Category: Tours

What’s Out There Weekend, September 21-22: Join Us and the Cultural Landscape Foundation!

Join us, the Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) and its other partners to explore Baltimore’s unique landscape legacy during What’s Out There Weekend Baltimore on September 21-22, 2024. This event features FREE, expert-led tours of dozens of sites, including gardens, campuses, plazas, public parks, and cultural institutions.

These tours allow participants to discover the background and design history of familiar places they often overlook. Knowledgeable guides will share rich stories, personal anecdotes, and keen observations, providing behind-the-scenes expertise and insights into landscape architecture and urban development.

TCLF will produce a printed guidebook for What’s Out There Weekend Baltimore, featuring most of the tour sites. The guidebook will be available for pre-order and as a free downloadable PDF soon. Additionally, you can explore the area’s landscape legacy with TCLF’s digital What’s Out There Cultural Landscapes Guide to Baltimore, available now.

Announcing Exciting New Heritage Tours for July & August

We are thrilled to offer even more unique walking and behind-the-scenes tours in the next few months and hope to see you on some soon. Check out our calendar to see new additions!

–Johns Hopkins, Executive Director

Join us for a tour inside Clifton Mansion, the Italianate country house that has overlooked Baltimore City for over 200 years. At one time the summer home of War of 1812 captain Henry Thompson and then philanthropist Johns Hopkins, the story of Clifton is one of two prominent businessmen, enslaved & free Black people, and more. And the tour wouldn’t be complete without climbing the tower and taking in one-of-a-kind views of Clifton Park and our surrounding city. We hope to see you there. July 24 (5:30 pm-6:30 pm) & August 21 (5:30 pm-6:30 pm). $10-$15

For a tiny neighborhood squeezed between the University of Maryland and Camden Yards, Ridgely’s Delight contains an oversized history. George Washington rode here and Babe Ruth was born here. Join us to walk the preserved, picturesque streets of one of the earliest neighborhoods in Baltimore while we look back at the stories of both its famous visitors and the ordinary Baltimoreans who worked and raised their families here. July 14, 9:30 am-10:30 am. $10-$15

Baltimoreans celebrated atop Federal Hill when we ratified the U.S. Constitution. We used it to defend the city from the British in the War of 1812 and to make sure we stayed in the Union in the Civil War. We have even tunnelled under it to quarry minerals. Join us on a tour of Federal Hill and the neighborhood around it to learn about this waterfront community’s rich history, including stops at one of the last wooden houses in the city, the oldest house in Federal Hill, and the wonderful alley houses along Churchill Street. July 21, 9:30 am-10:30 am. $10-$15

Mount Vernon began as a country estate for Revolutionary War hero John Eager Howard and grew to be the place to live for Baltimore’s rich and famous in the mid-nineteenth century. Join us on a tour to hear the stories behind the landmarks of Baltimore’s grandest historic neighborhood. July 28, 9:30 am-10:30 am. $10-$15

A Walking Tour of East Baltimore’s Historic American Indian “Reservation:” The place now known as Baltimore, like the rest of what is now known as the United States, has always been home to Native peoples. Baltimore is part of the ancestral homelands of the Piscataway and the Susquehannock, and a diverse host of American Indian folks from other nations have passed through or lived here at different times — and still do! In the mid-twentieth century, thousands of Lumbee Indians and members of other tribal nations migrated to Baltimore City, seeking jobs and a better quality of life. Join historian and artist Ashley Minner Jones to learn about places and spaces important to American Indian history and heritage in the city, with a focus on East Baltimore’s Historic American Indian “Reservation” in the 20th century. September 4, 5:30 pm-6:30 pm. $10-$15

Join Baltimore Heritage on a Tour This Summer!

As we move into our warmer months, we are creating even more unique walking and behind-the-scenes tours. We hope to see you on some soon. Please check our calendar to see new additions!

–Johns Hopkins, Executive Director

Ridgley’s Delight: For a tiny neighborhood squeezed between the University of Maryland and Camden Yards, Ridgely’s Delight contains an oversized history. George Washington slept here and Babe Ruth was born here! Join us to walk the preserved, picturesque streets of one of the earliest neighborhoods in Baltimore while we look back at the stories of both its famous visitors and the ordinary Baltimoreans who worked and raised their families here. June 9, 9:30 am – 10:30 am. $10-$15

 

A Factory Tour of Mount Royal Soaps: Mount Royal Soap Company was founded in Baltimore, MD in the Spring of 2014 by three soap-obsessed friends: Matt, Pat & Sam. With the explosion of soap and sanitizer demand during the pandemic they opened their first manufacturing space in the Woodberry neighborhood just 2 miles from the Remington store. Join us for a fascinating tour of sustainably sourced bath and body products made through a small batch production process right here in Baltimore! June 18, 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm. $10-$15

 

Mount Vernon Place: Mount Vernon began as a country estate for Revolutionary War hero John Eager Howard and grew to be the place to live for Baltimore’s rich and famous in the mid-nineteenth century. Join us on a tour to hear the stories behind the landmarks of Baltimore’s grandest historic neighborhood. June 23, 9:30 am – 10:30 am. $10-$15

 

Feisty Females of Fells Point: Everyone knows that Fell’s Point has a rich history, but do you know about the Caribbean immigrant, Mary Lange, who dared to teach children of color out of her home and rose to be the first Black mother-superior in American history? How about the single mom who helped stop the development of an interstate highway through these historic streets? We hope you’ll join us and tour guide Robin Minor to hear about these fierce women who helped forge Fells Point into the vibrant, distinctive neighborhood it is today. June 23, 11:– am – 12:30 pm. $10-$15

 

Celebrate Pride! LGBTQ Heritage in Charles Village: Charles Village was home to many activists and institutions at the heart of the city’s LGBTQ community in the 1970s and 1980s. Our wonderful guides will take us on a walk past local landmarks from the original home of the Gay Community Center of Baltimore, now the GLCCB, to the St. Paul Street church that supported the growth of the Metropolitan Community Church, Baltimore’s oldest LGBT religious organization, and the radical feminist writers and publishers that gave a voice to lesbian authors who might not otherwise have been read. June 30, 10:00 am – 11:30 am, $10-$15

 

The Lillie Carroll Jackson Civil Rights Museum: From 1935 until her retirement in 1970, Lillie Carroll Jackson was president of the Baltimore chapter of the NAACP and for much of this time her home on Eutaw Place was a hub of Civil Rights organizing for Jackson and her daughter, Juanita Jackson Mitchell. Executive Director Johns Hopkins for a short walk around Lillie Carroll Jackson’s neighborhood. Then we will go inside the museum to tour where Jackson, called the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement,” lived and worked. July 27, 9:30 am – 11:00 am. $10-$15

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.