Category: Support

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.

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!

Happy Holidays…and Oh Yes, January Tours of M&T Bank Stadium and Zeke’s Coffee Roastery

Even though we’re in the midst of the 2019 holiday season, we can’t help but share two new tours we just lined up for the new year and hope you will put them on your 2020 calendar.

On Tuesday, January 7, we are excited to offer a tour of M&T Bank Stadium, “From Pianos to Pigskins: Ravens Stadium Then and Now.” We’ll explore the stadium from the suite-level to the locker-rooms and learn about the enormous 1869 Knabe Piano Factory that once sat at the same location. Join us for this touchdown tour to talk about both football players and piano players.

On Thursday, January 23, we’re touring Zeke’s Coffee Roastery to learn about this Baltimore business’s unique roasting process, as well as a little of the history of Baltimore’s coffee trade. In 2005 when Thomas Rhodes founded Zeke’s, he joined a long line of coffee connoisseurs going back over 200 years in Baltimore. We hope to see you on the 23rd: it will be espresso-ily energizing!

From all of us at Baltimore Heritage, we wish you a happy holiday season and thank you again for all your interest and support.

— Johns Hopkins, Executive Director

P.S., If you have not renewed your membership, we humbly suggest now would be a great time to do so. And for last minute shoppers, Baltimore Heritage memberships make great holiday presents!

Suffrage in the Spotlight: Heritage Talks and Tours this Holiday Season

Before we turn all of our attention to holiday planning, check out our upcoming heritage talks and tours to get to know even more about Baltimore’s history this winter season.

On December 15, join author Elaine Weiss for a lecture on her book, The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote, which chronicles the struggle for American female suffrage. Ms. Weiss’s book is so compelling that Steven Spielberg and Hillary Clinton are teaming up to turn it into a movie! This Thanksgiving, we are especially grateful for the women and men who fought for voting rights over a century ago.

On December 14, catch our last Lexington Market tour of the year. See behind-the-scenes at what Ralph Waldo Emerson dubbed “the gastronomic capital of the world” and the catacombs under the marketplace. Be sure to stock up on the candies and baked goods at the market for your holiday sweet tooth!

Finally, with Thanksgiving around the corner, we at Baltimore Heritage have a lot to be thankful for, starting with the kind volunteers who lead our tours, research and write about historic places for Explore Baltimore Heritage, join us in fighting for threatened historic landmarks, and so much more. You make our work possible. Thank you all!

— Johns Hopkins, Executive Director

PS: It’s the time of year when we both give thanks and look forward to the year ahead. It is also the time of year when we ask you to join or renew your membership support for Baltimore Heritage. Your gift makes our work possible.

Renew your support for Baltimore Heritage in 2018

It’s the time of year when we both give thanks and look forward to the year ahead. It is also the time of year when we ask you to renew your membership support for Baltimore Heritage.

We at Baltimore Heritage have a lot to be thankful for—starting with the kind volunteers who lead our tours, research and write about historic places for Explore Baltimore Heritage, join us in fighting for threatened historic landmarks, and so much more. You make our work possible.

Archaeological investigation at the Sellers Mansion, July 28, 2018.

We also are thankful that the future is looking brighter for the Sellers Mansion in West Baltimore’s Lafayette Square neighborhood. This past summer, we helped organize a group of volunteer archaeologists and excavated the yard of this 1868 house. Our team identified the remains of a historic nursery building and found artifacts from the Sellers’ family occupation. Most importantly, the dig fulfilled one of the city’s requirements before stabilization work on the building could begin. After more than twenty years advocating for the preservation of this grand structure, we are excited to see the project being moving forward. The rehabilitation cannot come soon enough!

Sam Smith Monument
Sam Smith Monument, 2013. Courtesy CHAP.

We’d also like to say thanks to our new partners: the Adopt-a-Monument Partnership Fund. This program, now twenty-five years old, matches donors with public sculptures in Baltimore to raise funds for their maintenance and preservation. With thousands of dollars raised every year, the program has helped dozens of sculptures including the Peace Monument in Mount Vernon, On the Trail in Clifton Park, and the Sam Smith statue in Federal Hill. We look forward to both being the fiscal sponsor for this great project and helping it expand to help even more public art in Baltimore.

Behind the Scenes tour at Fashions Unlimited, June 26, 2018.

As we look forward to year ahead, we know that it will be full of new tours in our Heritage Tour Series (two hundred different sites and counting!), as well as work to help threatened historic squares and neighborhoods as they revitalize. Thank you again for your past support and for renewing your Baltimore Heritage membership. We can’t do it without you!