Category: Preservation

2026 Preservation Celebration: Send Us Ideas for Awardees and Microgrants!

We are thrilled that this year’s Baltimore Heritage Preservation Celebration will be at the Baltimore Streetcar Museum! On October 8, we’ll honor our 2026 Preservation Award winners and, with your help, give out five micro-grants (from $500 to $1500) 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. And, we’ll be celebrating local Baltimore businesses by giving away door prize gift certificates to local restaurants, theatres and more! With dinner and drinks from locally-owned Baltimore vendors, we hope you will join us for what promises to be a wonderful evening. The event is free with a suggested donation of $25.

In addition to joining us on October 8, please take a minute to send us your suggestions for our annual preservation awards (email hopkins@baltimoreheritage.org with award nominations). And if you are helping improve a historic neighborhood or place in the city, please consider applying for one of our microgrants. See below for more information.

–Johns Hopkins, Executive Director

About Our 2026 Historic Preservation Awards

At our October 8 celebration, we will honor people in Baltimore who over the last year have made an impact in helping save our historic places and improve our historic neighborhoods.

Our awards recognize work of all kinds: people who have done an excellent rehab job on their house or building; people who have volunteered at a historic site; people who have stepped up to improve their historic community with a new program or partnership. Individuals are eligible, as are organizations, corporations, and government agencies or programs. Self nominations are encouraged! Please email nominations to Johns Hopkins (hopkins@baltimoreheritage.org) by July 31.

 

About Our 2026 Microgrants

We’re in our 11th year of giving away microgrants to help fund preservation work in the city.

We’ll pick the most promising ideas and give them a chance for one $1500 grant, one $1000 grant and three $500 grants. Supporters of each idea will get three minutes to pitch them and at the end, all of us present will cast ballots to decide which ideas receive which micro grants.

The types of eligible projects are endless, and as long as they relate to Baltimore’s history, heritage, historic buildings or historic neighborhoods we will consider them. Past award winners include: restoring leaking masonry at a historic church, launching an after school arts-based safe space program in a historic neighborhood, supporting archaeological efforts at a historic furnace, and providing supplies for a community trying to provide access to a neighboring park. The sky’s the limit!

The award amounts may not be enough to complete an entire project. That’s OK. The goal is to help spark new and support existing neighborhood-level preservation work. You don’t need to be a nonprofit organization or even a formalized group to be eligible. Individuals and small groups are welcome! Complete rules can be found on the application. Please apply by September 11, 2026.

Join Us on October 8 at Our Preservation Celebration

Join us for our free Preservation Celebration 2026 at the Baltimore Streetcar Museum! On October 8, we’ll honor our 2026 Preservation Award winners and, with your help, give out five micro-grants (from $500 to $1500) 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. And, we’ll be celebrating local Baltimore businesses by giving away door prize gift certificates to local restaurants, theatres and more! With dinner and drinks from locally-owned Baltimore vendors, we hope you will join us for what promises to be a wonderful evening. The event is free with a suggested donation of $25.

Event Schedule: 

5:30 pm – Doors Open with Food and Drink

6:00 pm – Welcome

6:05 pm – Presentation of 2026 Awards

6:30 pm – Microgrant Presentations and Selection

About Our 2026 Historic Preservation Awards

At our October 8 celebration, we will honor people in Baltimore who over the last year have made an impact in helping save our historic places and improve our historic neighborhoods.

Our awards recognize work of all kinds: people who have done an excellent rehab job on their house or building; people who have volunteered at a historic site; people who have stepped up to improve their historic community with a new program or partnership. Individuals are eligible, as are organizations, corporations, and government agencies or programs. Self nominations are encouraged! Please email nominations to Johns Hopkins (hopkins@baltimoreheritage.org) by July 31.

 

About Our 2026 Microgrants

We’re in our 11th year of giving away microgrants to help fund preservation work in the city.

We’ll pick the most promising ideas and give them a chance for one $1500 grant, one $1000 grant and three $500 grants. Supporters of each idea will get three minutes to pitch them and at the end, all of us present will cast ballots to decide which ideas receive which micro grants.

The types of eligible projects are endless, and as long as they relate to Baltimore’s history, heritage, historic buildings or historic neighborhoods we will consider them. Past award winners include: restoring leaking masonry at a historic church, launching an after school arts-based safe space program in a historic neighborhood, supporting archaeological efforts at a historic furnace, and providing supplies for a community trying to provide access to a neighboring park. The sky’s the limit!

The award amounts may not be enough to complete an entire project. That’s OK. The goal is to help spark new and support existing neighborhood-level preservation work. You don’t need to be a nonprofit organization or even a formalized group to be eligible. Individuals and small groups are welcome! Complete rules can be found on the application. Please apply by September 11, 2026.

Laurel Cemetery: Added to the National Register of Historic Places

This past Tuesday, Laurel Cemetery was officially listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Baltimore Heritage, in partnership with the Laurel Cemetery Memorial Project, helped write the nomination. This historic property finally has the recognition it deserves as Baltimore’s first non-denominational African American cemetery, incorporated in 1852.

For decades Laurel Cemetery was the premiere burial site for African Americans, used by families across spectrums of social class, occupation, education, and religion. Here, the lives of washerwomen and laborers were commemorated alongside Civil War veterans and some of the most active and influential agents of African American progress. In 1894, Frederick Douglass traveled to Laurel Cemetery to speak at the unveiling of a monument honoring Bishop Daniel Alexander Payne, the sixth Bishop of the AME Church and founder of Wilberforce University. Leading Maryland Civil Rights leaders such as Rev. Harvey Johnson and Rev. Alexander Walker Wayman were also buried here. It is estimated that this burial ground was the resting place of an 37,000-42,000 people.

In 1957, the sole shareholder of the Laurel Cemetery Company sold the land against the wishes of descendants of those interred at the site. The closing of Laurel Cemetery was a politicized maneuver, organized clearly along lines of race and class. A series of lawsuits seeking justice for the disenfranchised descendants failed to prevail in the courts. Thus, after being in existence for 106 years, Laurel Cemetery was leveled and most of the site was paved over and completely forgotten in collective memory. One small undisturbed portion of the cemetery remains hidden in plain sight and this is the portion we nominated to be on the National Register of Historic Places. In February 1962, the former site of Laurel Cemetery became a department store. Today it is the Belair-Edison Crossing Shopping Center. For decades, most Baltimoreans have not known the site’s significance, the identities of those buried here, or even their own family connections to this space.

Thanks to the work of the Laurel Cemetery Memorial Project, Laurel Cemetery is no longer forgotten. It is celebrated as a sacred space and an important site of Black history and our city’s history. This nomination further supports the preservation and education of a key site in Baltimore’s (and Maryland’s) history.

Learn more about Laurel Cemetery on the Laurel Cemetery Memorial Project’s website. And stay tuned for a digitized version of the Laurel Cemetery’s National Register nomination form!

Baltimore Heritage Needs a Few Good Quilters!

If you are an experienced sewist who would like to use your skills and talents to join other volunteers in creating a group project that celebrates Baltimore, this post is for you.

Baltimore Heritage would like to submit a quilt to the 2026 Homage to Baltimore Quilting Competition, https://www.homagetobaltimorequiltingcompetition.com, and we could use extra hands to help create a quilt that reflects Baltimore Heritage’s commitment to Baltimore’s communities via places, people, and traditions.

Our idea is to create quilt blocks that are inspired by the subjects of our Five Minute Histories videos. We have a few subjects in mind but will also consider suggestions (please visit our YouTube channel for inspiration). Blocks will be a standard size (yet to be determined) and will include space to cite the topic being represented as well as the quilter’s name. Blocks can include a wide ranging of quilting techniques including (but not limited to) piecing, applique, and embroidery. Blocks will be due March 1 to give us time to assemble and quilt the piece by the April 1 deadline.

Our initial though is that volunteers would work on their blocks individually, though we will schedule a meeting kickoff via Zoom once we have our volunteers in place. If, however, there is a desire for a dedicated sew-in day, we could try to make that happen. We will ask for progress photos from individuals to be able to provide updates via social media, so our community can see us at work.

What we cannot do:
-teach quilting or piecing—experienced sewists only
-provide sewing machines
-provide materials—though if someone is in need, there’s a good chance we can crowd source small pieces of fabric

What we can do:
-coordinate and make assignments
-handle quilt assembly, quilting, and submission
-provide updates via social media
-answer questions
-enthusiastically cheer on this project!

If this sounds like something you would like to be involved in and have time for, please contact Mary Zajac at zajac@baltimoreheritage.org by Tuesday, January 20. Thanks!

What Are We Planning for 2026? And why we need your support to make it happen.

With thanks to those who have already donated, we wanted to share what we’re planning for next year and ask again for help in making it happen by joining or renewing your membership! We are a small organization so a gift of any size – from $5 to $500 – will help immensely. Here are a few highlights for how your gift will help in the year ahead:

 

Heritage Tours

This past year we launched a new Inner Harbor by Boat tour and a new walking tour at Green Mount Cemetery focusing on John Willkes Booth and Abraham Lincoln. This spring we will be able to return with more robust tours and events, including more boat tours and a new series we’re calling Baltimore After Dark. Please stay tuned!

 

Five Minute Histories Videos 

We have produced 387 Five Minute Histories and counting! Don’t worry, these are here to stay, and we’re ramping up for a full year of them in 2026.

 

Hands On Preservation Work

This past year we launched a new “voluntours” series where we helped with community trash clean-ups and learned local history in the process. We held two voluntours at Laurel Cemetery and several trash clean-ups at Herring Run Park and Masonville Cove. We plan to continue this unique tour model in 2026.

 

 

We need your help today.

 

We at Baltimore Heritage are a little bit unusual. We rely heavily on kind volunteers to make our work possible, and nearly three quarters of our annual operating income comes from gifts from individuals. Most of these gifts are at our basic membership levels of $35 for an individual and $50 for a family. By donating at any level, be assured that your support goes a long way.

Please accept an enormous thank you to everyone who volunteers with us, comes out for tours and programs (in-person and virtually!), and supports our work by generously donating. Your help makes all of what we do possible.

— Johns Hopkins, Baltimore Heritage