Category: Tours

A green-tinted photograph of a large stone house with overlaid white text reading: "Orianda House at the Crimea Estate"

New tours of the Orianda House, H.L. Mencken House, and more

After a quiet July, we are back with new tours of historic places all across the city! On August 24, we’re returning to the grand Orianda House at the former Crimea Estate in Gwynns Falls Park. Then, on September 12, we’re celebrating the birthday of Baltimore’s own H.L. Mencken with a tour of his beloved Hollins Street rowhouse.

If you have any visitors in town this summer (or you feel like being a tourist in your own backyard), be sure to check out one of our upcoming Monumental City tours of Jonestown and the Shot Tower this Sunday, August 6, downtown landmarks on August 13, the Washington Monument on August 20, and the Patterson Park Observatory on August 27. Of course, Lexington Market is open for visitors and local shoppers all year round but you can enjoy a special treat by exploring the market “catacombs” with our latest market tour on September 9.

Finally, you can get outside the city on September 30 as our friends at Preservation Maryland share how historic Ellicott City is recovering from last year’s devastating flood. We hope you are having a wonderful summer and we look forward to seeing you on a tour soon!

Tours on the move this summer!

We’re enjoying a hot start to summer but before it gets really hot we’re squeezing in a few tours that combine Baltimore’s great heritage with a little outdoor activity. Tomorrow, June 24, we’re taking a walk through Baltimore’s LGBT heritage with our Charles Village Pride tour. On Sunday, June 25, we’re pedaling and talking our way from Cylburn Arboretum to Druid Hill Park and back again on The Enduring Value of Baltimore’s Parks: A Tour by Bike. And on Thursday, June 29 you can check out moving images with a screening of the 1981 16mm film “Memories” organized by the Greater Hampden Heritage Alliance.

Finally, on Friday, June 30, we’re partnering with Goucher College’s Historic Preservation Program to offer a truly unusual tour: a visit with project engineers as they move three one-thousand ton mid-century modern dormitories across campus. How in the world can they do that? We’ll get up close on this hard hat tour to find out! We hope you can join us.

P.S. You can also check out our photos from last week’s 2017 Preservation Awards Celebration at Lexington Market. Congratulations again to all of our award winners!

Join us on June 15 at Lexington Market for Preservation Awards, market tours, and great food!

If you haven’t already bought your tickets, you still have time to join us on the evening of Thursday, June 15 for our 2017 Awards Celebration. Lexington Market is kindly hosting us for an evening that includes tours of the “catacombs” under the west market, delicious food from Faidley’s, Mary Mervis and more market favorites, and a celebration of the best historic preservation work of the year. We are especially excited to congratulate this year’s award winners. The array of diverse and exceptional award-winning projects includes the rehabilitation of alley houses in East Baltimore, the Herring Run Archaeology project, and the meticulous restoration of grand rowhouses in Bolton Hill. We’ll have parking available in the surface lot next to the market, and with Light Rail and Metro Subway stops close by, there is every reason to get yourself to Lexington Market on June 15!

As we round out the month of June, we also hope you can join us on an upcoming tour. We have three Monumental City Tours on Sundays: June 11 is Downtown Landmarks and Lions; June 18 is Mount Vernon Place and the Washington Monument; and June 25 is Patterson Park Observatory and the Battle of Baltimore. On Saturday, June 24, we are exploring LGBTQ heritage with Charles Village Pride: LGBT Heritage Walking Tour. And finally, on June 25, we have our final bike tour of the spring: The Enduring Value of Baltimore’s Historic Parks: A Tour by Bike. We’ll see you outdoors in June!

New tours of immigration, Cylburn Mansion, and Baltimore desserts

We hope you can join us over the next several weeks on tours by bike and on foot as we explore immigration into Baltimore, look inside one of the city’s great historic gems at Cylburn Mansion, and eat our way across East Baltimore. You can also check out two great events from our partners this evening: the centennial celebration of the Lafayette Monument at Mount Vernon Place and the Preservation Society’s Annual Reception in Fell’s Point.

On May 21, our Florence Meets Baltimore by Bike: Gelato and Ice Cream bike tour returns with a unique comparison of two great cities in architecture and frozen treats. We’re offering a second bike tour, Food From Home: Immigration, Bakeries, and Delis by Bike on June 10, to discuss immigration past and present, meet the owners from Attman’s Deli, DiPasquales, and Hoehn’s Bakery, and sample their delicious food!

On our Natural and Architectural Beauty at Cylburn Mansion and Arboretum tour on May 23, we’ll take a stroll around the grounds of Cylburn Arboretum and look inside the Tyson family’s historic mansion. And finally, on June 4, we’re pleased to host a tour with Jewish historian Deborah Weiner: Exploring Jewish Immigration: A Walking Tour in Bolton Hill and Reservoir Hill where we’ll highlight some of the Jewish immigrants, their homes, and synagogues, who played leading roles in Baltimore’s development.

Works of Art in the Past and the Artists Who Make Them Today

On two new tours this spring we are celebrating great art from Baltimore’s past and meeting the people who are making and teaching art in Baltimore’s present. On April 27, please join us on a visit to one of the grandest art collections in the city on our tour: Travel to the Gilded Age at Evergreen House. Evergreen House, once the home of Ambassador T. Harrison Garrett and his artist wife Alice Garrett, is a splendid building filled with the Garrett family’s art collection (including paintings by Degas and Picasso and one of the world’s largest collections of Tiffany glass).

On May 11, our tour of the Schuler School of Fine Arts is a chance to learn about a school that carries on the work of master Baltimore sculptor Hans Schuler. From Samuel Smith at the top of Federal Hill to Martin Luther near Lake Montebello, Schuler’s figurative monuments and sculptures adorn the city. Today, students learn the techniques of the Old World masters in the house and studio that has been part the Schuler family story for over a century. On our tour with the Schuler relatives and art instructors, we’ll see finished work by Schuler and works-in-progress by current students at the school.

Finally, we hope you can join us and our partners with the Herring Run Archaeology Project at our 2017 open house this Saturday, April 29. Project archaeologists Jason Shellenhamer and Lisa Kraus along with a great group of local volunteers are looking forward to sharing the story of the Eutaw manor house and the archaeology of the park with visitors from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm.