Category: Behind the Scenes Tours

Eat your way through Baltimore’s Old Chinatown

nixon_eating_chinese_food
President Nixon’s historic 1972 visit to China

Behind the Scenes Tour of Old Chinatown
Saturday June 1, 2013 from 4:15 pm to 6:30 pm
RSVP Today!
$45 members / $55 non-members
Includes sampling of international food from several restaurants
Limit of 10 people

Beginning in the 1870s, Chinese settlers started arriving in Baltimore from California and other West Coast states. Most had worked as laborers for the transcontinental railroad that was completed in 1869 and came east looking for jobs and to escape a rising level of persecution. In Baltimore near Lexington Market, the immigrants established places of worship (Joss houses), laundries, gambling houses, and restaurants. The original “Chinatown” was in the 200 block of Marion Street and even included a school for 40 children. Baltimore’s Chinatown was relocated to Park Avenue during an urban renewal effort in the 1950s and achieved its peak in the years preceding President Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972. Today the area has a number of shops and restaurants featuring international cuisine, including of course Chinese.

Please join us and our guide, Ms. Sharon Reuter, on a walking and eating tour that will follow Baltimore’s Chinese immigrants through historic Chinatown along Park Avenue to the present-day hodgepodge of ethnic eateries. The tour will include sampling dishes from Vietnamese/Thai, Ethiopian, and of course Chinese restaurants. It will also include learning about this once-bustling two-block area in the heart of downtown Baltimore and finding out what happened to the vigorous Chinese community and its many restaurants that once inhabited the area and which newer immigrants have since opened restaurants nearby.

The tour will provide an early dinner with a menu of vegetables, legumes, beef, shrimp, pork and duck dishes, along with water, tea and a bottle of Chinese beer. Vegetarian options, with or without shellfish, are available with advance notice. I hope you can join us! Johns

Tiffany, tile work and more: historic church tour with authors Sally Johnston and Lois Zanow

brown_memorial_stained_glass_windowIn their recent book “Monuments to Heaven,” historians and authors Sally Johnston and Lois Zanow describe the architecture, art and history of many historic houses of worship in Baltimore. Please join us on a tour with Ms. Johnston and Ms. Zanow to learn about the stained glass windows, lovely mosaic tile work, and great history of two of the city’s most impressive churches: Corpus Christi-Jenkins Memorial Church and Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church. The churches are a short walk apart in the Bolton Hill neighborhood.

Behind the Scenes Tour of Corpus Christi and Brown Memorial Churches
Wednesday, May 15, 2013 from 5:30 to 6:30 pm
Meet at Corpus Christi Church: 110 W. Lafayette Ave., Baltimore 21217
RSVP today. $10 members | $20 non-members

Corpus Christi Memorial Church was built in 1891 in memory of Thomas and Louisa Jenkins by their children. Their goal was to build the most exquisite church in Baltimore. Patrick Keeley, the foremost architect of Catholic churches in his day, designed the building. The interior, designed by John Hardman & Company of London, glitters and glows with colorful mosaics accented with gold tessera, stained glass windows and a high vaulted ceiling with clerestory windows. Famous for its large Florentine style mosaics adorning the chancel, Corpus Christi also has smaller mosaic Stations of the Cross as well as a charming mosaic depicting the founding of Maryland. There are four chapels and a baptistery which boast  gold mosaic ceilings, marble walls, statues of saints and stained glass windows.

Just one block from Corpus Christi is Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church, built in memory of George Brown in 1870 by his wife Isabella Brown. The church was designed by Nathaniel Hutton and John Murdoch, and the stunning interior has 17 stained glass windows including 12 Tiffany windows, making it one of the world’s largest and finest collections of stained glass. The two largest windows measure 16″ by 32″ and are the largest windows the Tiffany Studios ever made. The chancel has a five part window in the medieval style by the Wilbur Burnham Studios. Without interior columns, there is an unobstructed view of these glorious windows.

I hope you can join us to learn about these wonderful churches and their artwork.

Behind the Scenes Tour at Thomas Brown Woodwright highlights architectural millwork and antique machines

thomasbrown
Thomas Brown, Woodwright

Thomas Brown, Woodwright custom mills architectural products for historic buildings all over Baltimore and beyond. Amazingly, Thomas Brown does all this mostly on machines that pre-date the Great Depression. The shop uses very few machines built after 1929 and keeps some machines that date as far back as the 1830s. Please join us for a Behind the Scenes Tour of this workshop located in a 1905 former icehouse building in the Remington neighborhood.

Behinds the Scenes at the Thomas Brown, Woodwright Workshop
Wednesday, March 13, 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
330 West 23rd Street, Baltimore, 21211
RSVP Today! $15 members | $25 non-members – wine & cheese will be served.
Parking is available on the street. Enter on the Hampden Avenue Side.

You can see Thomas Brown’s handicraft in architectural millwork across the city at places like Hampton Mansion, Evergreen House, and the Garrett Jacobs Mansion. A little further afield, his shop has has helped to restore the Gracie Mansion in New York, the Harvard University Center in Boston, Winterthur Museum in Delaware, and the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. Thomas Brown’s workshop has fifteen wood working machines that have vanished from the planet everywhere else except their shop in Remington! What others consider antiquated or outdated, Thomas Brown considers essential to fabricating architectural woodwork for historic buildings.  Please join Mr. Brown as he walks us through his shop sharing the stories of this rare historic wood-working equipment and the architectural woodwork that they produce.

Thomas Brown, Woodwright
Thomas Brown, Woodwright

Let’s Go O’s (and adpative reuse)! Join us for a Behind the Scenes tour of Camden Yards

Camden Station
Camden Station

Camden Yards, home to the Baltimore Orioles, is much more than a ballpark. When the park first opened as the new home of our Baltimore’s baseball team in 1992, the buildings had already served the people of Baltimore for over 130 years. Many of us have visited Camden Yards on game day amid the crowds of enthusiastic sports fans. Here is a chance to see the ballpark at a quieter time and to visit places that are not typically open to the public. Our tour will include the dugout, umpires tunnel, press box, club level, and the JumboTron control room. We will hear about the history of baseball in Baltimore while gaining an appreciation for all that goes into making a home for a great team like the Orioles.

Behind the Scenes Tour of Camden Yards
Saturday, March 9, 10:15 am or
Sunday, March 24, 12:30 pm
333 W. Camden Street, Baltimore, 21201
RSVP Today!  $15 members | $25 non-members
Parking is available at lots B & C located between Oriole Park and Ravens Stadium for a fee or visit the MTA website for details on transit options.

The history of Camden Yards began in 1855 when the B&O Railroad started construction on Camden Station. The iconic B&O warehouse  that frames the west side of the stadium today was built between 1899 and 1905. The warehouse is over eight stories tall and over 1,100 feet long – large enough to hold the freight from 1,000 railroad cars. The station remained in active use by the B&O’s passenger trains until the 1980s making it one of the longest continuously operated railroad terminals in the United States. The building has gone through many changes since its original design of a castle-like façade to today’s ballpark. Today, Camden Yards and Camden Station are a nationally known success story for adaptive reuse and a great place to catch a game!

Photograph of Camden Yards, 2006 by Carol Highsmith. Courtesy LOC, LC-DIG-highsm-04854
Photograph of Camden Yards, 2006 by Carol Highsmith. Courtesy LOC, LC-DIG-highsm-04854

Discover a mysterious history at the Masonic Grand Lodge of Maryland’s Museum and Library

In addition to invoking more than a little mystery of rituals and clandestine meetings, Maryland’s Masons have been collecting important pieces of history for hundreds of years. Maryland Masons established a collection in the 1830’s to preserve relics associated with heroes of the American Revolution. The collection parameters were later expanded and the museum accumulated a vast array of material that encompasses not only Masonic-related objects, but also items that were deemed important to preserve for posterity.

Masonic Grand Lodge Museum and Library
Wednesday, March 6, 2013, 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Update: Due to predictions of continued severe weather, we have rescheduled tonight’s tour for Wednesday, April 10th, 6:00 pm
304 International Circle, Cockeysville, MD 21030
RSVP today! $15 members | $25 non-members

Painting of Thomas Shyrock by Meredith Janvier, c. 1910-20. Image courtesy Maryland State Archives, MSA SC 1545-1214.
Painting of Thomas Shyrock by Meredith Janvier, c. 1910-20. Image courtesy Maryland State Archives, MSA SC 1545-1214.

Highlights of the collection include the desk that George Washington used to resign his commission as Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Army in 1783 in the Old Senate Chamber of the Maryland State House, as well as a rich collection of items that belonged to Baltimore philanthropist and Maryland State Treasurer Thomas J. Shryock (1851-1918). The museum also boasts one of the most extensive and comprehensive collections of Masonic regalia in North America, dating back to 1775. As a result of an ongoing inventorying of the collection, many items have been rediscovered, including Thomas Jefferson’s paper knife given to the museum in 1959 by the widower of Jefferson’s great granddaughter, Sarah Randolph Hammerslough (1871-1959). Museum Curator Edward Heimiller will lead our tour and will help us better understand the origins, beliefs, and history of the freemasons.