Category: Partners

Join Us for Baltimore Heritage Night at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra

The Meyerhoff Symphony Hall is turning 40 this year and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is shaking things up with a new conductor and a season of innovative music from around the world. To help the BSO usher in this new era, we hope you can join us for a Baltimore Heritage night on Saturday, June 3 to see Latin Fire.

Plan to arrive early on Saturday June 3 to celebrate Latinx heritage in the lobby with food for purchase from local food vendors, live music, and cultural performances! Also, BSO oboist and historian Michael Lisicky will chat with us before the show. 

Stay late on June 3rd for the final BSO Late Night Trivia of the season! BSO violist Helen Hess returns as your host to test your knowledge of Latinx influence on classical music and the history of our city, with an appearance from Baltimore Heritage’s Executive Director, John W. Hopkins. You’ll want to study up, because the first-place prize is a doozy – two tickets to the Season 23-24 Gala Celebration on Saturday September 22, 2023, featuring Music Director, Jonathon Heyward, and Dance Theatre of Harlem.

Use this link to the BSO’s website for tickets or enter the code BALTHERIT at checkout for the Baltimore Heritage 20% discount.

Here’s what the BSO says about the show:

The scintillating young conductor Enrico Lopez-Yañez, already Principal Pops Conductor with the Nashville Symphony, makes his Baltimore Symphony Orchestra debut. Drawing on his Mexican-American heritage, in collaboration with the Costa Rican trumpeter Josè Sibaja and the Mexican soprano Mónica Abrego, Lopez-Yañez presents his own sparkling arrangements of Latin hits like “Tico-Tico no Fubá” along with classical gems rooted in the Spanish-speaking world, including a sultry suite from Bizet’s Carmen.

Funding to Restore the Mitchell Law Office in Upton

The Mitchell Law Office in Upton is set to receive $1.75 million from Congressman Kweisi Mfume. This money will be used to transform the building, which was once the office of Maryland’s first Black woman lawyer, Juanita Jackson Mitchell, into a legal hub in West Baltimore. Rev. Al Hathaway of Beloved Community Services Corporation is spearheading this alongside his other project, the PS 103/Thurgood Marshall School restoration. Here is a link to a Baltimore Banner article that ran yesterday.

The Mitchell Law Office on the end, c. 2015
About 7 years ago, Baltimore Heritage secured $10,000 from the National Trust of Historic Preservation to stabilize the roof of the Mitchell Law Office. This was the project’s first funding and helped get the restoration going. We’ve been involved in several ways since then and will continue to help wherever we can.

 

The Mitchell Law Office restoration joins several other ongoing West Baltimore restoration projects including PS 103 and Upton Mansion (for the Afro American offices), along with the already-completed Lillie Carroll Jackson Civil Rights Museum. We are very near to having a critical mass of nationally important Civil Rights sites that have been restored, all within a few blocks of each other. For several years Baltimore Heritage, Rev. Hathaway and others have been talking about how to put Baltimore on the national map as a Civil Rights heritage destination. We’re making progress!

 

–Johns Hopkins, Executive Director

Thank You for Attending Our Preservation Celebration 2022!

Last week, Baltimore Heritage had its annual Preservation Celebration and we are delighted we could once again gather in person! We handed out 14 awards to groups and individuals doing fabulous work celebrating and preserving our city’s history and buildings. We gave out 6 micro-grants to 6 very worthy community projects. We conducted our organization’s annual meeting and welcomed a few new board members. And we said a big thank you to our wonderful volunteers. They make historic preservation possible in Baltimore. All the while, we ate delicious food from Trinacria and drank wine from Spirits of Mt. Vernon! Thank you to everyone attended.

 

Award Winners: 

Sonia Eaddy and Nicole King
For tireless advocacy in historic Poppleton

CASA
For the restoration of the 1921 Belnord Theater

Award winners Nicole King (left) and Sonia Eaddy (right) at the celebration!

Lillie Carroll Jackson Civil Rights Museum
For developing a Baltimore Civil Rights history school curriculum

Baltimore City Department of General Services and
Carroll Museums, Inc.
For the restoration of the interior of the Phoenix Shot Tower

The Peale
For the restoration of The Peale

Friends of Patterson Park and
Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks
For restoration of the historic superintendent’s house in Patterson Park

Nia Redmond
For creating the East Baltimore Historical Library

Meadow Development Group
For restoration of The Eleanor at 3400 Auchentoroly Terrace

Jubilee Baltimore
For rehabilitation of the Odell’s Building at 19-21 East North Avenue

Bree Jones
For advancing equitable renewal in historic West Baltimore

Volunteer of the Year – Richard Messick
For enhancing Baltimore’s historic places through years of research, publishing, and tour guiding

 

Pitch Party Winners

$1000: St. Mark’s Lutheran Church
For exterior lighting

Diana Bailey, Executive Director of the Maryland Women’s Heritage Center, receiving her microgrant check from Baltimore Heritage Executive Director Johns Hopkins

$750: Laurel Cemetery Memorial Project
For new cemetery signage

$750: Greater Baltimore Urban League
For a new history exhibit

$500: Maryland Women’s Heritage Center
For a new electronic exhibit

$500: Carroll Museums, Inc.
For a new Shot Tower sign

$500: Filbert Street Garden
For new beehive boxes

Join Us at Our Preservation Celebration 2022!

Join us for our Preservation Celebration 2022 at the newly restored and re-opened Peale Museum! On October 13, we’ll honor our 2022 Preservation Award winners and, with your help, give out four microgrants to people working on the front lines in our historic neighborhoods. We’ll say thank you to our volunteers and honor all of their hard work this year. This gathering also acts as Baltimore Heritage’s annual meeting where the board will elect its new members. With food from Baltimore vendors, wine and beer from Maryland suppliers, and complimentary valet service, we hope you will join us for what promises to be a wonderful evening. And we couldn’t be in a better historic place than the newly renovated Peale Museum. We hope you’ll join us on October 13!

Register here! Tickets are a suggested donation of $25.

Save the Date: Bmore Historic is on September 23, 2022!

Baltimore’s annual unconference on people, places, and the past will be held in-person at the Baltimore Museum of Industry on Friday, September 23, 2022!

What is Bmore Historic?

Bmore Historic is a participant-led unconference for people who care about public history and historic preservation in and around Baltimore. This includes historians, preservationists, museum professionals, archivists, librarians, humanities scholars, students, volunteer activists, Main Street board members, educators, and anyone interested in exploring the intersections between people, places, and the past in Baltimore and Maryland.

Unconferences are events run by participants. Attendees set the agenda for what’s discussed, lead the sessions and workshops that fill the schedule, and create an environment of innovation and productive discussion.

Past, in-person Bmore Historic unconferences have been structured around four session blocks: two in the morning and two in the afternoon. We usually have between four to six sessions in each of the time blocks for a total of twenty sessions throughout the day. Learn more about Bmore Historic or read our introduction to unconferences. 

 

We hope to see you on September 23!