Category: Behind the Scenes Tours

Kick off 2017 with two Behind the Scenes Tours

Happy New Year! We are ready to ring in 2017 with some great new Baltimore Behind the Scenes tours.

On Tuesday, January 10, we’ll go backstage at the Meyerhoff Symphony Hall to learn about acoustical design, music legends, and the history of the Symphony Hall and the Meyerhoff family. On our tour, we will walk the stage and explore the basement, music library, and the area where the musicians hang out before the show.

On Saturday, February 4, we’re visiting the 150-year-old Manger Packing Corporation in southwest Baltimore to learn about the tradition of sausage making and Baltimore’s German heritage from Alvin Manger, great-grandson of the company’s founder and current patriarch of the Manger family’s business.

Finally, please join our statewide partner Preservation Maryland on Wednesday, January 4 for a town hall meeting to learn about how you can advocate for preservation during this year’s Maryland Legislative session. The meeting is at Union Mill (1500 Union Avenue) at 6:30 pm. Registration is not required!

I hope your new year is starting off well and I hope you can join us for these and other tours in the year ahead.

Behind the Scenes at City Garage and the Maryland House

Our upcoming tours give you an insider’s look at one of the most talked about projects in Baltimore, let you step into an often overlooked gem at the Maryland Zoo and tell the love stories of Mount Vernon. We are also bringing back our popular Monumental City tours on Sundays from April to November!

On April 14, our Port Covington tour offers a behind-the-scenes tour of the City Garage and a chance to talk with Sagamore Development about their vision for the future of South Baltimore. Originally developed in 1904 around the end line of the B&O Railroad, the Port Covington area is today poised to become Baltimore’s largest urban redevelopment project.

For our Maryland House tour, Tony Azola of the Azola Companies and Lori Finkelstein of the Maryland Zoo will guide you through an architectural gem located just next to the Rogers Mansion. The Maryland House was built for the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia and then rebuilt on the Zoo grounds. Special thanks to Preservation Maryland for co-hosting this tour! We also will hold our Mount Vernon Love Stories tours (rescheduled from a very cold Valentine’s Day weekend) on April 9 at 11:00 am and 1:00 pm.

Finally, our Monumental City tours return starting April. These tours are a great way to explore Baltimore on Sunday mornings. Join us for as we explore Jonestown and the Shot Tower (1st Sunday); Landmarks and Lions Downtown (2nd Sunday); Mount Vernon and the Washington Monument (3rd Sunday); and the Patterson Park Observatory (4th Sunday).

See the Whitehall Mill and a church full of Tiffany on our upcoming heritage tours

Our upcoming Baltimore Heritage tours will show you the bright future of a historic mill, and let you experience a hidden Baltimore treasure. Later this month, we’re stepping into the middle of construction on our tour of Whitehall Mill. This former textile mill is being reborn as a mixed-use complex of apartments, office space, a restaurant, and a market. Please join us and our hosts from Terra Nova Ventures on a walk through the building, showing the progress they’ve made so far and what work is still to come.

On March 19, please join us at St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church where you can experience the rare treat of standing in the middle of a room and almost everything you see is made or decorated by Tiffany. Please join our host, Reverend Dale Dusman, for a tour and a bit of Tiffany overload at this hidden Baltimore gem.

Unfortunately, due to predictions for extreme cold this weekend, we have decided to reschedule our Mount Vernon Love Stories tour from February 13 to April 9 at 11:00 am and 1:00 pm. We hope to see you on our upcoming tours!

Fall in love with a beautiful building on our upcoming heritage tours

February is the perfect time of year to share a memorable love story and fall in love with a beautiful building. Please join us on Sunday, February 15 for a Valentine’s Day tradition—the Mount Vernon Love Stories Valentine’s walking tour with volunteer guide Jamie Hunt!  Jamie’s tour weaves together stories of trysts, true loves and everything from Benedict Arnold to Al Capone. It’s a real treat and we hope you can join us.

Later in the month, we are looking forward to a preview of a restored Civil Rights museum at the Lillie Mae Carroll Jackson house on Eutaw Place. This tour is the first program in our Civil Rights Landmarks series highlighting historic places tied to the history of Baltimore’s African-American Civil Rights movement. The series is organized through our new partnership with the Maryland Historical Trust and the Baltimore National Heritage Area to document Baltimore’s Civil Rights heritage in the year ahead.

We are always looking for places to tour so, if you have ideas, we’d love to hear from you. You’ll see from our calendar of upcoming tours that we are continuing to branch out with new spring tours planned for Ellicott City and Havre de Grace, so any and all ideas are welcome! Don’t forget, membership support includes discounts on tours and early access to our spring 2015 Baltimore by Foot tours—including walks with local experts in Pigtown, Mount Washington, Hampden and more.

Behind the Scenes Tour of the Institute of Notre Dame High School – rescheduled for August 12!

Join us on a tour of the Institute of Notre Dame – a Baltimore landmark that has educated young women for over 150 years. Our guide, long-time resident Sister Hilda Marie Sutherland better known as Sister Hildie, is 81 years old and a local treasure in her own right. She came to IND from St. Mary’s Female Orphan Asylum in Roland Park at age 14 and never left.

Originally established in 1847 as the Collegiate Institute of Young Ladies, the Institute of Notre Dame High School (IND) was founded by Baltimore’s own Mother Theresa – the Blessed Mother Theresa of Jesus Gerhardinger. A native of Munich, Bavaria, Mother Theresa helped to found the School Sisters of Notre Dame (SSND) in Germany and came to Baltimore with a small group of sisters to educate the children of immigrants and minister to the poor. Mother Theresa purchased the original convent building from the Redemptorist priests assigned to nearby St. James in 1847 and soon expanded the convent into a boarding school when the sisters discovered two orphans left on their doorstep. By 1852, the sisters had built the school that still stands today.

The school continued to grow through the years: adding an auditorium in 1885, a chapel in 1892, additional classroom space in 1926, and their gymnasium in 1992. Since the first graduation ceremony on July 24, 1864, over 7,000 alumnae have graduated from IND including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (1958) and Sen. Barbara Mikulski (1954) who later recalled, “They taught me more than geography or mathematics; they taught me to help those in need of help. They inspired my passion for service.”

Sister Hildie is the perfect guide to the school’s rich legacy with over 60 years in residence at the school. Her service has touched countless students among the school’s students and East Baltimore residents who have been helped by her weekly efforts to collect clothing, household items and food to share with the school’s neighbors. Come out to Aisquith Street and discover the charms and history of Sister Hildie and IND!