Category: Preservation

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.

CHAP Update: Sarah Ann Street Historic District Nomination Advances!

This afternoon the city’s historic preservation commission (CHAP) advanced the nomination for Sarah Ann Street in the Poppleton neighborhood of West Baltimore to become a local historic district. The district would include the alley houses in the 1100 block of Sarah Ann Street that have been owned by Black Baltimore families since they were built in the 1870s, as well as two houses on North Carrollton Street that also have rich histories. The next step for the nomination is for the preservation commission to conduct further research and solicit additional input from the public before holding a second and final hearing this fall.

We at Baltimore Heritage first got involved in the effort to save these historic houses from being demolished back in 2004. We joined neighborhood residents, including homeowner Sonia Eaddy and her family who still live there and are still active advocating for their homes, along with retired judge Tom Ward who worked for decades preserving historic places in West Baltimore. The city’s recent willingness to create a new historic district and preserve the houses comes after years of uncertainty. It also comes after new allies joined the fight, including Dr. Nicole King and her students from the University of Maryland Baltimore County.

If you would like to have your voice heard on this issue, you can email comments to the preservation commission’s executive director, Eric Holcomb: eric.holcomb@baltimorecity.gov. And check back here for additional information as the Sarah Ann Street historic district proposal advances.

Celebrating Noted Baltimore Historian Wayne Schaumburg

I am sad to report that Baltimore Heritage board member Wayne Schaumburg passed away last week. Wayne was a superstar at helping people fall in love with Baltimore. He developed and led tours at Green Mount Cemetery for something like 40 years and they will forever be known as the Wayne Schaumburg Tour. That’s how everyone in Baltimore refers to them! He also developed and led tours of the 1904 Fire downtown, which Baltimore Heritage was fortunate enough to have inherited. Wayne was a teacher in the city’s public schools for his career, but spent an equal amount of energy on helping Baltimore’s historic places. In addition to our board, he was a long time board member of the Irish Railroad Workers Museum and the Baltimore City Historical Society and other groups. And for something like 20 years, he gave lectures on Baltimore’s history to thousands of people all over the region. Almost anywhere I go, people ask me: “Do you know Wayne Schaumburg? He gives the best talks and tours!” In addition to all of this, if you had the privilege to know Wayne, I am sure you will agree that there was not a nicer person to walk on planet Earth.

Victory in Poppleton!

Baltimore Heritage is thrilled to share the news that the Eaddy family and all of the advocates in Poppleton have won. The city just announced that it will not evict the Eaddy family (they will get to continue to own their homes), and that the City is selling the Sarah Ann Street alley houses to non-profit developer Black Women Build for $1 each. Black Women Build has already started thinking through their rehab and eventual sale, with the former tenants getting first priority. This has been 20 years in the making and is a huge victory. A big thank you and congratulations to the Eaddy family and Organize Poppleton for their sustained campaign to save these historic homes. We’ll share more later, but here is a wonderful Baltimore Brew article.