Category: Tours

Bmore By Bus: Introducing Our New Bus Tour Series

Baltimore Heritage is happy to announce that we are launching  three new bus tours this spring: Baltimore’s Civil Rights, Baltimore’s Public Markets, and Baltimore’s Parks. Join us to explore the city and cover tons of history along the way. Spread the word–students are free!

All tours are from 10 am-12 pm and include at least one stop where the group will disembark from the bus. There will be an option to stay on the bus and receive the same information as the walking portion of these tours. If you are a wheelchair user, please contact Molly Ricks (ricks@baltimoreheritage.org) to make a reservation. 

We hope you can join us on one of the following tours and please check back for more bus tour announcements!

–Johns Hopkins, Executive Director

 

March 23, 2024: Baltimore’s Civil Rights Movement

Baltimore has an incredible history of Civil Rights activism. Join us on this bus tour to explore neighborhoods like Marble Hill, which gave rise to some of the fundamental pillars of the Civil Rights Movement. We will discover how luminaries like Juanita Jackson Mitchell, Thurgood Marshall, and our late congressman, Elijah Cummings, were at the forefront of the fight for equality for Black citizens. We’ll see sites of demonstrations against Jim Crow laws in Druid Hill Park and department stores near Lexington Market, as well as the homes of activists who waged legal battles against racist housing laws in West Baltimore. We’ll discuss the efforts to end segregation in schools and the work of Black suffragists to gain the right to vote. On March 23, we hope you’ll join us to see how the incredible organizing of people like Lillie Carroll Jackson and Rev. Harvey Johnson promoted Civil Rights not just for Baltimoreans, but for Americans across the nation.

 

April 20, 2024: Baltimore’s Public Markets

Lexington Market, Broadway Market, Hollins Market and the rest of Baltimore’s public markets have been a part of our daily life for more than 250 years. They’ve survived and thrived by adapting to change without losing their purpose: to feed people! On April 20, we will drive between four of Baltimore’s six remaining markets, including the oldest survivor, Broadway, and the newest to be renovated, Hollins. We’ll stop inside our youngest market, Northeast, which dates from 1885, to chat with a market vendor and try some traditional Baltimore coddies. We’ll start at Lexington Market and we’ll end up back there to sample one of Baltimore’s favorite fried chicken spots. Bring your appetite!

 

May 18, 2024: Baltimore’s Parks: 

In 1827, William Patterson donated land in East Baltimore for what would become our city’s first public park: Patterson Park. Seventy-five years later, the City commissioned the Olmsted Brothers landscape architecture firm to create a plan for a municipal park system, which eventually led to the creation of a first-class network of parks that covers thousands of acres. Family estates that at one time ringed Baltimore City, including homes of the Carrolls, Rogers, Winans and other families, were converted into promenades, nature walks, ballfields, and swimming pools. On May 18, we’ll meet at the renovated Druid Hill Park Superintendent’s House and travel between some other well known parks in the western part of our city including Leakin Park and Carroll Park, stopping by some gems that are less appreciated like Lafayette Square and Leon Day Park. Join us as we learn how our city’s parks were designed and used, and how they have shaped the city we know today.


This project has been financed in part with funds from the Charles A. and Lois H. Miller Foundation and State funds from the Maryland Heritage Areas Authority, an instrumentality of the State of Maryland. However, project contents or opinions do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Maryland Heritage Areas Authority.

What Are We Planning for 2024?

And why we need your support to make it happen!

There are only a few days left in 2023, which means you have only a few days left to donate or become a member this year! 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 began hosting tours at Westminster Hall & Burying Ground in addition to our recurring tours at Clifton Mansion, Green Mount Cemetery and in historic neighborhoods around our city. This spring we will be able to return with more robust tours and events, including three new bus tours. Please stay tuned!
  • Five Minute Histories Videos: Our Five Minute Histories series offers a way to connect that in-person programs just can’t. So, don’t worry, these are here to stay, and we’re ramping up for a full year of them in 2024.
  • Critical Preservation Advocacy: This past year we helped fight to preserve architecturally significant rowhouses on Preston Street in Mt. Vernon and several buildings in the Five & Dime Local Historic District near Lexington Market. In 2024, we will continue this work throughout the city, which a special focus on disinvested historic neighborhoods.

 

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.

So once more for 2023, 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. We look forward to working with you and connecting with you in the year ahead.

— Johns Hopkins, Baltimore Heritage

Spend Your Holidays with Baltimore Heritage: Upcoming December Tours

The holiday season is upon us and we want to spend it with you! Please check out our upcoming heritage tours to get to know even more about Baltimore’s history this winter season. We hope to see you this month!

Boughs of Holly: A Tour of Evergreen Museum & Library Decked Out for the Holidays

When a tremendous Gilded Age mansion gets fully-adorned with holiday decorations, there’s a lot to see. On Tuesday, December 5, please join us for a special winter tour of the Evergreen Museum and Library, which holds 48 rooms, a soaring portico, a Tiffany designed glass canopy, and loads holiday decorations. Register here!

 

The Baltimore Immigration Museum: A Behind-the-Scenes Tour

On Tuesday, December 19, join Baltimore Heritage at the Baltimore Immigration Museum to hear the stories of the various ethnic groups, including Germans, Irish, Jews, Poles, Lithuanians, Czechs, Italians, and Greeks, who started their American journey in Baltimore between 1830 and 1914. Register here! 

 

Up into the Clockworks at the Bromo Seltzer Tower

On Wednesday, December 27, join us for a behind-the-scenes tour of the Bromo Seltzer Tower! Completed in 1911, the tower’s four clocks each measure 24 feet across, a foot more London’s Big Ben, and the tower itself was the tallest building in Baltimore at the time. Our tour through the building will include a trip up into the clockworks at the top to look at the tick-tock operation in process and peer out the translucent windows. Register here! 

 

Our 2023 Preservation Celebration

Finally, with Thanksgiving just behind us, 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.