new discoveries during restoration underscore Homewood House’s superlative construction, and may explain why the house ended up costing four times the original $10,000 that Charles Carroll budgeted for it in 1801.

Tour Details

Wednesday, June 13, 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
3400 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218 (on JHU campus)
$15 members | $25 non-members (wine & cheese will be served)
RSVP for the tour today!

Check out the Homewood House with Explore Baltimore Heritage!

Homewood House is the former home of Charles Carroll, Jr., son of Maryland’s only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence, Charles Carroll of Carrollton. In 1800, the elder Carroll offered his son and new bride, Harriett Chew, the funds to build a country retreat. The original plan was to renovate an existing farmhouse, but Carroll the younger had higher social aspirations and wanted a house to reflect it. With more than a little contention between father and son, Homewood House was completed in 1801 at a cost of $40,000, four times what Father Carroll had wished to spend. The exceedingly high cost, however, went into both great architecture and great craftsmanship.

The current restoration of the south portico has reinforced this, with new discoveries of vaulted arches under the stairs and other construction practices that have helped the building stand straight and true for over two centuries. For the tour, Ms. Catherine Rogers Arthur, Director and Curator of Homewood House Museum, and Mr. Travers Nelson, project manager, will take us through the steps involved in the restoration of the south portico and then into the house itself. Today’s current craftsmen undertaking the restoration work include G. Krug & Son, Baltimore ironmongery in business since 1810, for the original wrought iron railing, and SMG Architects as the lead architect. As an extra bonus, the tour will include Homewood House’s most recent acquisition: Charles Carroll of Carrollton’s architectural drawing desk. With several Atlantic crossings to Ireland and back, this Irish-made desk has quite the story to tell. Please join us for a tour of this preservation project in action and one of Baltimore’s historic treasures.