Category: Preservation

Members Make It Happen: Thank You from Baltimore Heritage

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We at Baltimore Heritage cannot say it enough. This year has been challenging for everyone and we could not have navigated it without your support. Our new Five Minute Histories video series and our ongoing Legacy Business and Centennial Homes programs, to name a few, are possible only with your help. If you haven’t yet done so, please consider joining or renewing your membership today.

Here are just a few of this past year’s projects made possible with your support:

We produced over 100 Five Minute Histories videos. Beginning the first day of Maryland’s Covid lock-down, we have traveled all over our city covering topics such as the Civil Rights Movement, mercantile history, immigration, religious development, Native American history, LGBTQ heritage, transportation, landscape design, women’s rights, and even some geology.

We expanded our Friday afternoon history lecture series and went virtual. In partnership with the Baltimore Architecture Foundation, we held engaging talks by Charlie Duff, Nancy Proctor, Jackson Gilman-Forlini, Aaron Henkin, Anne Bruder, Meg Fairfax-Fielding, and more.

We handed out 5 micro-grants and 18 preservation awards virtually. We pivoted to a Zoom pitch party to continue to make preservation a participatory sport with micro grants. Thank you to member Brigid Goody for making this yearly event possible. And we have been featuring our 2020 preservation awards winners on our website and on our YouTube channel.

We continued to fight to preserve Baltimore’s heritage. Restoration has begun at the Bruce Street Arabber Stable. Construction continues at the Lafayette Square bathhouses. And the Center for Health Care and Healthy Living at the Baltimore Hebrew Orphan Asylum will soon be 100% occupied by the Baltimore City Health Department and Behavioral Health System Baltimore.

For all of you who volunteer, log-on to our programs, email us kind words (and correct our mistakes), and support our advocacy work in Baltimore, please accept a sincere thank you from all of us at Baltimore Heritage. Your time, talents and financial support make a difference. Please consider joining or renewing your membership.

We wish you a safe holiday season and thank you again for doing so much for Baltimore.

P.S. Need a holiday present idea? Get in touch about how you can get a gift membership for a friend or family-member!

Introducing Our New Video Series on South Baltimore’s Industrial Legacy with the Baltimore Museum of Industry

Baltimore Heritage is pleased to be launching a new series, South Baltimore: In the Shadow of Industry, created with our friends at the Baltimore Museum of Industry. Tune in on Wednesdays for five videos about different industrial sites in Locust Point. Today’s episode showcases the Procter & Gamble factory, today’s Under Armour headquarters!

Micro-Grants Fund Five New Preservation Projects!

Thank you to everyone who came to our virtual micro-grant party last week and helped select the five new ideas to advance preservation in Baltimore! It was a fun and participatory event. Here are the five projects that received funding:

$500 Micro-Grants: 

Friends of Contee-Parago Park: The micro-grant will help them preserve the original dedication plaque installed in the park in 1971. 

Fight Blight Baltimore: The micro-grant will help fund the establishment of a book and food library at 703 N Fremont Ave. 

$250 Micro-Grants: 

ImagineIN: The micro-grant will help create an outdoor visual art video installation at 1647 North Calhoun Street. 

The Linden Avenue Association: This micro-grant will help to repair and repaint the gazebo in the 1700 block of Linden Avenue. 

$50 Micro-Grant: 

The Baltimore Crime Museum: This micro-grant will help to create a podcast about Baltimore’s crime history and how it has shaped Baltimore’s history, geography, and its current situation. 

 

We will keep you posted as these projects move along and, again, thank you!!

New Preservation Project: Announcing Partnership to Support the Bruce Street Arabber Stable, and a Baltimore Tradition Too!

Baltimore Heritage is delighted to be partnering with the Southwest Partnership and the Bruce Street Arabber Stable to help keep the historic stable on Bruce Street from collapsing.

Current owners Dorothy and David Johns wish to continue the tradition of arabbing (a-rab-bing)–in which melodious vendors sell fruit and vegetables from colorful, horse-drawn wagons–out of this stable, but their endeavors are threatened by a tree growing in the rear wall. This project will help protect the stable and allow it to continue growing into a vital community gathering place. 

This two-story, brick stable has been in operation since at least 1897 when this street was still called Bruce Alley. Since then the property has changed owners more than seven times before landing in the hands of Dorothy and David Johns. Dorothy’s grandmother, Mildred Allen, was one of Baltimore’s most successful arabbers, and the first female stable owner in Baltimore. Dorothy wants to celebrate her family’s past, and Baltimore’s unique arabbing culture, by continuing to shelter horses and wagons at the Bruce Street stable. 

The Baltimore Sun, December 9, 1897

Last year, Baltimore Heritage became aware of the need for stabilization of the building. After a site visit in November 2019 with staff from Baltimore Heritage and the Southwest Partnership, the Southwest Partnership retained a structural engineer to provide a preliminary assessment of the necessary work. The engineer concluded that there were three primary areas that needed to be addressed: the rear wall, the roof, and the internal support joists. 

We worked with Dorothy and David and the State of Maryland to secure funds and now work has begun. Check back to get periodic updates on its progress! 

 

For more on Baltimore arabbing: 

The Arabbers of Baltimore: A Photo Essay by Roland Freeman

The Arabbers of Baltimore City: A Market on Wheels by Madeline Ross

2020 Virtual Pitch Party: Help Us Give Away Five Micro-Grants!

Preservation in Baltimore is a participatory sport and we hope you will join in at our 2020 micro-grant giveaway on Thursday, October 22! At this free and virtual event, you’ll get to help us give away five micro-grants to help great projects in Baltimore. Based on your votes, we will give out two $500 grants, two $250 grants, and one $50 grant. Here are the finalists:

Jean Lee Cole, Friends of Contee-Parago Park
Hope Ford, ImagineIN
Matt Hood, The Baltimore Crime Museum
Nneka Nnamdi, Fight Blight Baltimore
Steven Skerritt-Davis, The Linden Avenue Association

We will count the results and let the winners know on the spot which grant they have won! It will be an exciting night and we can’t wait to “see” you there! Questions? Email ricks@baltimoreheritage.org